ok, I am sorta having urgent problems, i would appreciate any help you 
guys can offer...

so it all started when I decided to compile my own kernel.  when it 
finished compiling, I felt adventurous, so I thought I would try it.  not 
surprisingly, it didn't work.  while starting up, it stopped with the 
message "/etc/rc.conf not configured", which puzzled me a little, so I 
used the installer utility to change kernels back to the old one that I 
had been using that I knew worked.  when restarted, it gave me the same 
error message, about rc.conf.  I figured maybe the file got changed 
somehow, so I downloaded etc.tar.gz using my powermac and copied the rc, 
rc.conf, rc.subr, and rc.lkm files into bsd (just to be safe).  

now when i try to boot, I get the message "could not exec 
/usr/libexec/getty for /dev/ttye0: file does not exist" (or something 
damn close to that).  Using the installer utility, /usr/libexec/getty 
exists, and I rebuilt all of the devices and verified that /dev/ttye0 is 
there.  I also rewrote my /etc/fstab and verified that all of the 
partitions were there.

So I am not sure what to do with this error message.  I have a feeling 
that my /usr partition is not getting mounted because there are not 
messages about it before the boot process stops.  I don't know how I can 
get it to mount, though, since it won't drop me into a single user shell 
like it normally does when there are problems.  I don't understand why it 
wouldn't get mounted though, since i am using a kernel that I know works 
and by /etc/fstab has the partition listed.

Also, I noticed at one point there was an /etc/nologin file created, I 
don't know exactly when.  It definately was not there beforehand.

Anyways, if anyone has any ideas, i would really appreciate them.  I am 
dreading a full re-install, partially because of the effort and partially 
because of the data...  oh yeah, almost forgot, it is a Quadra 610, 8 MB 
RAM, Quantum 2GB drive.

Thanks

latr
dan heller



----------------------------------------

Dan Heller
heller@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~heller/

"You'll find many of the truths we cling to depend greatly
    on our point of view"