pinetab2 danctnix broken during upgrade - shell error

[acruhl]

Hello all.

I was doing some package upgrades on my pinetab2 running danctnix and I started noticing some errors with the shell:

-bash: symbol lookup error: -bash: undefined symbol: rl_completion_rewrite_hook

Recklessly, I rebooted and now I can't log in.

It boots up to the graphical login screen. I authenticate, and something happens and I come back to the graphical login screen.

If I try to log in via ssh, I get the error above.

How can I boot into single user? I'm not finding much.

I'm thinking I should try to boot into single user and try to fix it, but I don't know how.

Any other advice?

Thanks!

[Kevin Kofler]

I think your best bet is to boot a known working DanctNIX image off a microSD card, then mount the internal eMMC storage from there and try to fix the system that way. With a broken bash, it might not even be possible to chroot into it, so you will likely need to fix the bash on the eMMC from outside (from the system on microSD). The error is because the installed versions of bash and readline (libreadline.so.*) are not compatible. So, if you have the eMMC mounted at /mnt/emmc, try something like sudo pacman --sysroot /mnt/emmc -Sy bash readline or just upgrading everything with sudo pacman --sysroot /mnt/emmc -Syu.

[acruhl]

I think your best bet is to boot a known working DanctNIX image off a microSD card, then mount the internal eMMC storage from there and try to fix the system that way. With a broken bash, it might not even be possible to chroot into it, so you will likely need to fix the bash on the eMMC from outside (from the system on microSD). The error is because the installed versions of bash and readline (libreadline.so.*) are not compatible. So, if you have the eMMC mounted at /mnt/emmc, try something like sudo pacman --sysroot /mnt/emmc -Sy bash readline or just upgrading everything with sudo pacman --sysroot /mnt/emmc -Syu.

Got it.

I've never booted it off of an SD card, I guess there is a process for that. I'll try to figure it out.

Some systems have a statically linked shell for situations like this in like a rescue directory, I was hoping to use that from single user or something. 

Thanks!

[Kevin Kofler]

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineTab2

See the box "Note regarding the boot order". Since the bootloader is apparently not corrupted, only a part of the userspace (bash/readline), it should be enough to just stick in a bootable microSD card, and the bootloader is supposed to boot from that.

[acruhl]

I tried to boot a MicroSD card and it behaves as if it's not there.

I seem to have lost the UART thing that came with it. Still looking.

I tried to buy another one but noticed there is a $25 surcharge on everything. I might have to do it anyway.

[tophneal]

will Ctrl+Alt+F2(/3/4/5/etc) from the login screen get you into bash to try repairing the update?

[acruhl]

will Ctrl+Alt+F2(/3/4/5/etc) from the login screen get you into bash to try repairing the update?

That won't work. The problem is /bin/bash is dynamically linked to a library that is broken, so the shell doesn't work.

I was hoping to break into single user and use a different shell so I can attempt to fix bash. 

This is a classic unix/Linux risk with dynamically linked executables.