Rampaging Software Installation

[Andrew Hume]

	The other day I was roused from my terminal stupor
by our installation manager who had been supervising 2
field engineers installing some ``maintenance software'' updates.
apparently, there was some trouble booting, and could I come and help?

	the problem was pretty clear; nothing could mount as the
devices in /etc/fstab didn't even exist!! I said ``where did they
go? no one could be such a d*ckhead as to remove a customer's devices
for so piddly a thing as a maintenance update?'' (Of course, I was
asking for trouble using non-standard partitions for my filesystems.)
And of course, my awk script for generating these didn't work because
the godforsaken awk that comes standard is 6 years old and doesn't
even have sub() in it. but hey, what are computers for, anyway?
the event fizzled out as I did a few mknod's by hand, mounted enough
stuff to do some work and then generated my devices and we were
then able to boot. (we pass over the fact that the installation
procedure had put us back to 96 processes (for a 380??) which i only
found out today.)

	my question is: why is this clearing out and regenerating
of /dev/dsk /dev/rdsk (and whatever else) done? it can't be for space;
my /dev/dsk has the standard partitions for 160(!!) ipi drives
(10 controllers at 16 drives each). are you telling me my 8 extra
devices were too much? if sgi (and it may be sys v or mips' fault)
REALLY wants to do this, is there some way we can prevent it
or provide a hook so we can ensure the devices we want are remade?