system does not come up after reboot due to devices in /dev missing freebsd v3.2

[Kris Kennaway]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 01:07:37PM -0400, David Glassman wrote:
> We have a freebsd 3.2 system and had to reboot it. Afterwards it could
> not fine the following:
> swapon: /dev/da0s1b: No such file or directory
> swapon: /dev/da2s1b: No such file or directory
> Automatic reboot in progress...
> Can't stat /dev/da0s1a: No such file or directory
> Can't stat /dev/da0s1a: No such file or directory
> /dev/da0s1a: CAN'T CHECK FILE SYSTEM.
> /dev/da0s1a: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
> 
> it seems that the above devices disappeared in /dev (See fstab file
> below)and goes into maintenance mode.
> 
> _How do I recover the devices from my fstab file?? Why would they
> suddenly disappear if there was no disk failure??

Only due to disk corruption or explicit removal.

In old versions of FreeBSD you create devices by hand using the
/dev/MAKEDEV script.

Kris