[jwhat]

Hi jmjsgi,

to unmount you use the directory that mount is on not the device.

So if mount is on /tmp/BOOT then:

umount /tmp/BOOT

Sounds like you have found the problem, but it is very strange.

I see you have put the mount in /etc/fstab , given that this is just temporary mount for diag/fix, I would not bother with that ;-)

Do a check on your disk for "wayward" symbolic links on in your top directory "/" by doing an "ls -la" and looking to see if there are any "strange" links.

This is sometimes the case when you "inherit" a machine and the prior owner has moved thiings about and put symbolic links to make sure it will works.

On my Fuel it had lots of links in the various application install directories to make it stuff everything into a single place.

This took quite a bit of work to unwind.

Does the machine that the boot disk come from have mutliple disks installed ?

It might be that one of these is used for /var mount point.

On the boot disk, check the fstab to see what is being mounted:

cat /tmp/BOOT/etc/fstab

I see the read only mount failed as disk was not clean, this typically happens then you just power off machine (ie pull the plug), without going through proper shutdown (either via button or shutdown command).

IRIX does auto fschk / xfs_repair (file sytem check) on boot, but it obviously must have write access to fix things.

Out of curiosity does read only mount work now it has been cleaned up ?
I should but empirical evidence provides the definitive answer ;-)

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John