From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 2 07:16:52 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 88EA11065672 for ; Tue, 2 Oct 2012 07:16:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx02.qsc.de (mx02.qsc.de [213.148.130.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2FE208FC08 for ; Tue, 2 Oct 2012 07:16:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-72-25.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.72.25]) by mx02.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 771EE27AD4; Tue, 2 Oct 2012 09:16:44 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id q927GhuC002060; Tue, 2 Oct 2012 09:16:44 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2012 09:16:43 +0200 From: Polytropon To: Rod Person Message-Id: <20121002091643.dc17f05b.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20121002062045.020b8237@atomizer64> References: <20121001200829.2c8afade@atomizer64> <20121001080254.46572b2e.freebsd@edvax.de> <20121002062045.020b8237@atomizer64> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Port update hosed entire system X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2012 07:16:52 -0000 On Tue, 2 Oct 2012 06:20:45 -0400, Rod Person wrote: > It would never have occured to me that updating a port that > has to do with audio and video containers would totally leave me unable > to login into my system or issue and shell commands without getting > a segmentation fault. I find it very hard to see a correlation here. Coincidence? Yes, but I cannot imagine a way a port can dmage the system in that way so not even shell commands keep working... > I did discover that my / file system had run out of space -131MB. That could show that some part of important content on / has not been written yet - it's still held in "write buffers" pending. So you could first check what takes up space in / that is not required to be there, and remove it, then the "write buffers" will be written properly. A "sync" command could do this on request. Check with "df -h" for _no_ negative values before rebooting the system into SUM. I'm not sure if the "write buffers" can survive a shutdown. > I'm still able to issue sudo, so using sudo rm -r I was able to free up > 25GB...but still, /bin/sh, ls, clear all seg fault and su doesn't work > and switching consoles doesn't let me log in. That sounds that somehow calling programs (executing / forking) is not working properly anymore. As this is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of the systems, it's hard to believe that this can be triggered through a port update... > I maybe be left with attempting a single user boot, but I'm still not > that comfortable at attempting such as I don't want to have a totally > useless box. You'd have to find out the exact problem first, maybe the solution is simple. However, how is a ports update supposed to change stuff on /? I assume you have a partitioned system with functional separation, e. g. /, /var, /tmp and /usr (where /usr/local and maybe /usr/home are located). When updating a port, data in /var/db, /usr/ports and /usr/local will be dealt with. Nothing of that should happen on /, or even touch system shells... I assume you have no script of what happened during the port's upgrade? Using "script" (see "man script" for details) is a convenient solution if you want to run upgrades while not being able to monitor them constantly. On Tue, 2 Oct 2012 06:12:27 -0400, Rod Person wrote: > This is the default shell. I didn't try that yet, because I don't want > to be left with no way to login at all if something is really messed up. You have a stand-alone emergency shell in /rescue/sh (which is on the / partition, so it can even be started in single-user mode with / mounted read-only). > Since I could not even switch to a no console (ctrl+alt+f2...) and > login I'm not really wanting to reboot at this point. >From within X, you need Ctrl+Alt+PF2; from text mode, only Alt+PF2 is needed (even though I checked... Ctrl+Alt+ also works in text mode). So you can't even switch VTs? Interesting, makes the problem much more strange... -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...