[wplug] Well, now I've gone and done something......

[William N. Powell]

Michael P. O'Connor wrote:
> try chmod 666 /dev/null as root
> but with out more information I don't know if this would work or not,
> but it just sounds like a permission problem.
> 
> If that one does not work you could delete /dev/null and remaking it
> with
> /bin/mknod /dev/null c 2 2
> 
> On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 16:22, William N. Powell wrote:
> 
>>I apparently have done something to damage the file system(s) on my laptop. The system started reporting that /dev/null was a read-only file system. (I always figured it was write-only!) Prior to that as a normal 
>>user, I attempted to redirect stderr to /dev/null to get rid of error messages from the command line.
>>
>>Obviously, I did something more than redirect stderr! I am not worried about what I did then, just how to fix what I have now.
>>
>>Now it boots up to the (repair filesystem) prompt.
>>
>>The laptop is a P133 running RH 8 with 32M of memory.  This is a utility laptop and works pretty good with limited memory for what it is used for, so upgrading the system isn't really on the table.
>>
>>/dev/hda1 is a 500 MB FAT16 partition and used to contain Win 98. I wiped that and just use it for backup info now.
>>
>>/dev/hda2 is about 100 MB ext3. No reference to /dev/hda2 in mtab or fstab.
>>
>>/dev/hda3 is 128 MB SWAP partition.
>>
>>/dev/hda4 is 5 gig ext3 / containing the rest of the system and is mounted currently per /etc/mtab
>>
>>dmesg doesn't show a particular errors, the last two lines are:
>>
>>EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
>>Freeing unused kernel memory: 200k freed
>>
>>nothing in /var/log/messages jumps out at me, but all stderr output may have gone to /dev/null or other non-recoverable ether devices.
>>
>>My home directory is intact and appears undamaged.
>>
>>I guess my next step is to get a bootable floppy rescue disk so that I can do a full fsck on /dev/hda4 when it is not mounted.
>>
>>What is the best was to proceed from this point?
>>
>>Bill
>>
>>


Micheal,
thank you for the info. It put me on the right track and allowed me to
fix the problem.  I had tried to chmod 666 /dev/null as root as you
suggested, but it failed.

I did boot from the install floppy and compared the /dev/null file
listing from the rescue system to my /dev/null file listing on my
/dev/hda4 when it was mounted as /mnt/sysimage/ in rescue mode.

Rescue system /dev/null:
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 AUG 30 2002 /dev/null

My /dev/null when /dev/hda4 when mounted as /mnt/sysimage/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    31 APR 24 14:34 /mnt/sysimage/dev/null

apparently when I trashed it, it lost both the char device type and the
major and minor numbers for the device.  I did as you indicated and
deleted the old file in /mnt/sysimage/dev/null and created a new one
with the mknod command. I did however use the major and minor numbers as
in the rescue system as shown above.

I umounted /mnt/sysimage and ran fsck /dev/hda4 on it and it indicated
no errors.

I then logged out of the rescue mode and rebooted and all is fine with
the system.  Nothing lost that I can tell.

Thanks Again!

Bill