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)

Reply via email to