I've broken /boot/device.hints

[Andy Holyer]

I was trying to disable ACPI by editing device.hints, and left some 
garbage at the start of the file. Now I find the kernel won't boot - 
you get to the little Daemon flash page, and then kernel load goes on 
and after the first line of boot, the star fails to spin.

I've got a spare copy of the root partition on /dev/ac1s1a but I can't 
seem to boot from there.

This box is very unhappy with ACPI.

If I boot from floppies the emergency shell doesn't seem to include a 
copy of mount, so I can't rectify the fault.

Is there an easy survival route?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

---
Andy Holyer, Technical stuff
Hedgehog Broadband, 11 Marlborough Place Brighton BN1 1UB
08451 260895 x 241
___
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: I've broken /boot/device.hints

[Matthew Seaman]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 04:28:53PM +0100, Andy Holyer wrote:

 If I boot from floppies the emergency shell doesn't seem to include a 
 copy of mount, so I can't rectify the fault.

Booting from alternate media is your simplest route to fixing things.

Are you sure there's no mount command on the fixit floppy?  You did
use the fixit disk (as you are prompted for by selecting 'Fixit' from
the top level menu of sysinstall, rather than just hitting Alt-F2 to
get into the emergency shell)?  Once you've got the fixit environment
enabled, you should be able to mount your drive and clean up the
device.hints file. You'll have to refer to mount by the full path:
/sbin/mount -- it would be an odd ommission if it isn't there.  Plus
you might have to use the ed(1) editor, as is traditional in this sort
of last-gasp recovery of a hosed system.

Failing the fixit floppy, next best would be to pull down one of the
disk2 .iso images and cut yourself a CD.  It's much the same deal as
the fixit floppy, except that with a 650Mb CD image to play with, you
get a full install of the OS.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   26 The Paddocks
  Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK


pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature