Alpha is seriously broken

[Doug Rabson]

On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 16:15, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:41:13PM +0100, Doug Rabson wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 14:58, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:24:52PM +0200, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav wrote:
> > > > Ruslan Ermilov <ru at freebsd.org> writes:
> > > > > I think there's no emergency plan other than to reinstall "base"
> > > > > on these systems from some older snapshot?
> > > > 
> > > > cross-compile on a different machine in the cluster, copy over the new
> > > > make(1), then use it to installworld over NFS.
> > > > 
> > > Only if this machine is also Alpha.  To tell you the truth, some bits
> > > produced by cross-compiles on different architectures are not ready
> > > for use on a native architecture.  This includes binary files such as
> > > fortune(6) .dat files, NLS catalogs, etc.  I haven't identified them
> > > all yet.
> > > 
> > > Once I get my "modern" Alpha box, I will start working on a project
> > > that will eventually address this, so cross- builds and releases
> > > will produce the same binary files as on native platforms.  NetBSD
> > > achieved a great success in this direction, so it shouldn't be too
> > > hard to fix.
> > 
> > It might be quicker to extract various critical static binaries (init,
> > make, cc, ld etc.) from an unbroken bindist. Oh and hope that beast
> > doesn't crash before you replace init :-)
> > 
> Hmm, but init(8) is also a statically linked binary.  Heh, and I know
> why beast is still alive -- it's due to the way the /root script that
> automatically updates the world and kernel on beast works.  The script
> does, in this risky sequence: buildworld, installworld, and the "old
> way" kernel build/install, then reboots in five minutes.  At this time,
> after it made installworld and attempted to build a kernel, it failed
> to do so (the /boot/kernel/kernel is still old).  Installworld was
> fine because it saves tools that it uses (including "sh" and "make"
> into WORLDTMP).
> 
> So Ken, if you want to attempt to revive this machine, don't reboot
> it yet, it won't boot up with the new init(8).  Of course, we have
> /sbin/init.bak saved, but...  ;)

Another idea - if the obj tree is still around on beast, you might be
able to re-run 'make everything' if you can find a working make binary.