From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 24 8:22:54 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from d9168.upc-d.chello.nl (d9168.upc-d.chello.nl [213.46.9.168]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC02F37B400 for ; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 08:22:32 -0800 (PST) Received: by d9168.upc-d.chello.nl (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 08F903C0; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 17:22:31 +0100 (CET) Delivered-To: edwin@d9168.upc-d.chello.nl Received: by d9168.upc-d.chello.nl (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 82F163CB; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 17:16:04 +0100 (CET) Received: from mail.brabant.chello.nl by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.3.8) for edwin@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 24 Jan 2001 17:16:04 +0100 (CET) Received: from alcor.wuc.on.ca ([209.216.144.65]) by amsmta04-svc.chello.nl (InterMail vK.4.02.00.10 201-232-116-110 license 85b07e7cd9378159aa6ecc9a5634d971) with SMTP id <20010124161549.VHMI4619.amsmta04-svc@alcor.wuc.on.ca> for ; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 17:15:49 +0100 Received: by alcor.wuc.on.ca(Lotus SMTP MTA v4.6.2 (693.3 8-11-1998)) id 852569DE.00591E36 ; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 11:13:24 -0500 X-Lotus-FromDomain: WUC From: rmichalski@enwin.com To: Edwin Groothuis Message-ID: <852569DE.00591D70.00@alcor.wuc.on.ca> Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 11:13:21 -0500 Subject: Re: Unable to root due to invalid shell Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Thanks for answering so quickly. I tried what you said and the file system is being mounted, but when I try to use ed to edit the /etc/passwd file I get a 'read-only file system' error for '/tmp/ed.a989d' <-- something similar to that. It looks like its just trying to create a temporary file but it's not allowed to. I can't use vi, it says it can't find it. Have you run into something like this before? Edwin Groothuis on 01/24/2001 10:57:45 AM To: Remi Michalski/cert cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unable to root due to invalid shell On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 10:49:38AM -0500, rmichalski@enwin.com wrote: > I can't login as root due to an invalid shell setting in the user database. > The shell selected is kcsh which does not exist in my bin directory. > Because of this I cannot login as root. Any attempt to copy or rename csh > to kcsh fails because I do not have permission. Any help would be > appreciated. Boot in single-usermode (at the ten seconds delay during startup), then you can edit the file /etc/passwd. Maybe you need to mount the filesystems manually, maybe you need to use ed instead of vi. I always found it an interesting experience when I had to fix my system :-) Edwin, been there, done that, got the tshirt -- Edwin Groothuis | Interested in MUDs? Visit Fatal Dimensions: mavetju@chello.nl | http://fataldimensions.nl.eu.org/ ------------------+ telnet://fataldimensions.nl.eu.org:4000 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message