Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 00:22:21 -0400 From: "Brian F. Feldman" <green@FreeBSD.org> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de>, questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Help, I can't boot FreeBSD anymore Message-ID: <200010190422.e9J4MM509024@green.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Message from "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> of "Wed, 18 Oct 2000 20:50:19 CDT." <3.0.6.32.20001018205019.00853560@mail85.pair.com>
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"G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> wrote: > Thank you. The problem seems solved <whew>, though I'm not quite sure why. > I decided to boot again, and went to read a book for a while. > > When I came back, the system was finally booted, but acted eratic. df > claimed my 8 Gig drive was 108% full. I deleted entire directories, but df > kept reporting the same. I ran MAKEDEV all. It recreated /dev/null, thank > goodness, before it failed for lack of disk space. The hard disk LED was > just churning (or rather the disk was, the LED was blinking like crazy). I think your /var/run/utmp might have been unhappy. rc: (cd /var/run && cp /dev/null utmp && chmod 644 utmp;) If /dev/null is really /dev/zero.... ;) > I typed "reboot". After a long period of disk syncing, the system did > reboot, though it said / was not dismounted properly (that would be the 8 > Gig drive). However, it booted fairly quickly, df reported the big drive > was 21% full, and everything was fine and dandy. Also /dev/null seems > working right. I tried the same as before (tags 9999999 > /dev/null), and > it worked as it was supposed to. Hm. I wonder why it couldn't unmount correctly. > So, I can go back to programming again. I am not sure what the heck > happened (or for that matter how my /dev/null turned into a file), but as > long as everything is working I'm happy. :) Lots of things running as root might have accidentally unlink(2)ed it. I'd probably try to find out which one did so it can't happen again. > Thanks for your help, > > Adam > > At 02:27 19-10-2000 +0200, Siegbert Baude wrote: > >Hi, > > > >> To my surprise, null was actually a huge file filled with tabs. I deleted > >> it (rm null), then I did ln -s zero null. > > > >I think that induced your problem. /dev/zero and /dev/null arenīt identical. > >>From /dev/MAKEDEV > > > >mknod null c 2 2; chmod 666 null > >mknod zero c 2 12; chmod 666 zero > > > >Sorry, but I donīt know, where in the boot process you would need > /dev/null the > >first time, so I donīt know, where your boot hangs. I suggest to use a fixit > >floppy, mount / && cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV null I'd prefer rc(1) called "echo -n >utmp" instead of "cp /dev/null utmp" :-/ -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \ FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! / green@FreeBSD.org `------------------------------' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the messagehelp
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