Hi,
I'm trying to boot up my NeXTstation Turbo 33mhz running NeXTstep 3.3 and I can't seem to get passed the "Loading from Disk" screen w/ the spinning hard drive. I'm able to get into the rom monitor but i'm not too sure what to type in. If I type "bsd" It says this:
NeXT ROM Monitor 3.0 v70
NeXT Mach 3.3: Mon Oct 24 13:56:37 PDT 1994; root(rcbuilder) :mk-171.9.obj~2/RC_m68k/RELEASE_M68K
FPU version 0x41
physical memory = 16.00 megabyes.
available memory = 14.07 megabytes.
using 102 buffers containing 0.79 megabytes of memory
fc0 at 0x2014100
Sony MPX-111N as fd0 at fc0 slave 0
SCSI 53C90A Controller, Target 7, as sc0 at 0x2014000
SEAGATE ST1480 Rev 5736 as sd0 target 1 lun 0
Disk Label: Disk
Disk Capacity 406MB, Device Block 512 bytes
Generic SCSI Device as sg0 at sc0 target 7 lun 7
Generic SCSI Device as sg1 at sc0 target 7 lun 7
Generic SCSI Device as sg2 at sc0 target 7 lun 7
Generic SCSI Device as sg3 at sc0 target 7 lun 7
eno at 0x2006000
en0: Ethernet address 00:00:0f:01:0e:46
IP protocol enabled for interface en0, type "10MB Ethernet"
dsp0 at 0x2008000
np0 at 0x200e000
root on sd0
Load of /etc/mach_init, errno 2, trying /etc/init
Load of /etc/init failed, errno 2
I think I may have done something when I deleted a user while using the GUI. When I got the NeXTstation there were already a number of user accounts on it and I trying to clean some of them off. While I was logged in as the "root" I deleted a user called "nobody" and then logged back to the "me" user. The first thing that happened was NeXTstep prompted me with something that said "internal error detected" and something about "continue at your own risk."
Anyway, the I continued and then the next time I tried to boot up it would hang on the boot screen. Anyone know what may be the issue and how I can fix it?
Any replys would be helpful!
Thanks!
Yikes!
As far as I know.. and its been a while, you need the nobody account.. even on OS X ?
But the nice thing about NS is that you can probably boot in to single user mode and rebuild the user... I dont have a NS system around.. but for some hints I would look on google about how to erase the root password.
I think that NS comes with a system template that is used for netbooting other computers.. you can use that template for reseting your system.
I would poke around in /private
*gulp*
Oops! Ok, well I guess this is the fun of this system is hosing it and trying to bring it back to life again.
The only time i've erased/reset the root password it required me to boot into the SCSI drive (bsd) but I can't even get that far now. It still shows me the "Load of /etc/init failed, errno 2"
So i'm not really sure what I can type into the Rom Monitor.
Any ideas? anyone?
At the rom monitor type:
bsd -s
to go into single user.
If you deleted non-netinfo accounts(and from your description that's what you did) then it should be easy to recover. nobody doesnt exist in netinfo, only in /etc/passwd & /etc/master.passwd.
Also, get familiar with unix in general before you go messing around next time.
I agree with you on the "learn more before I mess with things."
When I type "bsd -s" to get into single user mode it won't go past "Load of /etc/init failed, errno 2"
I appreciate the help though, but I'm still unable to get into single user mode this way.
If you have a nextstep cd, then boot single user from the cdrom. Normally I dont have a cdrom connected but when I do, I actually make it a ID lower than my HD(so then it will default to booting off of it - turbo systems):
bsd(n,0,0)sdmach -s rootdev=sdn
Once you boot single user from the cd it will drop you into a shell and you can fix from there.
By the way, if you have a non-turbo system, then you'll need to boot off a floppy. I have never booted single user from a floppy before, but it should be the same thing:
bfd -s
but also make sure you have the nexstep cd in your cdrom drive as well, as the floppy is only used as a bootstrap and then loads up files off of the CD.
It sounds like you blew away init, which is needed. You can try doing what the other guys pointed out and copying one file back at a time to see if you get further.
I still don't understand what you were thinking deleting stuff like this... At least you now have a very good opportunity to learn the internals of a BSD-like Unix: NeXTSTEP!
Good luck
Thanks for the reply, sorry I was out of town for a few weeks. I'm still determine to get my beloved NeXTstation up and running. You think it would be possible to boot from a floppy and copy the necessary files from that? Or would I have to completely reinstall NeXTstep?
I'm not the ultimate NeXT/Unix guru, although I've dealt with both in certain depth, but one method you can do is the following:
Get another disk and install NeXTSTEP on that, and then boot from that and mount the disk with the deleted files and do a diff to see what you've blown away in "important" directories. So checking /tmp won't help, but checking /etc/ will.
Or somehow try to recollect what you blew away?
Even if you boot from floppy, without an idea of 1) what you deleted and 2) a NeXTSTEP CDROM, you won't be able to restore a lot. AFAIK the floppies contain a mini kernel and drivers and the installation app/scripts. Nothing of the sort that you deleted.
Good luck
Quote from: "ROBeRTO"Thanks for the reply, sorry I was out of town for a few weeks. I'm still determine to get my beloved NeXTstation up and running. You think it would be possible to boot from a floppy and copy the necessary files from that? Or would I have to completely reinstall NeXTstep?
You need floppy and CD if you are using a non-turbo. You only need a CD if you are using a turbo system.
Well It's been a long journey since my last post and I have to admit my NeXTstation was a giant, black magnesium paper weight for a few months...but good news! Yesterday I bought a SCSI cd-rom drive for $5 off craigslist and was finally able to see if my NeXTstep 3.3 Boot Disc would be able to fix my problem of the "deleted nobody user." This being very new to me I wasn't really sure at first how to even get the NeXTstation to read the SCSI cd-rom instead of the internal SCSI hard drive. So this next bit i'm writing is to help those like me who didn't really grow up w/ SCSI.
My external SCSI cd-rom has to very large plugs on the back of it, which are called SCSI 1. But the NeXTstation has only a SCSI 2 port on the back. You need a SCSI 1 to SCSI 2 cable to hook the two up together. And to get your computer to see the SCSI cd-rom you have to set a small switch on the back of the cd-rom drive. This is called a jumper and it has a little number on it. If you push it the number will change (0,1,2,3, etc.). Set it to zero so it will be the first SCSI device you computer will try to read. Then when you are back in the rom monitor you can type bsd -s and it should attempt to read your SCSI cd-rom.
So anyway, now that I'm able to get the NeXTstep cd-rom read by my NeXTstation I get all the way to the UNIX prompt and I'm kinda lost. Luckly my uncle is a huge UNIX head from way back so he's going to help me try to copy the needed "nobody user" files from the cd-rom to the NeXT hard disk.
cool. 8)