From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 23 05:14:23 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 548C4106564A for ; Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:14:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: from ethic.thought.org (plato.thought.org [209.180.213.209]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 176308FC13 for ; Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:14:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from thought.org (tao.thought.org [10.47.0.250]) (authenticated bits=0) by ethic.thought.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o5N5EMul002313 for ; Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:14:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: by thought.org (nbSMTP-1.00) for uid 1002 kline@thought.org; Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:14:21 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:14:20 -0700 From: Gary Kline To: FreeBSD Mailing List Message-ID: <20100623051418.GA80985@thought.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: With 23 years of service to the Unix community. Cc: Subject: before i even =touch= my server again.... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:14:23 -0000 a friend was over to help with things; among them was the fact that for unknown reasons, my KVM wired don't worse consistantly from my single keyboad to my [new{2009}] server. things happened so that we didn't double-check before my friend left. mail broke for unknown reasons. i KVM'd into ethic and fired up dovecot. no-joy. then i figured a theraputic reboot was in order. Disaster. all hell broke loose. i lost keyboard connection to ethic and coul not ssh in from tao. long-story-short, after bugging my wife to reboot umpteen time i got under desk four or five time and got ethic limping along. fsck seemed to fix most slices, but a check as root told me the /var was//IS still dirty. Q: how can i umount /var and run fsck -y without going single-user? remember that in order to regain keyboard control of ethic i have to crawl under deskm, muck around, etc. an hour+ ago i tried to umount /var AND umount /dev/ad4s2d and keep getting a busy. for obvious reasons that my logs are being written to constantly. how does fsck work, backgrounded? [[note that shutting of /etc/mail wouldn't work because my /var/log directory is constantly filling up with the kiddie cracker output.]] thanks for any ideas, gary -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix The 7.83a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php http://journey.thought.org 99 44/100% Guaranteed Novel