Re: "make check" may have trashed my system

[Paul J. Menchini]

Paul,

>>>> I discovered that every non-directory file in
>>>> / was gone; in particular, the symbolic links /bin, /lib, and /sys (in
>>>> addition to /tmp and some local symbolic links) and the files /boot,
>>>> /kadb and /vmunix (as well as some backup versions of /vmunix) were
>>>> gone.  In addition, my bootblocks on / were trashed.
>> 
>> Ok, I've now run the tests from a non-priviledged account, using trace.
>> I've had a quick look through the log file, but can't find anything
>> suspicious.  Can you suggest anything I should look for?

> Only the usual: calls to 'unlink' to remove /sys and friends (or any
> mention of /sys, for that matter); mention of files under "/dev"; that
> sort of thing.

> Also, you might try running the tests from a non-privileged account,
> but with the HOME environment variable set to "/".

> If this doesn't work, I don't know what to suggest other than running
> it as root under "trace" on a system that you're willing to regenerate
> from scratch after it gets trashed.

One thing that I did notice after sending you the previous email was
that there were complaints about "nawk -v" being invalid.  Apparently,
SunOS 4.1.3 nawk doesn't implement the -v switch (but Solaris 2.5.1
does).

So, I installed gawk (3.1.0, if that matters) and soft-linked nawk to
it.  I then reran "make check" (from a non-priviledged account, of
course).  This time, all tests succeeded!

I still don't know why "make check" evaporated my system, but I'm now
convinced that I've built it correctly and will proceed with
installation.

You might want to put a note in the README for sunos about its native
nawk not being up to the task, checking for the presence of gawk, or
insisting on the presence of gawk for SunOS installations of
autoconf....

Anyway, thanks so much for your help!

Regards,

Paul