On Mon, 31 Jan 2000, Merideth Johnston wrote:

> the bad news is, the other partition sd0d is, well, wrong.  I know it's
> wrong because it only has one file on it, and that is an empty directory,
> yet df tells me it is 75% full (what _does_ it think is _in_ there?), and
> more than twice as large as it's supposed to be!?!?  This makes me nervous.
> I'd like to just reformat the thing and start over with it.  I've already
> re-made the directory in question elsewhere, and wondered if I could do the
> reformatting of that partition without using the little devil on it again,
> as that did seem to have some problems with the large drive.  (I'm hoping
> that is the cause of sd0d's pecular problem)  Can I instead just use
> something from within NetBSD to reformat that partition?  (wiping out the
> erroneous size thing, and all else - whatever that else is - with it)  The
> size of it appears correct when listed with disklabel, so it seems to me it
> would just be the contents, the file structure, that needs to be redone.

Meredith,
	there is a known bug (well, I found out about it the same way that
you did) having to do with df reporting partition sizes incorrectly on
partitions subsequent to the first on a disk.  It kind of adds the values
from the first partition to the second, and gives values that are too
high.

> Then, there is a boot message that says it will do its dumps on sd1b....
> which is the tiny Mac partition.  I'd guess that isn't a good place for it
> to do its dumps, but I don't know where a good place would be for them, and
> I can't seem to find where to change where it will do the dumps.  After it
> says that, it says "configuring network interfaces", whereupon it says
> "segmentation fault - core dumped" after which it says "savecore:
> /netbsd:kvm_dump_mkheader:Pread: invalid argument"
> 
> <I swear, I didn't do anything but watch it boot itself.>
> 
> then, it says "ldconfig: /usr/pkg/lib: no such file or directory  Illegal
> instruction - core dumped"  whereupon it has a Pread invalid argument with
> itself again....
> 
> hmmmm.  I'm thinking all of that could be due to the incorrect dumping spot
> first noted.
> 
> Lastly, for this installment of my Adventures in NetBSD land, in looking
> for the place to specify a proper dumping ground, I found the file fstab.sd
> which lists /dev/sd0a as the root partition - this is dangerously wrong.
> sd0a is the partition I want to be untouched.  sd1a is the NetBSD root
> partition.  I wanted to know what that file, fstab.sd, is used for, before
> I go and change it, as it does seem to change itself, (it added sd0g to
> itself) so changing it directly may not even work.

Perhaps you could send the list a message and include the contents of your
fstab file, and the disk-related messages that come up on your display
while booting up.  You could also tell us how you think your disks are
configured, and how they should be. 

> Oh yeah, while I'm thinking of it,  I've got some .core files around now in
> various places, and wondered if they might be some of those mysterious
> dumps, and if I could delete them - they vary in size, but some are fairly
> large, and they seem to multiply like dust bunnies in the dark.

A core file is essentially a copy (saved to disk) of the memory space that
was in use be a process when it choked and died.  They usually appear in
the directory that was the current directory when the process was started. 
I doubt very much that you'll need them.  They are usually used by
programmers and administrators, who anyalyze them in a debugging program
to figure out what was the state of things in memory at the time of the
error.  You can remove them.  Once you get your system running normally,
you can configure your machine to keep them down to a minimal size of
zero, or not create them at all. 

/*======================================================================
"Don't die wondering..."                http://www.cldc.howard.edu/~cpg
                                              email: cpg@scs.howard.edu
chris out-              Christopher P. Gill
  peace.        C.L.D.C. Senior System Operator (Ret.)
======================================================================*/