stefanos@concour.cs.concordia.ca (KIAKAS stefanos) (06/23/91)
hello everyone
i seem to have erased my hard disk. i was logged in as root and had
a floppy disk in the disk drive from using the command
tar -xvf /dev/rfd0b <some files which i had ftp'd >
i copied the files from the floppy onto my next and i wanted to format
the floppy so that i could use it as a next formated diskette. ( i had
formatted the diskette on a sun sparc. )
i selected the disk option from the workspace manager menu and selected
initialize. the message that appears when you want to initialize a disk
appearded on the screen. i clicked on the mouse button figuring
that i would format the floppy disk and that is when the panic message
appeared to the screen. i tried to reboot but got a message saying SCSI
error.
i then got into the ROM monitor and set it up for extended diagnostics
and i got the following message
Starting Extended Self Test...
Extended SCSI Test
System Test Passed
boot sd(0,0,0) diagnostics
booting SCSI target 1, lun 0
waiting for drive to come ready ...
blk0 boot: sd() diagnostic
Booting from SCSI target 1, lun 0
diagnostics: not found
load failed
blk0 boot:
so can you initialize the hard disk by using the disk oprtion in the
workspace manager menu as i have done? (is it this easy to do so?)
what can i do now to get the system up again?
i have a nextstation 8M RAM 200M HD, it is not connected to a network.
any help would be appreciated.
stef
cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu (06/24/91)
In article <556@daily-planet.concordia.ca> stefanos@concour.cs.concordia.ca (KIAKAS stefanos) writes: i seem to have erased my hard disk. i was logged in as root and had a floppy disk in the disk drive [... stuff deleted ...] i selected the disk option from the workspace manager menu and selected initialize. the message that appears when you want to initialize a disk appearded on the screen. i clicked on the mouse button figuring that i would format the floppy disk and that is when the panic message appeared to the screen. so can you initialize the hard disk by using the disk oprtion in the workspace manager menu as i have done? (is it this easy to do so?) -- yes. Unfortunately, this has happened before. what can i do now to get the system up again? -- Most likely, you're going to have to rebuild your system hard disk. Contact the folks who sold you the system and explain that you need to do a builddisk on the internal hard disk. As a worst-case scenario, you might have to have a NeXT-certified service provider remove the hard disk from your system and ship it to NeXT to have the OS re-installed (this takes about an hour). As a best-case scenario, you'll have a NeXT campus consultant near by whom you can contact. There is a possibility that you can re-install the boot-block on the system, but in my experience, under these circumstances, when the panic monitor comes up, you're done. By the way, you have done no physical damage to the hard disk, and your system should be just fine after a builddisk is done. Hope you had your data backed up. And I'm sure we all really hope NeXT changes this "feature" in some future version of the OS.
louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (06/24/91)
In article <17688@helios.TAMU.EDU> cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu writes: >Hope you had your data backed up. And I'm sure we all really hope NeXT changes >this "feature" in some future version of the OS. Oh, come now. If you log in as root to do routine tasks, you are playing with a loaded gun. Presumably we should remove the 'rm' command because someone might inadvertantly delete /sdmach, that big file that takes up all that space? Let's not build a system that's so "safe" you can't get your work done. If you lock up all of the power tools, who's going to use them? louie
stefanos@concour.cs.concordia.ca (KIAKAS stefanos) (06/24/91)
In article <1991Jun24.005935.18747@ni.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: >In article <17688@helios.TAMU.EDU> cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu writes: > >>Hope you had your data backed up. And I'm sure we all really hope NeXT changes >>this "feature" in some future version of the OS. > >Oh, come now. > >If you log in as root to do routine tasks, you are playing with a >loaded gun. Presumably we should remove the 'rm' command because >someone might inadvertantly delete /sdmach, that big file that takes >up all that space? > >Let's not build a system that's so "safe" you can't get your work >done. If you lock up all of the power tools, who's going to use them? > >louie louie, in the User's Reference manual chapter 9 ( page 168 ) the disk menu is supposed to work with (to quote) "These commands apply to a removable disk - floppy or optical - that you've inserted in your computer." i have a station, therefore no optical disk. therefore this should have, as a default, applied only to the floppy disk not my hard disk. this is obviously a bug. no one suggested that we build a system so safe to make it difficult to use, but when a command is documented as doing one thing and it does another then this is a bug and should be fixed. my system is a 8M 200M station running OS 2.1. here is a brief description of the events that lead to this. - i used tar to move files from a sun sparc to the next tar -xvf /dev/rfd0b <files> - did not eject disk - moved from the terminal to the workspace manager to format the disk - selected the Disk Menu when it appeared, i could only invoke the initialize command not the eject command. i invoked the initialize command and assumed, as described in the documenttation, that it would initialize the floppy. it did not occur to me that it would initialize the hard disk. - this situation occured several times but i never wanted to initialize a disk before now i have a few question to ask the unix gurus. i've only had my machine for a few days before this happened. - when i get my system up and running is there a way to put the OS, that is on my hard disk, on floppies so i can reinstall it without waiting for next? ( it took 8 weeks to get my station from the time i ordered it ) - is there a way to make the system ask for your root password, even if you are logged in as root, before it initializes the hard disk? (it is not often that people want to initialize their hard disks so i don't think this will be an inconvenience.) thanx, stef
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/24/91)
In article <1991Jun24.005935.18747@ni.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: > cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu writes: > >Hope you had your data backed up. And I'm sure we all really hope > >NeXT changes this "feature" in some future version of the OS. > > Oh, come now. > > If you log in as root to do routine tasks, you are playing with a > loaded gun. Presumably we should remove the 'rm' command because > someone might inadvertantly delete /sdmach, that big file that takes > up all that space? The problem is that ordinary novice users *have* to log into root to install some packages. We must abandon the idea that the only people who are logging into root are unix gurus who know everything they are doing and want to fly without any nets. The problem is that it is all too easy to initialize the hard disk using the Disk menu option, and there is NO good reason for it to be so easy. In reality, under what circumstances would a person want to completely wipe out the one and only hard disk that they have on the system? Do you do this every day? Would it really hamper your lifestyle if there were some more protections around this particular operation? > Let's not build a system that's so "safe" you can't get your work > done. If you lock up all of the power tools, who's going to use them? I agree we can go too far the other way by trying to make things too safe. On the other hand it's very reasonable to put up some firewalls based on the seriousness of making a mistake. My own preference is that 1) the Disk menu have a separate menu item for initializing the hard (or optical) disk. This won't slow down anyone who has a burning desire to wipe out their hard disk, but might save a few people from the anguish of doing it by mistake. 2) You have to provide the root password before using the erase-hard-disk option. This will slow down legitimate users only a tiny bit, but if you put up the right dialog it should pretty much insure that no one will zap their hard disk by mistake. Given those two changes, we'd greatly reduce the danger without really slowing down anyone who legimately wants to zap their hard disk. Note that these are changes to the nice NextStep interface only, it isn't a change to the wild and woolly let-the-typer-beware world of Unix. - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA