/dev is zapped

[John Reynolds]

Bob McClure was first to suggest : 

>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?
>> 
>
>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.
>
That was indeed the ticket.  Many thanks!

John Reynolds




A: Because it's more readable that way.
Q: Why should I bottom-post replies to the mailing list?