So, I disabled my laptop yesterday by deleting (intentionally) the old static /dev directory–I mean, I’m using udev, which builds the thing dynamically (and really, it does a very fine job), and a comment in the /etc/init.d/udev script suggested that it could be removed.
So I did.
There was no immediate havoc, but I couldn’t reboot–the moment the kernel went to hand over control to /sbin/init, init would complain that it couldn’t open an initial console.
Long story short, I had to boot from a borrowed USB floppy drive (using only 1 floppy, because switching disks to load a root partition, as most rescue disks seem to do, just didn’t work with the USB unit), and add /dev/null and /dev/console nodes; and that was it.
Why didn’t I boot from a CD-ROM? Err, I forgot to bring it with me. I figure that if that’s the only significant thing I forget, I’m doing well.
And the torrential rainstorm outside is suggesting that the CD-ROM wasn’t the only thing of consequence I forgot–I have no umbrella.
Oops.
