Originally Posted by methyl

Ideas:

Does the computer respond to external "ftp". I wonder if you can rename the file from a ftp session?

Does the computer respond to external rcp? I wonder if you could copy the library to another computer, rename it and copy it back?

bash (but not ksh) has a character-by-character raw read feature (read -r -n1). Maybe someone better with bash than me could use this feature to create a script to binary copy a file?
With umask it might even be possible to get the permissions correct enough to run real commands to fix the problem.

Originally Posted by methyl

@jlliagre
This is verifiable fact.



The O/P states that bash is still working. I picked up the bash "read" idea from the IBM website after googling the library filename (which we finally got accurately in post #15). Found a thread where they were responding to someone in a similar situation. Renaming this library is a technique to get certain software such as Apache running on AIX when a replacement library is installed further down the library search path. However you have to do things in precisely the right order or you are in a mess.
Unfortunately the promising thread petered out when that O/P rebooted the computer and an unrelated can of worms opened due to having two system discs at different releases of AIX with the wrong one as the default boot.

I picked on "ftp" and "rcp" as ideas because they were not on a list I found of dependencies for the high level library. This does not mean that it will work, but it is worth a try. Given access to the O/S we could find out what libraries each binary requires and look for a loophole.

On the permissions front we won't need execute permissions but we could need world read. Depends on what the default umask is in the first place.

Overall this would be much easier if you or I had a running copy of this AIX complete with the unusual addition of "bash".

I'd still be interested if there is someone out there who can write a binary file copy in "bash".

As you hinted in an earlier post, I too am surprised that this computer stayed running for any length of time.

There are still many options available almost all of which involve booting an alternative system to carry out a repair. Depends on local conditions and whether they have a full release kit and a fully documented system (it's a bit too late to do a hardware and software inventory).