From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Mar 2 15:17:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA08998 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 15:17:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from agora.rdrop.com (root@agora.rdrop.com [199.2.210.241]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA08991 for ; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 15:16:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de by agora.rdrop.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #17) id m0w1KUK-000907C; Sun, 2 Mar 97 15:16 PST Received: (from helbig@localhost) by helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA00163; Mon, 3 Mar 1997 00:09:57 +0100 (MET) From: Wolfgang Helbig Message-Id: <199703022309.AAA00163@helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de> Subject: Re: /etc/fstab file screwup. In-Reply-To: from Vincent Poy at "Mar 2, 97 02:21:51 pm" To: vince@mail.MCESTATE.COM (Vincent Poy) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 00:09:57 +0100 (MET) Cc: questions@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL30 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi, > I accidentally while doing a backup forgot to replace the > /etc/fstab file with the original one so now the system won't boot up, is > there a way I can rebuild /etc/fstab without reinstalling from scratch? Yes. You should boot in single user mode by entering -s to the boot prompt. In single user mode the root file system will be mounted read only. The /etc/fstab lives in the root file system so you have to mount it for r/w access. You do it by # mount -o rw -u / Then you can edit /etc/fstab with the ed editor. If you feel uncomfortable with ed you can mount the /usr file system and use vi. wishing you success Wolfgang Helbig