FreeBSD 5, chroot and /dev

[Bill Moran]

Hanspeter Roth <hampi at rootshell.be> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have built a new kernel on a FreeBSD 5.2 system which doesn't boot
> anymore. So I took a Freesbee and mounted the filesystems from the
> harddisk and changed root to the harddisk's one. But there were no
> devices in /dev. I tried some of /etc/rc.d/dev*. This only created a
> /dev/null.
> Trying to build the kernel (with a different configuration) fails.
> A regular file /dev/stdout has been created.
> 
> What is the recommended way to create the device nodes in /dev in a
> chroot environment?

This isn't a direct answer to your question, but it should help you
work around your problem.

After booting the CD, look in the /boot directory on the HDD.  If you
move the contents of /boot/kernel.old to /boot/kernel, you'll have
restored your previous kernel, and can then reboot off the HDD to
attempt to build a working kernel again.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com