On Wed, 02 Oct 2013, Thomas Mueller wrote:
Running "mount" by itself shows
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (union, local)
OK. A tmpfs /dev is created automatically by init(8), if
/dev/console does not exist at boot time. This is desirable
for some types of installation media, and to help with recovery
if /dev is corrupted, but is not usually desirable for a normal
running system.
Usually, the installation process will create a fully-populated
/dev directory on the new system's disk. Then, when the new
system is booted, /dev/console will exist, and a tmpfs /dev will
not be created.
Something seems to have gone wrong in your installation process
such that you don't have a fully-populated /dev directory on disk.
Now, going back to an earlier part of the message:
I originally installed from source, building either from FreeBSD
or NetBSD.
NetBSD installations are on USB 2.0 sticks, as opposed to hard
drive.
I use hard drive to keep source and pkgsrc trees and do the
compiling work.
If you install "by hand" then you have to manually run MAKEDEV
all, or allow etcupdate(8) to do it for you. I notice that
postinstall(8) does not run MAKEDEV for you, and that might be a
bug. It's certainly a bug that there is no good documentation for
how to install "by hand".
I remember going into $DESTDIR/dev and running ./MAKEDEV all
OK, you did run MAKEDEV all, but you probably ran it in the tmpfs
/dev directory, not in the underlying directory on disk, so the
effects are lost on every boot.
Should I edit /dev/MAKEDEV and add a line to make nodes dk16,
...?
I'd just run something like (cd /dev ; ./MAKEDEV dk16 dk17 ), but
it has to be run in the underlying /dev directory on disk, not in
the tmpfs /dev directory that will be lost on reboot.
Running "mount" by itself shows
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (union, local)
I replied to that first, because it'e the key to understanding
what went wrong.
--apb (Alan Barrett)