From owner-freebsd-questions Tue May 28 18:45:17 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from csun.edu (cvpa.csun.edu [130.166.1.51]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 87EC537B409 for ; Tue, 28 May 2002 18:45:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from balrog.moria.csun.edu (balrog.moria.csun.edu [130.166.244.2]) by csun.edu (8.9.3 (MessagingDirect 1.0.4)/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA1714096 for ; Tue, 28 May 2002 18:45:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 9485 invoked by uid 1003); 29 May 2002 01:45:05 -0000 Received: from 130.166.244.5 ( [130.166.244.5]) as user ulairi@ulairi.moria.csun.edu by balrog.moria.csun.edu with HTTP; Tue, 28 May 2002 18:45:05 -0700 Message-ID: <1022636705.3cf432a196c42@balrog.moria.csun.edu> Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 18:45:05 -0700 From: ulairi To: David Loszewski Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: problem with startup, need help ASAP References: <3CF43D87.8050401@attbi.com> In-Reply-To: <3CF43D87.8050401@attbi.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 3.0 X-Originating-IP: 130.166.244.5 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Quoting David Loszewski : > if I hit return that brings me into single-user mode I think but none of > the drives are mounted so I don't have any commands like the vi command > or ee command to edit the fstab file. What is the file supposed to look > like in the fstab and how would I edit it if I can't edit it? > > Dave fsck should be available. Also, try "mount -a" - this will attempt to mount what it can based on /etc/fstab. This may bring in enough of a toolset (/usr/bin, et cetera) for you do more. If not, dump out /etc/fstab and start running fsck against those partitions. If the system is so horribly messed up that you do not even have "mount" or "ls", you have, realistically, only 3 options. 1) Try to salvage the system by getting to some utilites. If "ls" is not avilable, most shells will let you do stuff like "for i in *; do echo $i; done" - poor man's ls 2) Whip out the install CD set, boot from the install CD, get into the emergency shell, start fixing things that way 3) FSCK gives up, you have a full-blown-bar-none hardware failure... replace hardware, restore from backups (you *do* have backups, right?) -- "To achieve victory when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. Nor is it the true acme of excellence when you win and the whole empire says, "Well done!". True excellence is to plan secretly, to move surreptitiously, to foil the enemy's plans and to balk his schemes, so that at the end, the day is won without shedding a drop of blood. Sun Tzu, The Art of War. [6th Century. B.C.E.]" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message