Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:20:29 -0500 From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com> To: Glenn Gillis <glenn@elaw.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Tried to symlink /etc to another disk, now stuck Message-ID: <20080613012029.GA16341@dan.emsphone.com> In-Reply-To: <84a992f30806121702r39f132a8y11f8e410221e132c@mail.gmail.com> References: <84a992f30806121702r39f132a8y11f8e410221e132c@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In the last episode (Jun 12), Glenn Gillis said: > I think I did just about the worst thing I could do to my > organization's FreeBSD-4.11 email server today: > > I was trying to free up space on the root disk and attempted to copy > the /etc directory to another disk, /new/etc, then delete and symlink > the old location to the new: > > $ sudo cp -Rp /etc /new/etc > $ sudo rm -rd /etc/; sudo ln -s /new/etc /etc > > Of course, with the sudoers file in the original /etc directory, the > first "sudo" command to remove the /etc directory disabled the second > "sudo" command's ability to run. > > Now, I cannot log in as a privileged user to copy or move /new/etc > back to /etc. (Because the password files were also in /etc.) I've > tried booting into Single User mode with "boot -s" at the boot > prompt, only to receive a "mountroot>" prompt wanting to know where > to find the root filesystem. I've also tried booting from my > installation distribution, but can't get out of the installation > without the machine rebooting. > > To make a long story shorter, is there any hope for getting a > privileged user account on this machine to move /etc back to where it > should be? It may be easiest to boot a live CD (FreeSBIE, or a FreeBSD-7 install disc 1 should work), mount both of your hard drives from it, and put /etc back where it belongs that way. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20080613012029.GA16341>