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So I've made a huge mistake and moved /lib and /opt folders to subfolder. Now almost every command returns "No such file or directory" or "/bin/sh: bad interpreter: No such file or directory". I need to move these files back, but I can't run mv. Can I do it somehow or should I start restoring server from backups?

EDIT:

My provider allowed external access to file system, so I was able to move directories to main directory and everything went back to normal:) Thanks for help.

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  • Possibly, you can boot using live CD and try to fix it
    – Khaled
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:03
  • @Khaled: I don't have physical access to server, so I can't mount filesystem from outside.
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:05
  • Do you have an out of band access like iLOM or IPMI? If so you can do a network boot.
    – Mircea Vutcovici
    Jan 6, 2012 at 17:17

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Step 1: Boot from live-cd...

Step 2: Mount the Hard Disk

Step 3: and move the files back.

Step 4: NEVER do that again.

(if you need specific instructions... just ask)

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  • Thanks. Sorry I didn't mention it earlier. I don't have physical access to server. I am in the shell now using putty.
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:06
  • it looks like you moved your /bin folder as well. You could try specifying the full path to executables you need... for mv & such... i.e. /opt/bin/mv /opt/bin / I am not sure if that will work... but worth a shot...
    – TheCompWiz
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:10
  • I can't specify full path, it just doesn't work, there is the same error. I didn't move bin folder.
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:15
  • I guess at this point... you need to do some digging and figure out what commands do work... if there are any. Maybe cat? i.e. cat /opt/dir/file > /dir/file
    – TheCompWiz
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:36
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    Yep. It relies on the underlying OS to be sane in order to do its tasks. At this point... I think you're screwed. Time to get someone on the phone over there... and step them through a live-cd.
    – TheCompWiz
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:55
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You might be able to undo the move by something like:

 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/subfolder/lib
 /subfolder/lib/ld-linux.so.2 /bin/mv /subfolder/lib /lib

...replacing /subfolder with whatever directory you moved /lib into. If a 64-bit Linux host, try ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 instead.

I haven't fully tested this, because I'm not going to break a system in order to do so!

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  • I would gladly try to use your solution, but I was able to solve it by mounting file system from outside, so the problem is over. If this could work, we will never know:)
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 17:52
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Don't logout that Putty session ! You probably won't be able to get back into the server.

Can you run busybox ? (it usually lives in /bin so try "/bin/busybox")

Busybox is almost completely self-contained and has build-in versions of most standard Unix commands'. Busybox without any parameters gives you a list of all commands that it can emulate.

You run the commands like "/bin/busybox {command} ".

E.g.: "/bin/busybox mv file1 file2"

If you have it on the system you can probably use it to move everything back to the original locations.

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  • I won't be able to get back to server. "/bin/busybox" doesn't work too:|
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:19
  • That's not good. Next thing to try is if you can connect a FTP or SCP client to the server and rename the folders back with that. (Is probably not going to work unless you are allowed to do FTP (or SCP) as root, which is usually disabled for security reasons.)
    – Tonny
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:28
  • I can't do it. FTP works, SCP doesn't, but root access is not allowed. I am so happy now to have secured server...
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:33
  • Time to restore then: at least you will be able to pull copies of critical config files and such using FTP. That may help to fix configuration issues after the restore (depending how old the backups are).
    – Tonny
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:37
  • No need to restore, see my solution below. :)
    – Mattias Ahnberg
    Jan 6, 2012 at 17:06
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You have a tool called sln which is a statically linked ln. You can use this one to symlink the folders to the previous place, and then work from there. So say, if you moved /lib to /datadrive/lib and then you broke the system, you could type this to temporarily fix it:

sln /datadrive/lib /lib

Do this for each library path you might have moved.

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  • I was not able to run any command, including ln and sln.
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 17:42
  • That is very very strange. What OS is it? And what happened when you tried to run sln? The point with sln is that it statically linked, compared to dynamically linked, which means it doesn't require any external libraries. Its self-included. I tried it myself just to verify before I gave you the recommendation, I moved /lib and /lib64 into a subfolder, and everything stopped working like for you, then symlinked it back and voila. Worked. :) But glad it worked out with your Edit baove.
    – Mattias Ahnberg
    Jan 6, 2012 at 18:48
  • I am using debian and sln is not found:) Thanks for trying:)
    – LukLed
    Jan 6, 2012 at 19:12
  • Oh darn. I thought Debian/Ubuntu had it too, I tried on RedHat/CentOS machine. Sorry. :( But glad it worked out! :)
    – Mattias Ahnberg
    Jan 6, 2012 at 19:35

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