*BSD News Article 63996


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.nla.gov.au!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!purdue!haven.umd.edu!cville-srv.wam.umd.edu!NewsWatcher!user
From: crb@eng.umd.edu (Christopher R. Bowman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: help /var and /user no longer found
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 16:12:15 -0500
Organization: University of Maryland
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <crb-1903961612150001@128.8.22.80>
References: <crb-1803960124300001@128.8.21.94> <4iktq1$sl4@uriah.heep.sax.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: annex6-24.dial.umd.edu

In article <4iktq1$sl4@uriah.heep.sax.de>, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
(Joerg Wunsch) wrote:

> crb@eng.umd.edu (Christopher R. Bowman) writes:
> 
> >   I go and run pspice in
> > windows for a while, and later when I reboot to run freebsd again, the
> > kernal can't seem to find any partitions/slices other than the root. 
> > The machine boot the kernal and then when it goes to swap on either
> > drive it says no such file or device, same for mounting /usr and /var. 
> 
> Have you trashed your fdisk table?
> 
> Boot into single user (-s at the boot prompt), and try to look around.
> fdisk is on the root partition, as well as a very simple editor (ed).
> 
> In order to mount the root file system writeable, first fsck it:
> 
>         fsck /dev/rwd0a
> 
> then mount it r/w:
> 
>         mount -u /dev/wd0a /
> 
> (assuming an IDE drive).

Since you have been kind enough to respond (as no one else has) perhaps I
could impose upon you a little more.  I have a pentium with two ide drive:
one 1 gig quantum as master with 900 megs for windows and 100 meg for unix
swap, one 1.6 gig western digital on the same channel as slave devoted
completely to unix 64 meg / 64meg /var 96 megs of swap and the rest /usr. 
I used the dos fdisk to partition the 1.6 gig drive to one partition. 
Things were working fine, I had gone back and forth to windows several
times, I did not play with the /etc/fstab file, the all of the sudden only
the root partition/slice mounts.

I ran fdisk, nothing stood out to me as obviously wrong, but I wouldn't
know really I have only had a pc for 2 weeks now.

So I booted the machine and when it can't find the files sytems to mount
it gives me a shell at this point I did the fsck on rwd0a rwd0e and rwd0f
(/ /var and /usr) as you suggested and they do not report any errors. 
Further I can mount /dev/wd1e and /dev/wd1f by hand and I then seem to
work fine, I can type ls /var /usr and see the contents of the directory
as I should, so I ctrl-d and hope the system will work. turns out that it
is trying to mount /wd1s1f or such and not finding them.  So I am not sure
what to do.  I believe I know how to edit /etc/fstab to mount /dev/wd1f
instead of /dev/wd1s1f on /usr but this doesn't seem right to me.  FreeBSD
set up that file for me and I see no reason to change it when I haven't
made chagnes to the system that should require it and it was working fine
before, and I don't know what the implication are of makeing the change.

So I am realy in a quandary, I don't know what happend and I am not sure
what to do.  Have I some how run up against some limit, can I not put a
1300 meg slice in a dos fdisk partition  or some thing?  If I am devoting
the entire 1.6 gig drive to FreeBSD is there an alternative way to chop up
the drive that doesn't involve dos and would be easier/better/more
realiable?  I really am in the dark here, an I don't know how to proceed.

Any help that anyone can give me would really be appreciated!

-----
Christopher R. Bowman
crb@eng.umd.edu
<A HREF="http://www.glue.umd.edu/~crb">My home page</A>