topic Re: will the system boot without /var mounted? in Operating System - HP-UX

will the system boot without /var mounted?

David Heard — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:36:28 GMT

will the system boot without /var mounted?

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

Uday_S_Ankolekar — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:39:26 GMT

You can boot it on single user mode.

When press a key to discontinue appear on screen while rebooting. ( You have 10 sec time for this!)

Interact with IPL respond to "yes".
on ISL prompt type hpux -is

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:39:53 GMT

Yes, in single-user mode the only filesystems required are / and /stand. However, if you mean can the system run in multi-user mode without /var then no -- at least not for very long. You need to boot in single-user mode and do whatever maintenance is needed on /var and then boot normally.

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

Todd McDaniel_1 — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:46:26 GMT

David,

You have piqued my interest. What is the other question you didnt ask?

What happened to /var that you would ask? maybe we can help with your real problem?

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

Mic V. — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 20:16:09 GMT

Yes, as mentioned you could boot single-user and /var will not be mounted. I suspect that if you try to boot to run level 3 (normal run level) without an available /var, that one or more system services will either not start or may cause the boot process to hang. Knowing your actual configuration would make that easier to answer.

Among other things, mail and the vi editor will not work correctly (but you may not care). I suspect cron (an important system process) will not work.

We can probably give better advice if we know why /var won't be there. If you're short of disk space, you should be able to fake things out with some skeleton directories and files, but you'd need detailed knowledge on what is required vs optional.

HTH,
Mic

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

Bill Hassell — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:21:31 GMT

/var is always available, even in single user mode. A mountpoint is really a directory that serves 2 roles: a storage location for files, and a mounpoint or 'glue' to connect another disk volume into the directory structure. So /var is always available. However, the subdirectories won't be there which will cause many programs and daemons to fail. A good example is /var/adm where a lot of logging occurs.

If the reason you are asking is that someone has deleted all the files and directories, your system isn't going to be useful until the /var filesystem is restored from your backup. Without critical /var/adm/sw files, it will be impossible to patch or add any applications using software distributor.

Re: will the system boot without /var mounted?

Mic V. — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 22:44:12 GMT

Weeell.../var is always available unless it's corrupted and won't mount, or someone's rm -rf /var, etc. Also, depending on the initial layout, /var may not be a filesystem but part of /.

:)

(Thanks, Bill, for going to work at Aptitune. I'm glad we didn't lose your expertise.)