How to recover after deleting the symbolic link libc.so.6?

Question

In our server the symbolic link to libc.so.6 has been deleted. Now none of the binaries in the system work. To fix this, I tried:

/bin/ln -s /lib/libc-2.11.3.so /lib/libc.so.6

which, as expected, gives me:

/bin/ln: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: 
    cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I also tried:

/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2  --inhibit-rpath /lib/libc.so.6 \
   --library-path /lib/libc-2.11.3.so \
   /bin/ln -s /lib/libc-2.11.3.so /lib/libc.so.6

with the same result. Further unsuccessful attempts include cp, mv, cat.

I'm connected via ssh and I believe I will not be able to open another session after closing this one. Is there a way to fix this system (using bash built-ins perhaps)?

[edit] I did:

while read line; do echo $line; done < /lib/libc-2.11.3.so > libc.so.6

to copy the file and tried with:

/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2  --inhibit-rpath libc.so.6 --library-path . \
  /bin/ln -s /lib/libc-2.11.3.so /lib/libc.so.6

and got:

/bin/ln: error while loading shared libraries: ./libc.so.6: ELF file OS ABI invalid

Solution 1

You could simply run ldconfig. Most distributions ship this as a static binary.

Solution 2

Try:

LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libc-2.17.so ln -s /lib/libc-2.17.so /lib/libc.so.6

Note: The actual version depends on your library.

Solution 3

This helped in my case (the actual version depends on your library):

ldconfig -l -v /lib/libc-2.13.so

Solution 4

Boot using a live cd like Knoppix or whatever and fix the missing link after mounting the disk with the "broken" system out of the running live system.

Solution 5

Note, for 64 bit:

LD_PRELOAD=libc-2.13.so ln -s libc-2.13.so libc.so.6

This worked great for me

If you are not in that directory of course it will be something like:
LD_PRELOAD=/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6

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