From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 18 16:48:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.bfm.org (mail.bfm.org [216.127.218.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 426AF37B4CF for ; Wed, 18 Oct 2000 16:48:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from WhizKid (r34.bfm.org [216.127.220.130]) by mail.bfm.org (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-52399U2500L250S0V35) with SMTP id org for ; Wed, 18 Oct 2000 18:50:38 -0500 Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20001018184710.00923eb0@mail85.pair.com> X-Sender: whizkid@mail85.pair.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.6 (32) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 18:47:10 -0500 To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: "G. Adam Stanislav" Subject: Help, I can't boot FreeBSD anymore Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, Brian, I was wondering if you could help me here: I was working on some FreeBSD software (called tabs), and wanted to test its output when called 4 billion times. I typed: tabs 9999999999 > /dev/null It was supposed to write 4 bil tabs to stdout, redirected to /dev/null. After a while, I interrupted it with ^C, and did cd /dev; ls -lad null (as root). To my surprise, null was actually a huge file filled with tabs. I deleted it (rm null), then I did ln -s zero null. After a while I had to go, so I typed shutdown -p now, and turned the computer off when the shutdown was completed. The problem is, I cannot boot now. The boot process goes fine until it writes: /dev/rwd0s2e: 218 files, 5205 used, 55018 free (42 frags, 6872 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation) Then it just keeps accessing the hard drive (at least the LED is on) forever. After about 10 minutes I just turned it off, booted Windows, and have no idea what to do? Can you help? This is FreeBSD 3.1. Thanks, Adam P.S. Please CC replies directly to me: I am not a questions subscriber. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message