[rescue] Dictionary overflow?

[Justin Haynes]

Can you post a couple of techniques?  I think it would be interesting to
have in the archive.  I'm not sure what you had in mind, but this reminds me
of a story that illustrated to me the difference between this kind of hard
ware and 'commodity' hardware of today.

At the University of Houston a certain expert in the engineering department
was called upon to solve a problem.  One of the main (or the main, I forget
which) mail server which was running SunOS had had some kind of catastrophic
problem and the mailsystem was down without a usable backup.  (I'm not
suggesting that UH didn't do backups -but for some reason restoration was
not an option)

The admin sat at the Boot PROM and rebuilt a bootable kernel from the
i-nodes.  I apologize for the lack of detail, but the point is that I was
impressed with the idea of a system that is recoverable under almost any
circumstances if you Know What You Are Doing.  And that there would be
enough utility to local out of band management to manipulate the system
without some sort of external tool.

Certainly the process might have been rigorous or painful, but it was
*possible*

-Justin

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Jerry Kemp <sun.mail.list47 at oryx.cc>wrote:

> I wasn't familiar with the dictionary overflow myself.
>
> I looked at the provided link (below) and I disagree with the ultimate
> problem resolution.
>
> If your /etc/path_to_inst file is truly destroyed/deleted/corrupted, it
> can be rebuilt.  I disagree that a full reinstall is necessary to get
> the system operational again.
>
> Jerry
>
>
> On 06/15/11 09:41, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
>
> >
> > Found by googling for: sun dictionary overflow
> >
> > <http://unix.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/
> > solaris-l/cannot-build-device-tree-solaris-9-723603>
> >
> > Several other approprate links mixed with definitions of dictionary and
> > overflow. :-)
> >
> > Geoff.
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