THE PROBLEM:

Item    2176279                 93/10/12        11:40
From:   LOIS@DOUBLON.UNICE.FR@INTERNET# Internet Gateway II
Sub: fstab deleted: what now?!?!

I have a NeXT station that is being re-configured to
attach to a new network.  In the process of deleting the old
configuration to start over, someone has deleted the file
"/usr/etc/fstab" and of course when it was rebooted, it
couldn't mount the file system properly.  Now the problem has
been given to me (a bit late!!) and I'm stumped: It fakes the
root mount, and I end up, as single-user, with a read-only
file system.  Thus, I cannot add the missing fstab, and I
cannot unmount the "fake", read_only system and mount it
properly by hand, because THAT requires updating mtab, which
isn't allowed for a read_only system. (Catch-22!)

My question: is there ANY way to remedy this
situation WITHOUT booting from another source? Or is my only
hope to find a diskette or optical diak and reader that has
the system and boot from there, mount the system by hand, and
add fstab, etc, etc.  This is important because we need this
computer NOW and I can't get hold of another boot source for
at least a week...
Thanks in advance for your help...

---
Lois Hoffer

E-mail:lois@ecu.unice.fr

____________________________________________________________
Institut Nonlineaire de Nice

Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis
1361 Route des Lucioles
F-06560  Valbonne, France

Phone: +33.92.96.73.03      Fax: +33.93.65.25.17



THE SOLUTION:

Item    8127995                 93/10/12        14:37
From:   M.CRAWFORD@DCS.SHEFFIELD.AC.UK@INTERNET#
Sub: Re: fstab deleted: what now?!?

OK, OK already!!  :-)
So I tried too hard!

Lois Hoffer had the following problem ("opportunity"?!):
> I have a NeXT station that is being re-configured to attach to a new
> network. In the process of deleting the old configuration to start
> over, someone has deleted the file "/usr/etc/fstab" and of course
> when it was rebooted, it couldn't mount the file system properly.
>

The easiest way to remedy this appears to be:

(1) boot single user
bsd -sb

(2) issue
mount -o rw,remount /dev/sd0a /
    to get r/w access.

(3) recreate /etc/fstab
    e.g. include
/dev/sd0a / 4.3 rw,noquota,noauto 0 1


(4) come back up multi-user

[cf: /etc/rc.boot, and mount(8)]

Many thanks to:
Fred Korz, Alan M. Marcum, Benjamin Cline, Nick Christopher,

Robert D. Nielsen, and any others in advance!

Have fun,

mmalcolm.