Re: some dev files disappeared, mouse doesn't work, no hostname

[Kent West]

Kent West wrote:

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!

I left the machine on last night after posting the above, and then 
tonight, I shut it down, popped in a Knoppix CD, and fired it up. 
Knoppix found my mouse without any problem. So I shut the machine down 
and rebooted normally, and now the mouse works.

What?!

Okay, I'll let these issues slide as unsolved mysteries, but I still 
have the problem with the hostname. Anyone have any solutions there?

--
Kent


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