Re: Alpha is seriously broken

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:41:13PM +0100, Doug Rabson wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 14:58, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:24:52PM +0200, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav wrote:
> > > Ruslan Ermilov <ru_at_freebsd.org> writes:
> > > > I think there's no emergency plan other than to reinstall "base"
> > > > on these systems from some older snapshot?
> > > 
> > > cross-compile on a different machine in the cluster, copy over the new
> > > make(1), then use it to installworld over NFS.
> > > 
> > Only if this machine is also Alpha.  To tell you the truth, some bits
> > produced by cross-compiles on different architectures are not ready
> > for use on a native architecture.  This includes binary files such as
> > fortune(6) .dat files, NLS catalogs, etc.  I haven't identified them
> > all yet.
> > 
> > Once I get my "modern" Alpha box, I will start working on a project
> > that will eventually address this, so cross- builds and releases
> > will produce the same binary files as on native platforms.  NetBSD
> > achieved a great success in this direction, so it shouldn't be too
> > hard to fix.
> 
> It might be quicker to extract various critical static binaries (init,
> make, cc, ld etc.) from an unbroken bindist. Oh and hope that beast
> doesn't crash before you replace init :-)
> 
Hmm, but init(8) is also a statically linked binary.  Heh, and I know
why beast is still alive -- it's due to the way the /root script that
automatically updates the world and kernel on beast works.  The script
does, in this risky sequence: buildworld, installworld, and the "old
way" kernel build/install, then reboots in five minutes.  At this time,
after it made installworld and attempted to build a kernel, it failed
to do so (the /boot/kernel/kernel is still old).  Installworld was
fine because it saves tools that it uses (including "sh" and "make"
into WORLDTMP).

So Ken, if you want to attempt to revive this machine, don't reboot
it yet, it won't boot up with the new init(8).  Of course, we have
/sbin/init.bak saved, but...  ;)


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
ru_at_FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer