/dev is zapped

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 02:03:04PM -0700, John Reynolds wrote:
> I have a Dell runing RedHat 7.1.  I do not know the history of what 
> happened, but during boot it fails with 'Unable to open initial console". 
> Booting with my trusty Tom's Root-boot floppy, I find that /dev/ is almost 
> empty; there are a few directories like ptys, but console, mouse,  all the 
> disks, etc are AWOL.
> 
> I'm only guessing how /dev got blitzed, but frankly I don't care that 
> much; the primary problem is how to force the system to re-create the /dev 
> entries during bootup.  A quick exam of manpages and the archives didn't 
> suggest anything.  I toyed with the idea of getting a dump of /dev on a 
> similar system and restoring it, but the odds are good that the device IDs 
> wouldn't match, and then I'm in it even deeper.
> 
>  Any tips?
> 
> Thanks as always.
> 
> John Reynolds
> SEEL-IT Data Management
> IBM-by-the-Bay
> San Francisco CA

Boot with your distribution CD to rescue mode.  (At the boot prompt,
put "linux rescue".)  Let it mount your installation.  I don't recall
if your CD is mounted at that point.  I think not, but run

  mount

to see if it is.  If it isn't, you may need to create a mount point,
say, /mnt/cdrom, then mount it:

  mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Then

  rpm -ivh --force -root /mnt/sysimage /mnt/cdrom/Red*/RPMS/dev-*.rpm

That will install the devices from the RPM.  When done,

  exit

and pop out the CD and it should boot normally.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Grace happens.