I now notice a page on www.netbsd.org, NetBSD Documentation: Other FAQs and HOWTOs
with a section on rebuilding /dev The /dev directory contains the necessary device files for accessing hardware and pseudo devices. If it becomes damaged, much strangeness can ensue. To rebuild the /dev directory, you should first boot single-user (it should be possible to perform while multiuser, but this is not recommended), then: mkdir /newdev cd /newdev cp /dev/M* . sh MAKEDEV all cd / mv dev olddev; mv newdev dev rm -r olddev I wonder if rebuilding/updating the NetBSD system from source would fix the /dev. I notice the instructions say nothing about booting single-user after installing the new kernel but before installing the new world. Instructions for FreeBSD advise booting single-user after "make buildworld, "make buildkernel" and "make installkernel". Maybe that would be a good idea for NetBSD too? I prefer to use NetBSD-current rather than 6.x. Some advantages are device athn support which includes Atheros AR9271, and NAME= in /etc/fstab. An internal media reader plays advice with /dev/sd* numbering. I can "boot netbsd-sandy6.1 -a" at boot prompt and get a prompt to specify root device, but there the system hangs, and won't recognize any keyboard input. I just checked the /dev/directory of that NetBSD-current amd64 USB stick, GPT-partitioned so no NetBSD disklabel problems, from FreeBSD, and only a few things were there including MAKEDEV and MAKEDEV.local , also altq, fd and log. Tom
