clearing space

[Peter Risdon]

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 11:59 -0500, Marty Landman wrote:
> At 11:32 AM 1/7/2005, Peter Risdon wrote:
> >On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 10:41 -0500, Marty Landman wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > This has become a problem. Took a working keyboard from another box and it
> > > won't work. Unless by some weird chance I should reboot first.
> > >
> >
> >This happens, but don't just reboot.
> 
> Peter, are you saying that it's possible my keyboard isn't working because 
> the console hasn't been used for a very long time? If so, why isn't 
> rebooting the easiest thing to do?

Sort of. Sometimes, not often, just plugging a ps2 keyboard into a
running machine won't work. It's also capable, even more rarely, of
damaging the motherboard.

[...]
> 
> >No - you ought to be able to su to root still.
> 
> But how?
> 
> %su -
> Password:
> su: no directory
> %

I still have the machine on which I moved /root available and here's
what happens:

-bash-2.05b$ ls /
COPYRIGHT       dev             kernel.GENERIC  nonexistent     stand
bin             dist            kernel.old      proc            sys
boot            etc             mnt             razor-agent.log tmp
cdrom           home            modules         sbin            usr
compat          kernel          modules.old     service         var
-bash-2.05b$ su
Password:
%ls /
.cshrc          compat          kernel.GENERIC  proc            tmp
.profile        dev             kernel.old      razor-agent.log usr
COPYRIGHT       dist            mnt             sbin            var
bin             etc             modules         service
boot            home            modules.old     stand
cdrom           kernel          nonexistent     sys
%pwd
/usr/home/peter
%         

One thing that does occur to me: what is your user's shell and, if it
isn't bash, do you have bash installed? And have you changed the root
shell from csh? I suspect the latter.


[...]
> >If you can boot onto a FreeBSD CDROM it'd be easy to fix this. Can you?
> 
> I still have the 4.8 mini-iso the system was installed with. But I need the 
> console to do this right? Any way I can be sure that the ps2 port/mobo 
> isn't what's really shot? Or does it even matter?

The keyboard will almost certainly work after a reboot. If not, you've
got other worries with that machine anyway. You can get a shell with
root privileges from sysinstall and make your link. Move /sbin back,
though. This was a bad thing to relocate.

Peter.