From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 18 21:22:33 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from green.dyndns.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49B6D37B4CF; Wed, 18 Oct 2000 21:22:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (v8jqvz@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by green.dyndns.org (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id e9J4MM509024; Thu, 19 Oct 2000 00:22:25 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from green@FreeBSD.org) Message-Id: <200010190422.e9J4MM509024@green.dyndns.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.2 06/23/2000 with nmh-1.0.4 To: "G. Adam Stanislav" Cc: Siegbert Baude , questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Help, I can't boot FreeBSD anymore In-Reply-To: Message from "G. Adam Stanislav" of "Wed, 18 Oct 2000 20:50:19 CDT." <3.0.6.32.20001018205019.00853560@mail85.pair.com> From: "Brian F. Feldman" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 00:22:21 -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "G. Adam Stanislav" wrote: > Thank you. The problem seems solved , though I'm not quite sure w= hy. > 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, tha= nk > goodness, before it failed for lack of disk space. The hard disk LED wa= s > just churning (or rather the disk was, the LED was blinking like crazy)= =2E 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 driv= e > 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), a= nd > 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 de= leted > >> it (rm null), then I did ln -s zero null. > > > >I think that induced your problem. /dev/zero and /dev/null aren=B4t id= entical. > >>From /dev/MAKEDEV > > > >mknod null c 2 2; chmod 666 null = > >mknod zero c 2 12; chmod 666 zero = > > > >Sorry, but I don=B4t know, where in the boot process you would need > /dev/null the > >first time, so I don=B4t 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 message