What could cause /DEV to clear out?

[babak badaei]

Hello, Thanks for the reply! Here is the information requested below:



UNAME -A:

FreeBSD 4.7-RC FreeBSD 4.7-RC #0: Sun Apr 13 21:43:57 PDT 2003 

LS -al:

drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel        18432 Aug 28 03:01 .
drwxr-xr-x  22 root  wheel         1024 Apr  7 16:32 ..
crw-r-----   1 root  operator   13, 0x00030002 Sep 17  2002 da0s2c
crw-r-----   2 root  operator   13, 0x00030003 Sep 17  2002 da0s2d
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel           12 Sep 17  2002 log -> /var/run/log
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel           13 Sep 17  2002 mouse -> /dev/sysmouse
-rw-rw-r--   1 root  wheel          115 Aug 29 03:01 null
crw-r-----   1 root  operator   13, 0x00030001 Sep 17  2002 rda0s2b
crw-r-----   2 root  operator   13, 0x00030003 Sep 17  2002 rda0s2d
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel            0 Aug 29 03:01 stderr

MOUNT | GREP dev:

/dev/da0s1a on / (ufs, local)
/dev/da0s2h on /home (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/da0s2e on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/da0s2f on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/da0s2g on /var/tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)


Any ideas? Can I somehow restore the missing files? What could cause this? I am certain I did not do it; no one else has root. Thank you.

----- Original Message ----
From: Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de>
To: freebsd-arch at FreeBSD.ORG; freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.ORG; babak badaei <badaei at yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:14:40 AM
Subject: Re: What could cause /DEV to clear out?

babak badaei <badaei at yahoo.com> wrote:
 > Today I was not able to log into my machine using SSH. I got this
 > following message "Server refused to allocate pty". I was, somewhat
 > fortunately, able to log using SCP. So SCP works. 

You can use "ssh -T" which disables allocation of a pty
(pseudo tty).  You probably won't be able to use full-
screen programs (such as vi), and maybe your shell's
editing functions won't work (depending on the shell),
but at least you will get a shell prompt.  See the ssh(1)
manual page for details.

 > The file system
 > looked good for the most part; until I checked out "/DEV". Almost
 > everything was GONE! Including MAKEDEV. Not sure what to do.

What version of FreeBSD are you running?  FreeBSD 5 and 6
use DEVFS, so MAKEDEV isn't required anymore (it wouldn't
work anyway).  If you're still running FreeBSD 4, then
there should be /dev/MAKEDEV.

 > Possible clue: Before this happened, last time I was actually
 > logged in via SSH, I ran a dropdb command on one of my postgres
 > databases and got an error message saying I did not have permission
 > to "/DEV/NULL". Not sure what to do, I set permissions to allow write
 > on "NULL". I have done "dropdb" many times before and had never seen
 > that message.

Please give the output from these commands:
uname -a
ls -al /dev
mount | grep dev

 > I hope this is in the right forum. This is the closest thing to right
 > place for this question in my mind but if this is in the wrong place
 > please direct me to the right forum.

Why do you think -arch would be the most appropriate place?
This should rather go to -questions (I've redirected it).

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

"anyone new to programming should be kept as far from C++ as
possible;  actually showing the stuff should be considered a
criminal offence" -- Jacek Generowicz
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