Unable to boot mountroot: unable to remount devfs under /dev (error 2)

[rkba1]

I restored a backup to a fresh system using rsync but unable to boot and getting the following as the last thing on the screen then it hangs:

.
.
.
mountroot: unable to remount devfs under /dev (error 2)
mountroot: unable to unlink /dev/dev (error 2)

It's three zpools for /, /home and /var. It does the same thing if I boot to single user mode or option 3. boot prompt then run boot -s. I can boot the livecd and mount root pool to /mnt and see the files.
I have no idea what to look for, any ideas?

 

[cy@]

Using rsync to restore (or create) a system is unorthodox. I'm surprised it even got that far.

Are we talking about a ZFS rootfs or UFS?

 

[atax1a]

Error 2 is "no such file", which sounds like /dev is missing; we'd mount the root pool from the livecd and then mkdir -p /mnt/dev and see if that fixes it

 

[VladiBG]

for ZFS use zfs-send(8) / zfs-receive(8)
for UFS use dump(8) / restore(8)

 

[rkba1]

Using rsync to restore (or create) a system is unorthodox. I'm surprised it even got that far.

Are we talking about a ZFS rootfs or UFS?

So what do you suggest for backup and restore? its zfs.

 

[rkba1]

for ZFS use zfs-send(8) / zfs-receive(8)
for UFS use dump(8) / restore(8)

Thanks, I'll have to figure out how to use those. the manuals are never helpful

 

[cy@]

So what do you suggest for backup and restore? its zfs.

zfs send.

As you're using zfs use boot environments to logically back up your boot datasets and snapshots for the datasets containing your data. This covers your need for a logical backup in case you make a mistake.

Then use zfs send to create a backup to another media in case you need to recover the entire disk. An alternative to this might be to zfs attach another device to let it mirror to the other device. Then do zfs split to detach the new mirror on the new device and store it away somewhere.

I use the zfs split approach when moving devices and the zfs send approach for my device backups. I use one of the zfs snapshot management ports to automatically snapshot my ZFS datasets daily. I can zfs rollback any one of them or rsync or selected files from .zfs/snapshot -- not an entire system, as that will result in your experience.