From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 17 08:44:58 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78F4716A4CE for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 08:44:58 +0000 (GMT) Received: from szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (s142-179-111-232.bc.hsia.telus.net [142.179.111.232]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A3A343D41 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 08:44:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sandy@krvarr.bc.ca) Received: from szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (8.13.1/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j1H8iu6k050887; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:44:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sandy@szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca) Received: (from sandy@localhost) by szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (8.13.1/8.12.11/Submit) id j1H8iunR050884; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:44:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sandy) From: Sandy Rutherford MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16916.22919.40934.655595@szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:44:55 -0800 To: Jamie Novak In-Reply-To: <20050217020202.GB34810@mail.oss.uswest.net> References: <03fb01c51457$3f246ff0$0b01a8c0@enigmedia.net> <1108595484.708.8.camel@chaucer.jeays.ca> <4213F7A1.3030304@cis.strath.ac.uk> <20050217020202.GB34810@mail.oss.uswest.net> X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under Emacs 21.3.1 X-krvarr.bc.ca-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@krvarr.bc.ca for more information. X-krvarr.bc.ca-MailScanner: Not scanned: please contact postmaster@krvarr.bc.ca for details. X-krvarr.bc.ca-MailScanner-From: sandy@szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: can't reboot after messing up my rc.conf file X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 08:44:58 -0000 >>>>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:02:02 -0600, >>>>> Jamie Novak said: > I may have missed something from the thread before I joined the list, > but is there any reason you can't just mount the filesystems and use vi > as you're used to? If you're getting far enough in the boot process to > get an opportunity to interact with a shell, you should just be able to > mount -a and vi whatever. (Or, if you want to play it safe (or if the > system wasn't cleanly shutdown before), fsck and then mount -a) This should work fine. Although, depending on where he is in the boot process, / may be mounted read-only. Do `mount -uw /' to make it read-write. The lesson here is that when editing any file that is even remotely connected to the boot process, _make_a_backup_copy_. You can then simply mv the backup copy back into place should you mess up. Sandy