some dev files disappeared, mouse doesn't work, no hostname
The other day I shut down my Sid box and left if off for several days.
Then when I came back to it tonight, I'm seeing some weird behaviour.
For example, the mouse doesn't work, via gpm in console.
I can't start X via "startx"; it complains about no /dev/tty0 device.
And sure enough, it doesn't, although there are lots of other /dev/tty[]
devices.
I was getting errors about a Windows partition, and sure enough, the
device file /dev/hda1 was missing, although other /dev/hda[} files were
there. I ran "./MAKEDEV hd" which fixed the missing hda1 file. I ran
"./MAKEDEV generic" which fixed the missing /dev/tty0 file, and now
startx works.
Even after that "/MAKEDEV generic" my mouse still doesn't work, and the
device file /dev/psaux exists (and existed prior to the "generic"). (If
I had a Knoppix CD handy I'd see if the mouse works there - it "feels"
like a hardware problem, but these other issues, and the suddenness of
the mouse problem, indicate a software problem.)
Sometimes, like if I try to do a "sudo", even something simple like
"sudo ls", I get:
sudo: unable to lookup westk03 via gethostbyname()
(westk03 is the name of this computer), and once I got something like
"hostname does not exist", even though the command "hostname" reports
"westk03" and that's what's in /etc/hostname.
Really weird stuff.
I also saw something along the way about devfs or something similar, and
I'm wondering if we're in a transition from the /dev filesystem to some
newer on-the-fly "devfs" setup (based on vague understandings and
remembrances), and my box has gotten hosed by a bad transition. Or maybe
I'm just barking up the wrong tree.
At any rate, anyone have any idea what happened, and more importantly,
how to get my box fixed?
Thanks!
--
Kent
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