hmmm... dont really know what to make of this. i read your last message which 
made a lot of sense so i took out the line dev_mkdb which i had put into 
defaults/rc.conf and rebooted. this time there was no problem and the database 
was built properly. the sysdb file contains the script for creating this file 
so i dont know why it didnt get created on the first boot. (i hate it when 
users tell me 'it got better by itself' but there you go!)

thanks for the help and advice

GREG

> On Sat, Feb 24, 2001 at 05:45:50PM +0000, Greg MATTHEWS wrote:
> > hi manuel..
> > 
> > you are right - dev_mkdb is not being run. running it by hand solved the 
> > problem of ps. however, i am unsure how it should be included in rc.conf or 
> > defaults/rc.conf
> 
> This should be done by /etc/rc.d/sysdb at boot time, and doesn't need any 
> special rc.conf setup.
> Didn't you see any error message at boot time, when the startup scripts are
> run ?
> 
> --
> Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
> --