After much delay, for what reason, I don't know, I finally dropped into Quay Computers and bought a CD-ROM. Not a flash one, just an old 24x speed which had a 30 day warranty. A decent deal for NZ$95. I planned to install it that night, but something else came up.
When I got home later that day, I found that the FreeBSD box had rebooted. At first I thought 'power cut'. Then I saw that NT1 was still running. And both used the same UPS. So it wasn't a power problem. There was no reason for the reboot that I could see. So I decided to ignore it and press on with other things. Namely, the CD-ROM.
I switched off the firewall and installed the CD-ROM. When I switched on the machine, the screen filled with Ys. Lots of them. Continuously filling the screen. Line by line. I couldn't figure it out. So I disconnected the drive from the IDE controller. The machine then ran OK. But I couldn't connect from NT1 through the firewall to the Internet. And my DNS was stuffed. What was going on here!
I figured something really serious had gone wrong. Anything from someone hacking into my system and changing something to a power surge blowing some code on the hard drive. I spent 4 hours trying to get it running again. Finally, I sent a message to the FreeBSD Questions mailing list and headed off to bed. Very annoyed!
10 July 1998 - Inspiration
The next day I figured it out during a lull at work (actually, I was staring out the window at the harbour wondering why I wasn't out there riding my bike). Master. Slave. Can't have two masters. DOH.
That night, I got it right. I swapped the little plug thing at the back of the CD-ROM and converted it from a master to a slave. You see, the IDE controller was already looking after the hard drive. Which is normally the master. And the machine booted.
The next step was mounting the drive. Which was a journey in own right.
Mounting the CD-ROM Drive
I received one suggestion about making sure the network cards where both working. They were. So I gave up on the firewall problem and decided to install the CD-ROM.
The FreeBSD site was down and I couldn't search for instructions on how to mount the drive. It's not like Windows where the thing is just there. You actually have to issue commands in order to see the drive.
I rang up Jay, who had a guest, but helped anyway. We found out what device the drive was mapped to. By using the command dmesg, you can see the boot time messages. We found wcd0. He told me to try:
mount -t cd9660/dev/wcd0/cdrom
It didn't work. We tried the MAKEDEV command on the device in order to make sure it's there. It still didn't work.
So I tried searching the web. Eventually I found
mount_cd9660/dev/wcd0c/cdrom
And tried it. It works. I could read the CD-ROM. Yea!
Where's my file system?
After the CD-ROM was mounted and I proved to myself that I could read the contents, I unmounted the drive and rebooted. I placed the drive into the final resting place, dropping a few screws underneath the motherboard in the process. Getting them out was a real pain. I had to shake the box really hard to dislodge them.
I wired everything up, put it all back together again. And rebooted the machine.
Oh. What's that message mean:
swapon:/dev/wd0s1b: No such file or directory
Automatic Reboot in progress
/dev/rwd0a: clean, 16327 free (183 frags, 2018 blocks, 0.6% fragmentation)
/dev/wd0s1f: No such file or directory
Can't stat/dev/we0s1f
BAD DISK NAME/dev/wd0s1f
/dev/wd0s1e: No such file or directory
can't stat/dev/wd0s1e
BAD DISK NAM/dev/wd0s1e
Automatic file system check failed... help!
Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh:
Well. I was annoyed. I couldn't figure out why this was happening now.
Restoring my botched system
I bypassed the firewall and connected to efnet and into #freebsd. Here's the chat session, just for a laugh. I've removed the extraneous stuff and changed other names to protect identity. JunkMale is my nickname, and xyz is the person that offered help.
<JunkMale> Ummm: I just installed a cd-rom, mounted it. did a umount. then rebooted. now I get this: swapon:/dev/wd0s1b: No such file or directory
<JunkMale> searching the website didnt find me a clue. Any ideas as to what to check/look for?
[21:45] <xyz> JunkMale: I'd say you did a lot more than that.:)
<JunkMale> reckon?:)
[21:45] <xyz> JunkMale: 'fess up - before or after you mounted the CD, you did something *else*. What was that?:)
<JunkMale>./MAKEDEV all
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: yep.
<JunkMale> I blame Jay. it's all his fault.
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: you screwed the pooch, sir.
<JunkMale> oh. and I didn't even enjoy it.
<JunkMale> so I should ring Jay and tell him it's his fault?
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: doing `all' rebuilds all the wd* and sd* targets, and those remove all the *slice* entries by default so that the disk entry list is nice and clean.:)
<JunkMale> arrrrrrrrrgh.
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: you're only supposed to do all once.
<JunkMale> it's all gone.
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: try this: cd/dev &&./MAKEDEV wd0s1a
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: if you're lucky, you can get back. but don't do that again!:)
<JunkMale> got a lot of file exists, and readonly file system. then "chgrp: not found"
<JunkMale> and yes, I won't be doing that again!
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: oh. you're in single user mode aren't you?;)
<JunkMale> yep.
<JunkMale> o
<JunkMale> i'll reboot
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: no
<JunkMale> k
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: won't help
[21:49] <xyz> JunkMale: you need to go with a fixit floppy now
[21:49] <xyz> JunkMale: you don't have your commands without/usr and you can't have/usr with a cleaned/dev
<JunkMale> I think I have one here. jas. I'll try that.
[21:50] <xyz> no, wait.
<JunkMale> k
[21:50] <xyz> what am I saying.
[21:50] <xyz> there's the compat slice
[21:50] <xyz> mount -u /
[21:50] <xyz> (make root read/write, as per the FAQ)
[21:50] <xyz> and now where was your/usr mounted?
<JunkMale> where are you getting this from?
<JunkMale> ummm, not sure. i dunno.
<JunkMale> i have only 1 drive.
[21:51] <xyz> JunkMale: section 8.2 of the FAQ. http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ
<JunkMale> k
[21:52] <xyz> JunkMale: look in your fstab
<JunkMale> 8.2 for me is how to add a user
<JunkMale> fstab? (I admit I've only been using unix for three weeks)
<JunkMale> found/etc/fstab
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: no, it's for dealing with a root password problem and ALSO tells you about single-user mode tricks like you just asked about.:)
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: this is Unix, you have to learn to take your tips wherever you find them because there aren't that many.:)
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: right, now where's/usr being mounted?
<JunkMale> sorry, but I don't understand the question.
[21:55] <xyz> JunkMale: in your/etc/fstab. Which device./dev/wd...something?
[21:55] <xyz> JunkMale: hint: it's one of the files you blew away.
<JunkMale> yep. How can I view fstab?
[21:56] <xyz> JunkMale: cat
<JunkMale> sorry
<JunkMale> found a line like this:
<JunkMale>../dev/wd0s1f/usr ufs rw 2 2
[21:57] <xyz> JunkMale: good, so now we know that the compat slice (which you should have) is/dev/wd0f
[21:57] <xyz> JunkMale: mount/dev/wd0f/usr
<JunkMale> done
[21:58] <xyz> JunkMale: now do the MAKEDEV you previously did again. chgrp and stuff should work
[21:58] * xyz is fading out.
<JunkMale> done.
[21:59] <xyz> zzzz...
[21:59] <xyz> time for bed.
<JunkMale> don't fade yet!
[21:59] <xyz> JunkMale: you are now resurrected. reboot.
<JunkMale> rebooting!
<JunkMale> well, when I hit the USA in 1999, I owe you a crate of beer.
<JunkMale> and when/if you hit New Zealand, you got a place to stay and a tour guide.
[22:00] <XX> xyz: you can go to bed - I'll take over if necessary
<JunkMale> looks much better.
[22:00] <xyz> JunkMale::)
<JunkMale> thanks XX.
[22:00] <xyz> XX: Thanks.:)
[22:01] <XX> xyz: good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
[22:01] * xyz goes to bed.
<JunkMale> reboot works. Cheers xyz.
In short, what I did was:
mount -u /
cd/etc
cat fstab # found out where/usr is mapped
mount/dev/wd0f/usr
then I rebooted. And all was well. I had the system back and my CD-ROM worked.
7 August 1998
I've just noticed that I haven't actually indicated how to mount the cdrom. Here's the command I use now:
mount -t cd9660/dev/wcd0c/cdrom
To unmount the above:
umount/cdrom
25 October 1998 - quick CD-ROM mounts
There is a shortcut to mounting a CD-ROM. It includes placing a list in/etc/fstab which looks something like this:
/dev/wcd0c/cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0
With such a line, you can mount your cdrom with just the following command:
Thursday. Pay Day. I love Pay Days. In fact, work is always better on a pay day. People are nicer, complaints are rarer, bank managers are friendlier - a guy could get used to this.
A bastard, however, could lose the touch - that finely honed reflex that enables him (or her) to sort the wheat from the chaff (user-wise). Complacency is the enemy.
Still, the brown envelope containing a cheque is a useful reminder of what we do this for. Smiling happily, I fumble with the self-adhesive seal on the envelope (the glue must be the same stuff they use to hold tiles onto the space shuttle), before losing my patience and ripping the envelope open from the other end.
Ahhh!, The smell of a freshly printed cheque...the feel of it as it slips out of the protective environment of brown paper. The temporary but overpowering feeling of goodwill for all things beancountery as I note the aesthetically pleasing sight of my company's name laserprinted on the top line, right above the amount of...WHAT THE HELL!?
THE THIEVING BEANCOUNTER BASTARDS HAVE UNDERPAID ME!
I have another look, just to make sure I've got it right. "The beancounters have underpaid me!"
"You're joking!?"
"I'm not! Look, they've rounded down the amount!"
"By how much?"
"27p!"
"Hang on, you're going to maim someone - possibly permanently - over 27p?"
"It's not that it's 27p, it's the principle of the thing. STEALING from me! It's unheard of! It's the thin end of the wedge - before you know it, they'll be riding the lifts again. They'll be questioning your expense claims, talking to you about business plans at lunchtime, and..."
About 10 minutes later I come to, with a rather nasty bruise on my head and a pain in my side.
"Sorry about that," the PFY calls from behind the door of the computer room, waving one of our low-output (aka 'warning') cattle prods.
He must have zapped me while I was under the influence of theft-crisis. "That's OK," I respond, "perfectly acceptable under the circumstances."
I go to let myself into the computer room to assure him there are no hard feelings, only to find my access card's been given 'lock-out' status.
"Sorry about that, too, but you know what you get like," the PFY calls through the safety glass.
"Of course!" I cry "No harm done," as I sneakily reach for my special reserve access card, noted in the database as a 'Fire and Civil Emergency' access card, which no one but me knows exi...
"Got that one, too..." the PFY murmurs apologetically.
You've got to give him credit, he's a chip off the old block.
I move away from the door to see if he's going to come out when he thinks it's safe, but he's not that stupid, either.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I set my rubbish bin on fire, then reverse the direction of the office ('remodelled') air-conditioner so that it's blowing air into the computer room instead of stealing air from it.
The halon 10-second warning goes off and the PFY rushes to the hold-off switch - the real one (disguised as an intercom pager button) - and not the decoy we use to frighten contractors.
I have him right where I want him. While the smoke detectors still sense smoke the halon system is still activated. While he holds the button down, the halon countdown is paused. Currently at seven seconds...
I hold the rubbish bin up to the viewing window and throw in some more paper and a back-up tape (to keep it nice and smoky) so the PFY can see I'm serious.
Out of earshot, he scribbles a quick note on the wall. "You could be right, 27p is an insult!"
Smiling, I pour coffee into the bin to extinguish the flames, then sit down at my desk. The PFY emerges from the computer room once the halon clear has been signalled.
"So, what are we going to do?" he asks.
"Well, I thought some form of example has to be made. Firm - but not, of course, brutal."
"You mean chilli sauce in the eye-rinse bottle, laxative in the water fountain or glue on the bog seats?"
"Well..."
"All three?"
"Warmer..."
"'Route their traffic via the 3-Phase mains 'network'?"
"Almost there..."
"Put indelible dye in the rooftop water reservoir and trigger the sprinkler system on their floor?"
"Yes...to all of the above."
And so it was that half-an-hour later, the PFY's up a ladder, pouring a crimson cement dye concentrate into the reservoir, when...BDZZZT!!
To his credit, the PFY makes no sound as the cattle prod takes effect. Apart from the splash of course.
After I've fished him out, I disable his card, the halon system and the card known to the database as 'Installation Card (Disabled)'.
It's quiet. Possibly too quiet - The kind of quiet you get when you shove a thick chunk of copper wire in a circuit breaker, a nail in the phase circuit breaker and a bolt in the floor circuit breaker... then drop a screwdriver down one of the ventilation holes of the mainframe's power supply.
I make my way carefully through the emergency-lit computer room to my office, my only detour being a quick circuit breaker replacement tour and a stop at the bin to drop off a badly scarred screwdriver.
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and a muffled BOOM from the sub-basement.
After all, it's just good manners to let the great unwashed know just who's still at the helm of this operation.
The PFY, meantime, is on holiday, exercising his Christmas bonus to its maximum potential. After all, it's only a matter of time before the Boss realises that there's a duplicate of his credit card out there (again) and calls up the card company.
I did my bit for the PFY's R&R by pushing the Boss's latest credit card statement, envelope and all, into the shredder. Apparently he was under the misguided impression that receiving mail at work is far safer than getting it at his dockside apartment drop box... a mistake that's likely to cost him.
Speaking of the Boss's mail, it's about time to distribute all his waylaid Christmas vendor freebies among the IT troops in a manner not altogether unlike a modern day IT Robin Hood.
"What? Is that it?" a particularly ungrateful antipodean contractor (who couldn't find his bum with a mirror and a torch without a 1:1 scale map) asks after I hand him a bottle of red wine that has better disinfectant than drinking properties.
"Sorry?"
"It's a little, er, cheap, isn't it?" he sniffles.
The things you hear when the PFY isn't around with a nailgun.
"Gee, sorry Mike!" I cry. "I guess it's not like home where you get your pick of the flock for the night as a Christmas bonus."
He lets the slur pass, and grudgingly accepts the bottle, not realising just how well I remember the time, after an agency knees-up, when he dropped me off at the farthest tube station from my destination...three minutes AFTER the Tube stopped running.
Trusting no one, he stashes the bottle in his desk-side footlocker, giving me the chance to stuff a large piece of foam packing over the cooling inlet at the back of his desktop machine.
Thermal overheating time bomb set, I wander off to distribute more New Year cheer.
And not a moment too soon, as the power is restored and the building springs back into life.
When I've run out of blocks of foam and cheap bottles of wine, I grab some of the good stuff and go on my REAL goodwill rounds, dropping off gifts to the telephone operators, the cleaning staff, and, lastly, the building maintenance guy. Know what palms to grease and when - that's my motto.
Having ensured that no one's going to investigate my long-distance phone bill, find the Boss's shredded credit card statements or wonder what's protected by the Armageddon-proof lock on the door marked 'Plant Room No3' in the basement, I return to my office.
As luck would have it, the Boss is waiting for me there with an annoyed expression on his face. It's only a 'generally-annoyed' expression, which means that he's probably not found out about his credit card yet, let alone me calling up his credit company and cranking his limit up so far he'd get nose bleeds just thinking about it.
"What's this about you blocking up the cooling vent of Mike's machine?" he asks.
Bastard!
"Oh, that - it's not sponge, it's...noise damping material."
"?..."
"Noise damping - the material has a gaseous porosity which allows air flow but reduces sound output by a factor of around 10 decibels per megalitre of vacuum-rated European Standard air."
"Err, really? So it's just to cut down noise?"
"Of course!"
"Hang on a minute!..."
I suppose it was a little too good to be true...
"Yes?"
"Why haven't you installed any on my machine?"
I don't believe it...
"Oh, I was just getting round to it - your one is in that old monitor box over there."
He ferrets around in the aforementioned box before pulling out a bit of packing.
"This? It's a bit of machine packing."
"No, it's a sound-reducing, air-cleaning filter."
"Then why has it got 'recycle this packing carefully' printed on the side of it?"
"Because... it was packed in old newspaper and they couldn't print over the top of it."
"Oh... so how do I use it?"
"Well, you make sure that it's hard up against the fan inlet so that no, er, 'unfiltered' air can get through."
"Right, well, I'll let Mike know then," he burbles as he wanders out to destroy his machine.
"No, no!" I cry. "Leave that to me - I'll sort him out."
It's mid-afternoon, and we're in the middle of our annual 'improve the perception of IT' fortnight. Things are going just great.
The boss has a bee in his bonnet about my liberal interpretation of the promotional slogan 'delivering what the client needs'. Apparently, my
helpdesk instruction sheets on how to deliver 'a damn good kicking' weren't within the intended scope of the motto...
He was in an even worse mood after the hand-proximity sensor on the line printer failed to operate while he was attempting to stop said
instruction sheets from printing. The fast moving paper gave him a large and deep paper cut that he won't be forgetting in a hurry. And the
PFY and I certainly don't know how that heavily salted water got into the first aid antiseptic bottle.
But his irritation began after spotting a publicity photo of one of the members of the company's football team (sponsored by the IT division)
walking around with his football jersey untucked. Beautifully crafted, and costing enough to make a beancounter weep, the jerseys have a
lovely little IT crest (a couple of crossed keyboards on a burning PC background, emblazoned on the left breast). The words 'IT - giving you
more' are in large letters on the back. When untucked however, the words 'of a shafting' become visible. The boss was not impressed.
The PFY and I make no attempts to escape his wrath knowing full well that he has to pass the head of IT's room to get to us. He's not so
keen on doing that since some complete bastard uploaded a new ring sound to the head's cellphone - a sound not dissimilar to that made by a
lentil casserole after its trip through the digestive tract.
Accordingly, the IT department managers' meeting he attended this morning was a swift affair, and certainly not one that really should have
been 'aired' as a live video conference and PR opportunity. Even the cafeteria staff saw it and wouldn't serve him the onion bhajis at
lunchtime.
Not that I feel sorry for the boss. The whole 'improve the perception of IT' initiative was all his fault in the first place for mentioning that it
'must be about that time of the year' to the head of IT.
No-one likes these PR weeks because the bosses like to answer all those stupid user questions such as: 'Can I send 1,000 copies of my CV to
the printer? Can I talk to one of your network guys for an hour or two?' and 'Do you know who set my car on fire?' with 'yes', 'yes', and
'no' instead of the far more appropriate 'not if you want to see another birthday, not if you want to see another birthday', and, 'us, we
thought it was your birthday.'
But the thing that really puts the boss under the gun is that he's invoked a 'response time' clause in our contracts that was meant for call-out
duties which says we have to respond within a reasonable amount of time to a user's problems.
In PR week, 'reasonable' means 10 minutes. Now perhaps the boss can have a good game of MDK in 10 minutes, but a networking
professional cannot!
Sure enough, I'm just firing up MDK when the phone goes.
"Hello?"
"Yes?" I ask, expecting the worst.
"I've got a problem with my network."
Here we go...
"Hmmm?" Why waste words on these morons? They're much happier with a bit of grunting and a few soothing clucking noises.
"It's a little difficult to explain over the phone - could someone come up?"
Sigh.
I flip the PFY for it and am stunned when I lose. Then I realise that the little bastard has switched my double headed 50 pence for a double
tail model.
It really does me proud to see him turning out so well.
Of course, I still won't be telling him that I removed the safety grille from the whirring blades of the cooling fan at the back of his PC, but
there you go.
I get to the user's office and it's the same old thing. They moved the PC and the network stopped.
"But it never used to do that."
"No, but now that we don't use thin wire network cabling it does."
"That doesn't sound like a good move."
I manage to extricate myself an hour later (after the story about how technology was much more reliable in the 1950s) and get back to the
office.
The PFY chuckles maliciously.
"He rang back - the lead's fallen out of the computer and he's scared to plug it in."
"A separate call," I cry, "that makes it your turn!"
"Toss you for it?" he asks, not understanding where the line should be drawn.
"I'll go for tails for a change."
"Bastard!" Sensibly, the PFY doesn't admit to anything.
"Oh, by the way, make sure to mention how reliable IT is nowadays, especially when compared to the 1950s..."
The PFY grumbles a bit before slouching over to the door.
"Have you seen my access card?"
"Yeah," I reply, "I needed it to get into the comms room this morning. I think it fell down the back of your PC. On the cooling fan side..."
Slashdot Mirror
You know, Windows XP doesn't feel as good as CmdrTaco's small penis going up my ass.
Wait, make that my wee wee hole.
Your penis is small, but mine is bigger and more useful than yours.
CD-ROM saga (a funny story)
/dev/wcd0 /cdrom
/dev/wcd0c /cdrom
/dev/wd0s1b: No such file or directory
/dev/we0s1f
/dev/wd0s1f
/dev/wd0s1e
/dev/wd0s1e
/dev/wd0s1b: No such file or directory
:)
:)
:)
./MAKEDEV all
:)
/dev && ./MAKEDEV wd0s1a
:)
;)
/usr and you can't have /usr with a cleaned /dev
/usr mounted?
/etc/fstab
:)
:)
/usr being mounted?
/etc/fstab. Which device. /dev/wd...something?
.. /dev/wd0s1f /usr ufs rw 2 2
/dev/wd0f
/dev/wd0f /usr
:)
:)
/etc
/usr is mapped
/dev/wd0f /usr
/dev/wcd0c /cdrom
/cdrom
/etc/fstab which looks something like this:
/cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0
/cdrom
9 July 1998
After much delay, for what reason, I don't know, I finally dropped into Quay Computers and bought a CD-ROM. Not a flash one, just an old 24x speed which had a 30 day warranty. A decent deal for NZ$95. I planned to install it that night, but something else came up.
When I got home later that day, I found that the FreeBSD box had rebooted. At first I thought 'power cut'. Then I saw that NT1 was still running. And both used the same UPS. So it wasn't a power problem. There was no reason for the reboot that I could see. So I decided to ignore it and press on with other things. Namely, the CD-ROM.
I switched off the firewall and installed the CD-ROM. When I switched on the machine, the screen filled with Ys. Lots of them. Continuously filling the screen. Line by line. I couldn't figure it out. So I disconnected the drive from the IDE controller. The machine then ran OK. But I couldn't connect from NT1 through the firewall to the Internet. And my DNS was stuffed. What was going on here!
I figured something really serious had gone wrong. Anything from someone hacking into my system and changing something to a power surge blowing some code on the hard drive. I spent 4 hours trying to get it running again. Finally, I sent a message to the FreeBSD Questions mailing list and headed off to bed. Very annoyed!
10 July 1998 - Inspiration
The next day I figured it out during a lull at work (actually, I was staring out the window at the harbour wondering why I wasn't out there riding my bike). Master. Slave. Can't have two masters. DOH.
That night, I got it right. I swapped the little plug thing at the back of the CD-ROM and converted it from a master to a slave. You see, the IDE controller was already looking after the hard drive. Which is normally the master. And the machine booted.
The next step was mounting the drive. Which was a journey in own right.
Mounting the CD-ROM Drive
I received one suggestion about making sure the network cards where both working. They were. So I gave up on the firewall problem and decided to install the CD-ROM.
The FreeBSD site was down and I couldn't search for instructions on how to mount the drive. It's not like Windows where the thing is just there. You actually have to issue commands in order to see the drive.
I rang up Jay, who had a guest, but helped anyway. We found out what device the drive was mapped to. By using the command dmesg, you can see the boot time messages. We found wcd0. He told me to try:
mount -t cd9660
It didn't work. We tried the MAKEDEV command on the device in order to make sure it's there. It still didn't work.
So I tried searching the web. Eventually I found
mount_cd9660
And tried it. It works. I could read the CD-ROM. Yea!
Where's my file system?
After the CD-ROM was mounted and I proved to myself that I could read the contents, I unmounted the drive and rebooted. I placed the drive into the final resting place, dropping a few screws underneath the motherboard in the process. Getting them out was a real pain. I had to shake the box really hard to dislodge them.
I wired everything up, put it all back together again. And rebooted the machine.
Oh. What's that message mean:
swapon:
Automatic Reboot in progress
/dev/rwd0a: clean, 16327 free (183 frags, 2018 blocks, 0.6% fragmentation)
/dev/wd0s1f: No such file or directory
Can't stat
BAD DISK NAME
/dev/wd0s1e: No such file or directory
can't stat
BAD DISK NAM
Automatic file system check failed... help!
Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh:
Well. I was annoyed. I couldn't figure out why this was happening now.
Restoring my botched system
I bypassed the firewall and connected to efnet and into #freebsd. Here's the chat session, just for a laugh. I've removed the extraneous stuff and changed other names to protect identity. JunkMale is my nickname, and xyz is the person that offered help.
<JunkMale> Ummm: I just installed a cd-rom, mounted it. did a umount. then rebooted. now I get this: swapon:
<JunkMale> searching the website didnt find me a clue. Any ideas as to what to check/look for?
[21:45] <xyz> JunkMale: I'd say you did a lot more than that.
<JunkMale> reckon?
[21:45] <xyz> JunkMale: 'fess up - before or after you mounted the CD, you did something *else*. What was that?
<JunkMale>
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: yep.
<JunkMale> I blame Jay. it's all his fault.
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: you screwed the pooch, sir.
<JunkMale> oh. and I didn't even enjoy it.
<JunkMale> so I should ring Jay and tell him it's his fault?
[21:46] <xyz> JunkMale: doing `all' rebuilds all the wd* and sd* targets, and those remove all the *slice* entries by default so that the disk entry list is nice and clean.
<JunkMale> arrrrrrrrrgh.
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: you're only supposed to do all once.
<JunkMale> it's all gone.
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: try this: cd
[21:47] <xyz> JunkMale: if you're lucky, you can get back. but don't do that again!
<JunkMale> got a lot of file exists, and readonly file system. then "chgrp: not found"
<JunkMale> and yes, I won't be doing that again!
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: oh. you're in single user mode aren't you?
<JunkMale> yep.
<JunkMale> o
<JunkMale> i'll reboot
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: no
<JunkMale> k
[21:48] <xyz> JunkMale: won't help
[21:49] <xyz> JunkMale: you need to go with a fixit floppy now
[21:49] <xyz> JunkMale: you don't have your commands without
<JunkMale> I think I have one here. jas. I'll try that.
[21:50] <xyz> no, wait.
<JunkMale> k
[21:50] <xyz> what am I saying.
[21:50] <xyz> there's the compat slice
[21:50] <xyz> mount -u /
[21:50] <xyz> (make root read/write, as per the FAQ)
[21:50] <xyz> and now where was your
<JunkMale> where are you getting this from?
<JunkMale> ummm, not sure. i dunno.
<JunkMale> i have only 1 drive.
[21:51] <xyz> JunkMale: section 8.2 of the FAQ. http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ
<JunkMale> k
[21:52] <xyz> JunkMale: look in your fstab
<JunkMale> 8.2 for me is how to add a user
<JunkMale> fstab? (I admit I've only been using unix for three weeks)
<JunkMale> found
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: no, it's for dealing with a root password problem and ALSO tells you about single-user mode tricks like you just asked about.
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: this is Unix, you have to learn to take your tips wherever you find them because there aren't that many.
[21:54] <xyz> JunkMale: right, now where's
<JunkMale> sorry, but I don't understand the question.
[21:55] <xyz> JunkMale: in your
[21:55] <xyz> JunkMale: hint: it's one of the files you blew away.
<JunkMale> yep. How can I view fstab?
[21:56] <xyz> JunkMale: cat
<JunkMale> sorry
<JunkMale> found a line like this:
<JunkMale>
[21:57] <xyz> JunkMale: good, so now we know that the compat slice (which you should have) is
[21:57] <xyz> JunkMale: mount
<JunkMale> done
[21:58] <xyz> JunkMale: now do the MAKEDEV you previously did again. chgrp and stuff should work
[21:58] * xyz is fading out.
<JunkMale> done.
[21:59] <xyz> zzzz...
[21:59] <xyz> time for bed.
<JunkMale> don't fade yet!
[21:59] <xyz> JunkMale: you are now resurrected. reboot.
<JunkMale> rebooting!
<JunkMale> well, when I hit the USA in 1999, I owe you a crate of beer.
<JunkMale> and when/if you hit New Zealand, you got a place to stay and a tour guide.
[22:00] <XX> xyz: you can go to bed - I'll take over if necessary
<JunkMale> looks much better.
[22:00] <xyz> JunkMale:
<JunkMale> thanks XX.
[22:00] <xyz> XX: Thanks.
[22:01] <XX> xyz: good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.
[22:01] * xyz goes to bed.
<JunkMale> reboot works. Cheers xyz.
In short, what I did was:
mount -u /
cd
cat fstab # found out where
mount
then I rebooted. And all was well. I had the system back and my CD-ROM worked.
7 August 1998
I've just noticed that I haven't actually indicated how to mount the cdrom. Here's the command I use now:
mount -t cd9660
To unmount the above:
umount
25 October 1998 - quick CD-ROM mounts
There is a shortcut to mounting a CD-ROM. It includes placing a list in
/dev/wcd0c
With such a line, you can mount your cdrom with just the following command:
mount
He cummed in my butt last night. Please do not post any more.
Jon Katz' karma: -500
Thursday. Pay Day. I love Pay Days. In fact, work is always better on a pay day. People are nicer, complaints are rarer, bank managers are friendlier - a guy could get used to this.
A bastard, however, could lose the touch - that finely honed reflex that enables him (or her) to sort the wheat from the chaff (user-wise). Complacency is the enemy.
Still, the brown envelope containing a cheque is a useful reminder of what we do this for. Smiling happily, I fumble with the self-adhesive seal on the envelope (the glue must be the same stuff they use to hold tiles onto the space shuttle), before losing my patience and ripping the envelope open from the other end.
Ahhh!, The smell of a freshly printed cheque...the feel of it as it slips out of the protective environment of brown paper. The temporary but overpowering feeling of goodwill for all things beancountery as I note the aesthetically pleasing sight of my company's name laserprinted on the top line, right above the amount of...WHAT THE HELL!?
THE THIEVING BEANCOUNTER BASTARDS HAVE UNDERPAID ME!
I have another look, just to make sure I've got it right. "The beancounters have underpaid me!"
"You're joking!?"
"I'm not! Look, they've rounded down the amount!"
"By how much?"
"27p!"
"Hang on, you're going to maim someone - possibly permanently - over 27p?"
"It's not that it's 27p, it's the principle of the thing. STEALING from me! It's unheard of! It's the thin end of the wedge - before you know it, they'll be riding the lifts again. They'll be questioning your expense claims, talking to you about business plans at lunchtime, and..."
About 10 minutes later I come to, with a rather nasty bruise on my head and a pain in my side.
"Sorry about that," the PFY calls from behind the door of the computer room, waving one of our low-output (aka 'warning') cattle prods.
He must have zapped me while I was under the influence of theft-crisis. "That's OK," I respond, "perfectly acceptable under the circumstances."
I go to let myself into the computer room to assure him there are no hard feelings, only to find my access card's been given 'lock-out' status.
"Sorry about that, too, but you know what you get like," the PFY calls through the safety glass.
"Of course!" I cry "No harm done," as I sneakily reach for my special reserve access card, noted in the database as a 'Fire and Civil Emergency' access card, which no one but me knows exi...
"Got that one, too..." the PFY murmurs apologetically.
You've got to give him credit, he's a chip off the old block.
I move away from the door to see if he's going to come out when he thinks it's safe, but he's not that stupid, either.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I set my rubbish bin on fire, then reverse the direction of the office ('remodelled') air-conditioner so that it's blowing air into the computer room instead of stealing air from it.
The halon 10-second warning goes off and the PFY rushes to the hold-off switch - the real one (disguised as an intercom pager button) - and not the decoy we use to frighten contractors.
I have him right where I want him. While the smoke detectors still sense smoke the halon system is still activated. While he holds the button down, the halon countdown is paused. Currently at seven seconds...
I hold the rubbish bin up to the viewing window and throw in some more paper and a back-up tape (to keep it nice and smoky) so the PFY can see I'm serious.
Out of earshot, he scribbles a quick note on the wall. "You could be right, 27p is an insult!"
Smiling, I pour coffee into the bin to extinguish the flames, then sit down at my desk. The PFY emerges from the computer room once the halon clear has been signalled.
"So, what are we going to do?" he asks.
"Well, I thought some form of example has to be made. Firm - but not, of course, brutal."
"You mean chilli sauce in the eye-rinse bottle, laxative in the water fountain or glue on the bog seats?"
"Well..."
"All three?"
"Warmer..."
"'Route their traffic via the 3-Phase mains 'network'?"
"Almost there..."
"Put indelible dye in the rooftop water reservoir and trigger the sprinkler system on their floor?"
"Yes...to all of the above."
And so it was that half-an-hour later, the PFY's up a ladder, pouring a crimson cement dye concentrate into the reservoir, when...BDZZZT!!
To his credit, the PFY makes no sound as the cattle prod takes effect. Apart from the splash of course.
After I've fished him out, I disable his card, the halon system and the card known to the database as 'Installation Card (Disabled)'.
What goes around comes around.
It's quiet. Possibly too quiet - The kind of quiet you get when you shove a thick chunk of copper wire in a circuit breaker, a nail in the phase circuit breaker and a bolt in the floor circuit breaker... then drop a screwdriver down one of the ventilation holes of the mainframe's power supply.
I make my way carefully through the emergency-lit computer room to my office, my only detour being a quick circuit breaker replacement tour and a stop at the bin to drop off a badly scarred screwdriver.
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and a muffled BOOM from the sub-basement.
After all, it's just good manners to let the great unwashed know just who's still at the helm of this operation.
The PFY, meantime, is on holiday, exercising his Christmas bonus to its maximum potential. After all, it's only a matter of time before the Boss realises that there's a duplicate of his credit card out there (again) and calls up the card company.
I did my bit for the PFY's R&R by pushing the Boss's latest credit card statement, envelope and all, into the shredder. Apparently he was under the misguided impression that receiving mail at work is far safer than getting it at his dockside apartment drop box... a mistake that's likely to cost him.
Speaking of the Boss's mail, it's about time to distribute all his waylaid Christmas vendor freebies among the IT troops in a manner not altogether unlike a modern day IT Robin Hood.
"What? Is that it?" a particularly ungrateful antipodean contractor (who couldn't find his bum with a mirror and a torch without a 1:1 scale map) asks after I hand him a bottle of red wine that has better disinfectant than drinking properties.
"Sorry?"
"It's a little, er, cheap, isn't it?" he sniffles.
The things you hear when the PFY isn't around with a nailgun.
"Gee, sorry Mike!" I cry. "I guess it's not like home where you get your pick of the flock for the night as a Christmas bonus."
He lets the slur pass, and grudgingly accepts the bottle, not realising just how well I remember the time, after an agency knees-up, when he dropped me off at the farthest tube station from my destination...three minutes AFTER the Tube stopped running.
Trusting no one, he stashes the bottle in his desk-side footlocker, giving me the chance to stuff a large piece of foam packing over the cooling inlet at the back of his desktop machine.
Thermal overheating time bomb set, I wander off to distribute more New Year cheer.
And not a moment too soon, as the power is restored and the building springs back into life.
When I've run out of blocks of foam and cheap bottles of wine, I grab some of the good stuff and go on my REAL goodwill rounds, dropping off gifts to the telephone operators, the cleaning staff, and, lastly, the building maintenance guy. Know what palms to grease and when - that's my motto.
Having ensured that no one's going to investigate my long-distance phone bill, find the Boss's shredded credit card statements or wonder what's protected by the Armageddon-proof lock on the door marked 'Plant Room No3' in the basement, I return to my office.
As luck would have it, the Boss is waiting for me there with an annoyed expression on his face. It's only a 'generally-annoyed' expression, which means that he's probably not found out about his credit card yet, let alone me calling up his credit company and cranking his limit up so far he'd get nose bleeds just thinking about it.
"What's this about you blocking up the cooling vent of Mike's machine?" he asks.
Bastard!
"Oh, that - it's not sponge, it's...noise damping material."
"?..."
"Noise damping - the material has a gaseous porosity which allows air flow but reduces sound output by a factor of around 10 decibels per megalitre of vacuum-rated European Standard air."
"Err, really? So it's just to cut down noise?"
"Of course!"
"Hang on a minute!..."
I suppose it was a little too good to be true...
"Yes?"
"Why haven't you installed any on my machine?"
I don't believe it...
"Oh, I was just getting round to it - your one is in that old monitor box over there."
He ferrets around in the aforementioned box before pulling out a bit of packing.
"This? It's a bit of machine packing."
"No, it's a sound-reducing, air-cleaning filter."
"Then why has it got 'recycle this packing carefully' printed on the side of it?"
"Because... it was packed in old newspaper and they couldn't print over the top of it."
"Oh... so how do I use it?"
"Well, you make sure that it's hard up against the fan inlet so that no, er, 'unfiltered' air can get through."
"Right, well, I'll let Mike know then," he burbles as he wanders out to destroy his machine.
"No, no!" I cry. "Leave that to me - I'll sort him out."
And sort him out I will.
It's mid-afternoon, and we're in the middle of our annual 'improve the perception of IT' fortnight. Things are going just great.
The boss has a bee in his bonnet about my liberal interpretation of the promotional slogan 'delivering what the client needs'. Apparently, my
helpdesk instruction sheets on how to deliver 'a damn good kicking' weren't within the intended scope of the motto...
He was in an even worse mood after the hand-proximity sensor on the line printer failed to operate while he was attempting to stop said
instruction sheets from printing. The fast moving paper gave him a large and deep paper cut that he won't be forgetting in a hurry. And the
PFY and I certainly don't know how that heavily salted water got into the first aid antiseptic bottle.
But his irritation began after spotting a publicity photo of one of the members of the company's football team (sponsored by the IT division)
walking around with his football jersey untucked. Beautifully crafted, and costing enough to make a beancounter weep, the jerseys have a
lovely little IT crest (a couple of crossed keyboards on a burning PC background, emblazoned on the left breast). The words 'IT - giving you
more' are in large letters on the back. When untucked however, the words 'of a shafting' become visible. The boss was not impressed.
The PFY and I make no attempts to escape his wrath knowing full well that he has to pass the head of IT's room to get to us. He's not so
keen on doing that since some complete bastard uploaded a new ring sound to the head's cellphone - a sound not dissimilar to that made by a
lentil casserole after its trip through the digestive tract.
Accordingly, the IT department managers' meeting he attended this morning was a swift affair, and certainly not one that really should have
been 'aired' as a live video conference and PR opportunity. Even the cafeteria staff saw it and wouldn't serve him the onion bhajis at
lunchtime.
Not that I feel sorry for the boss. The whole 'improve the perception of IT' initiative was all his fault in the first place for mentioning that it
'must be about that time of the year' to the head of IT.
No-one likes these PR weeks because the bosses like to answer all those stupid user questions such as: 'Can I send 1,000 copies of my CV to
the printer? Can I talk to one of your network guys for an hour or two?' and 'Do you know who set my car on fire?' with 'yes', 'yes', and
'no' instead of the far more appropriate 'not if you want to see another birthday, not if you want to see another birthday', and, 'us, we
thought it was your birthday.'
But the thing that really puts the boss under the gun is that he's invoked a 'response time' clause in our contracts that was meant for call-out
duties which says we have to respond within a reasonable amount of time to a user's problems.
In PR week, 'reasonable' means 10 minutes. Now perhaps the boss can have a good game of MDK in 10 minutes, but a networking
professional cannot!
Sure enough, I'm just firing up MDK when the phone goes.
"Hello?"
"Yes?" I ask, expecting the worst.
"I've got a problem with my network."
Here we go...
"Hmmm?" Why waste words on these morons? They're much happier with a bit of grunting and a few soothing clucking noises.
"It's a little difficult to explain over the phone - could someone come up?"
Sigh.
I flip the PFY for it and am stunned when I lose. Then I realise that the little bastard has switched my double headed 50 pence for a double
tail model.
It really does me proud to see him turning out so well.
Of course, I still won't be telling him that I removed the safety grille from the whirring blades of the cooling fan at the back of his PC, but
there you go.
I get to the user's office and it's the same old thing. They moved the PC and the network stopped.
"But it never used to do that."
"No, but now that we don't use thin wire network cabling it does."
"That doesn't sound like a good move."
I manage to extricate myself an hour later (after the story about how technology was much more reliable in the 1950s) and get back to the
office.
The PFY chuckles maliciously.
"He rang back - the lead's fallen out of the computer and he's scared to plug it in."
"A separate call," I cry, "that makes it your turn!"
"Toss you for it?" he asks, not understanding where the line should be drawn.
"I'll go for tails for a change."
"Bastard!" Sensibly, the PFY doesn't admit to anything.
"Oh, by the way, make sure to mention how reliable IT is nowadays, especially when compared to the 1950s..."
The PFY grumbles a bit before slouching over to the door.
"Have you seen my access card?"
"Yeah," I reply, "I needed it to get into the comms room this morning. I think it fell down the back of your PC. On the cooling fan side..."