Re: Similar problem to "Lost ability to boot" dated Jan 2002

[Luis Cerdas <luis.cerdas@rawtenla.com>]

> Unless you expected me to go to eRacks to buy one to help you for free
> (and wait for me to receive it), it is nearly useless to me.  (Do you
> REALLY think the size of the case or the rotational speed of the drive
> is more important than, say, the chip sets or the drive's model number
> in resolving a problem?)

Really mature...  thank you for going that extra mile in stressing that the
information provided did not help, and trying to point out my stupidity.

It just made sense to mention that the box was from Eracks as this machine
is supposed to be able to run without problems OpenBSD (as mentioned on
their website, and linked from OpenBSD.org).  It also made sense that there
could be other people on the list running these machines who would then be
able to quickly identify themselves as potential helpers and because the
chipset information with all the other technical specs are on their website
in the product description.  I now realize that that also would be hard to
ask "for free", so next time I shall at least include the URL.  As this is a
medium-high volume list, it made sense to keep the actual message size
smaller.

> If the kernel was moved outside the 8G area, the boot floppy wouldn't
> work.  Since the boot floppy DOES work, the problem is with the /boot
> file.
> 
> You have a Large Drive issue, I think.  The little info you provided
> only reinforces my belief.

> Something moved or reinstalled /boot.  As you had some kind of
> traumatic event on this box, I rather suspect it happened in the
> cleanup.

I do believe that you are correct in that the moment where something could
have been moved outside the 8G area could have occured during the
fsck/cleanup once the system came up after some forced reboot of the box by
the customer.

> yep.
> 
> The flames are for telling us it is urgent...and not providing
> info...being told EXACTLY what info we need to help you on this
> "urgent" problem...and AGAIN not providing it.

I am not aware of stating in any of my messages that it was "urgent".  You
must be confused with someone else's issue or you yourself have applied such
a label to this problem.  We did need to identify the problem so as to avoid
having it happen again, and we would have preferred to know the reason
before reinstalling the production box.
 
> You have five badly implemented systems.  You need to rebuild all of
> them properly, with / completely within the 8G range.  If you want to
> run 'em with one partition, odds are you can run your mail and web
> server and firewall very nicely with a single 8G partition (that is a
> LOT of mail and web).  However, I would recommend keeping /var
> separate to keep a lid on your mail, logs, and web space growth.  Also
> keep in mind that you are unlikely to need all 20G, you don't have to
> allocate it all from the start, you can allocate 2G for /, 1G for
> /var, 1G for /home (maybe you want to keep web sites under /home
> instead of /var), and leave the other 16G unallocated.  Need a larger
> /home?  make it!  Copy the files, change /etc/fstab, remount, done.
> 
> You got bit on one of them already...the others are waiting to bite
> you, too.  

Sound advice that we shall follow.  Thank you for your time.

Luis C.