Help - I can't create device files.

From: Dr. David Kirkby (drkirkby_at_ntlworld.com)
Date: 10/26/03 

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 21:35:17 +0000

I had a relatively small problem today on my Ultra 80 running Solaris
9 that I managed to make into a **big** problem. If you have any
suggestions how I can get out of this mess, please let me know. Sorry
if the message is a bit long-winded, but hopefully someone can see
what I need to do.

The basic problem is I can't seem to create device files for some
external disks, so I can't read them, although the disks are seen by
format and mount okay if I boot from cd-rom. That's the problem - this
is the background.

The original (small) problem was the external disks would not mount.
For reasons I can't work out, following a boot -r, the /dev/dsk/c3*
device files had been removed and in their place were files which
appeared to be on controller #5 (/dev/dsk/c5*) - which is a bit odd
given I only have 4 SCSI controllers - two on the motherboard, plus a
dual SCSI card.

I edited /etc/vfstab and replaced the all the c3's with c5's and the
machine booted and mounted all systems okay. However, like a stupid
fool, not content with that, I thought I'd remove the appropriate
files in /devices, with a hope of getting the disks back to their
correct place - on controller #3. The problem was I obviously removed
the wrong file(s) in /devices, as then the system was completely
unbootable. I could do nothing with it. boot -b, boot -r, all failed
miserably.

My backups of the root file system were not as recent as they should
be, so I booted from CD, mounted and backed up every single partition
to tape, although the backup of the root file system was clearly
missing some important device files.

I then reinstalled the system from the Solaris installation CD, doing
the smallest installation. I then did a 'boot cdrom' restored the /
and /usr file systems from tape, but without any files in /devices,
/dsk or /rdsk.

The system now boots and mounts all the file systems I created during
the install (/, /var, /usr), plus one other (/export/home) which is on
an internal disk. The data on /export/home has not been changed, so I
all the user directories remain.

The problem is I can't create device files. Following a boot -r, there
are entries in /dev/dsk for controllers 0 and 1, but not and 3. The
disks and partitions on the disks on c3 are visible to format. Booting
from CD I can mount them. But I can't mount them if I boot from disk,
as I don't have any device files, and seem unable to create them with
a boot -r.

Any suggestions - other than to keep better backups!

Dave Kirkby

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