Re-creating /devices and /dev

If the /devices or /dev directories are damaged--most likely to occur if the driver crashes during attach(9E))--they may be recreated by booting the system and running fsck(1M) to repair the damaged root file system. The root file system can then be mounted and /devices re-created by running drvconfig(1M) and specifying the /devices directory on the mounted disk. The /dev directory can be repaired by running devlinks(1M), disks(1M), tapes(1M), and ports(1M) on the dev directory of the mounted disk.

On SPARC, for example, if the damaged disk is /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0, and an alternate boot disk is /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0, do the following:

ok boot disk1
...
Rebooting with command: disk1
Boot device: /sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@1,0   File and args:
SunOS Release 5.7 Version Generic [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
Copyright (c) 1983-1998, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
...
# fsck /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0** /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0
** Last Mounted on /
** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
1478 files, 9922 used, 29261 free(141 frags, 3640 blocks, 0.4% fragmentation)
# mount /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 /mnt# drvconfig -r /mnt/devices# devlinks -r /mnt# disks -r /mnt# tapes -r /mnt# ports -r /mnt

Fixing /devices and /dev may allow the system to boot, but other parts of the system may still be corrupted. This may only be a temporary fix to allow saving information (such as system core dumps) before reinstalling the system.