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Date:      Wed, 28 Feb 2001 23:38:57 -0500 (EST)
From:      Jim Durham <durham@w2xo.pgh.pa.us>
To:        Brian Peterson <brianp@apocalypse.org>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Freezes at /sbin/init
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102282322450.47843-100000@shazam.int>
In-Reply-To: <200102280949.f1S9n6x24264@apocalypse.org>

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On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Brian Peterson wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for the response!
> 
> 
>     From: Jim Durham <durham@w2xo.pgh.pa.us>
>     ...
>     As to why /sbin/init won't run, more information would be a real
>     help. When you mount the drive from the fixit floppy, does /sbin
>     exist? Does init exist? Can you fsck all the partitions on the
>     hard drive successfully?
> 
> Yes, they both exist on the hard drive. Fsck runs ok; at least,
> it does phase 1-5 without complaint, and goes on to tell me how
> many files I have, the disk fragmentation, etc.
> This happens for /, /usr, and /var. (All my filesystems.)

This is a *good* thing..

> 
> 
>     I should mention that daemons are started from /usr/local/etc/rc.d.
>     This directory contains Bourne shell scripts to fire the various
>     daemons, and such scripts should also understand the arguments
>     "start" and "stop". 
> 
>     Are you sure your installation completed? Things will get very
>     strange if you bail out early.
> 
> Guess what? I don't HAVE anything in /usr/local   !!!
> Certainly not a /usr/local/etc/rc.d
> (There IS a /usr/local directory, though. It's just empty.) 

That doesn't sound right. /usr/local is where all the non-system
software is installed, so if you installed a very minimal system,
there would be little there. However, the absence of /usr/local/etc/rc.d
sounds bogus. I've never installed a system that didn't have it.
As I mentioned, it's only for starting things like apache, samba, etc.
It has noting to do with init. I was just mentioning it for completeness,
but it does seem strange that it's not there. I'm almost sure it
should be there, even if you asked for the minimal installation.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d is mentioned in the config scripts in /etc,
so I can't imagine that it would be normal for it not to be there.

> 
> There are lots of files in /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib, etc.
> 
> I poked around some more. In /usr/local/share/games,
> there are some directories (fortune, larn, etc) with nothing
> in them, either.

That doesn't sound right at all. I would assume that you asked
for the games distribution. I just checked a system I installed
recently where I did not ask for games, and I have no /usr/local/
share/games at all. So, if you asked for games, and got only
empty directories, I think this points to an incomplete
installation for some reason.

> When I did the install, it told me "Congratulations, you have
> installed FreeBSD successfully" (or something like that),
> so I assume the installer thought it was done.

> 
> Is the stuff in /usr/local something that can be installed
> on top of the old install, or do I have to do it all over again?
> (I have to do an ftp install.)
> 
I'm gonna say you should start from scratch. If things are
missing, then who knows what and where?

> If I need to do the install again, what version of FreeBSD and
> what installation set would you recommend for a minimal install,
> that would be most likely to have all the pieces I need???
> 
Well, I'd say go with 4.2-RELEASE. For right now, go with the
binaries + kernel sources choice, or the one right under it,
which is "Same as above with X window", depending on whether
you want X or not.


Good Luck!

Jim Durham

> Thanks again!
> 
> Brian
> 
>     On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Brian Peterson wrote:
> 
>     > Greetings,
>     > 
>     > I just installed the i386/4.2-RELEASE/ version of FreeBSD, with the
>     > minimal install. (via ftp)
>     > The system freezes on booting, and when I boot -v from the "fixit" floppy,
>     > The last message displayed is "start_init: Trying /sbin/init"
>     > 
>     > I am able to run the fixit floppy, mount the hard drive,
>     > see files, and even write to files with cat>filename.
>     > 
>     > I see that there are no files or directories named /etc/init*
>     > on the hard drive - no /etc/init.d, no /etc/inittab.
>     > Does FreeBSD even use those files? If not, what do I need to check for?
>     > 
>     > 
> 


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