Subject: Re: The smallest multi-user system
To: Brian Rose <lists@brianrose.net>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 08/14/2003 10:23:36
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Brian Rose wrote:

> When the kernel boots it prompts for a shell and then drops into single
> user mode. The command 'ls > ls.txt' gives the error message "cannot
> create ls.txt: read-only file system".

> Furthermore, I added an rc file with the following contents and I did
> not see any output.

How did you build /sbin/init? (Did you use a ramdisk-big script that set
the LETS_GET_SMALL directive? If so, the functions to run the system
startup script, to read the ttys(5) and to run getty are not built.)

Also, do you have a /etc/ttys file? If the ttys(5) is empty, then (if I
read the code correctly), it won't run a getty (because of no "session").

Or another idea: If I am reading the code correctly, if dbopen can't
create a temporary database (maybe because filesystem not writable), then
it fails to get to the getty step. The code uses dbopen(NULL, ...). I
don't know if this temporary database is in memory or disk.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/