From owner-freebsd-questions  Tue Feb  4 00:08:03 1997
Return-Path: <owner-questions>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA26231
          for questions-outgoing; Tue, 4 Feb 1997 00:08:03 -0800 (PST)
Received: from gdi.uoregon.edu (gdi.uoregon.edu [128.223.170.30])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA26211
          for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>; Tue, 4 Feb 1997 00:08:00 -0800 (PST)
Received: from localhost (dwhite@localhost) by gdi.uoregon.edu (8.8.4/8.6.12) with SMTP id AAA15913; Tue, 4 Feb 1997 00:07:58 -0800 (PST)
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 00:07:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
X-Sender: dwhite@localhost
Reply-To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>
To: Tom Cahill <tcahill@abcs.com>
cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Lost /var directory contents
In-Reply-To: <32F6A3D9.4E8B@abcs.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.970204000421.13156Y-100000@localhost>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Tom Cahill wrote:

> I lost the contents of /var and was wondering how to get em back
> without reinstalling. My current version is 2.1.5-RELEASE. I would
> also like to upgrade the system, is there anyway to do this via
> ftp? Can I fixit via ftp? Is there a place i can just copy the files
> over?

You can perform the upgrade via FTP, yes.  

The best place to get basic /var stuff would be from the Live Filesystem
CDROM (easy), or try to extract it from the bin distribution (hard!). 

Is there acutally any files in /var that are needed for the system to run
properly?  The worst thing is that the heirarchy is gone, but you can use
mtree(8) with the -U option to resurrect it, assuming
/etc/mtree/BSD.var.dist exists still.  

mtree -f /etc/mtree/BSD.var.dist -p /var -U  should do it.

> Any help would be appreciated. My initial install was done through
> CD-ROM but the CD-ROM is now damaged and the fixit from CD-ROM is
> there but not implemented yet.

ugh :(  

Hope this helps.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major