Solaris

Let's say someone accidentally renamed the lib directory in Solaris 8, and now they cannot get into the terminal or even rename the folder via file manager.What would one do?

Running daemons supporting file activity like ftpd/sshd might be able to do something, but they are dead if they exec().

Maybe boot up from a cd on a ramdisk and mount the device and fix it? Can Solaris do that? Else, install a small system to another disk.

Notes:

I do have a copy of the lib directory on a windows machine.

My Sun Enterprise 250 server has a CD drive.

---------- Post updated at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:35 PM ----------

Could you please give me a hint on how to do that, or what I should google for to do that?

If you can boot off a CDROM, then you can mount the filesystem where /lib is missing and then copy the /lib directory structure over from backup.

Remember, when you have physical access to a machine, you simply boot a working OS, mount the disk partitions with problems and go in an make the repairs.

For example, your friend "Joe" accidentally deleted the /lib directory running Solaris 8. You are running Solaris 8 as well. So you say, "Hey Joe, no worries at all". I can get you up and running in no time.

Then, you shutdown Joe's machine, remove his disk, shutdown your machine, install and mount the disk, copy over your /lib directory or copy from CDROM or even install from backup.... the choice is yours.

Joe has to buy you the beers after work.

As long as you have a bootable machine, you can fix it. Even if your machine is Linux. You can still mount the Solaris filesystem (what ever you are using), and repair the injury.

I was using WinSCP at the time, now I can no longer log into the server using or, or any other Putty-type program. I get an access denied message.

OH, in your case, it is even easier...

You can simply mount the filesystem and move it over from whatever it was accidentally named, back to /lib.

You can be up and running in a few minutes.

---------- Post updated at 17:47 ---------- Previous update was at 17:45 ----------

Unlikely....

Without /lib very little works on most machines if they use shared libs, like most modern systems do.

You've got my head spinning Neo, thank you so much.

What OS would you recomend I use to put on this disk for my ancient machine?

I have a Sun Enterprise 250 (1998 vintage).