# Dumb Terminal



## Keith (Jul 4, 2010)

I left a little tiny " off of the ="YES   in the rc.conf -- FreeBSD 8 now boots to a Dumb Terminal.  As I know, commands to edit or iv do not work without a shell.  How can I get a shell started or at least edit the rc.conf to add the final "  ?


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## fwaggle (Jul 4, 2010)

It should ask you the path to your shell, and then I think you should be able to mount -a to get to the point where you can edit your rc.conf.


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## teckk (Jul 4, 2010)

Can you boot in single user mode at startup? Or drop to shell?

If all else fails boot with a live cd and fix it.

The file is at
/etc/rc.conf

I don't see rc.conf keeping you from booting. You sure you did not change something else?


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## wblock@ (Jul 4, 2010)

Keith said:
			
		

> I left a little tiny " off of the ="YES   in the rc.conf -- FreeBSD 8 now boots to a Dumb Terminal.  As I know, commands to edit or iv do not work without a shell.  How can I get a shell started or at least edit the rc.conf to add the final "  ?



http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.html#RCCONF-READONLY


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## Keith (Jul 11, 2010)

I tried different ways... in the end, I used a different HD that also contained freebsd and then mounted my original hd, then edited the file needing the repair.  It worked nicely.


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## phoenix (Jul 11, 2010)

Choose option 4 (Boot to single-user mode) from the boot menu.

That will mount the / filesystem read-only, and drop you to a shell.  From there, you can remount the filesystem as read-write (*mount -u /*), and finally edit the file.

Then, to continue the boot into multi-user mode, just type "exit" or hit CTRL+D at the shell prompt.


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## Keith (Jul 11, 2010)

Thank you for your response.  I'm using an IOMEGA server with USB ports and the keyboard won't initialize until after the boot menu.  So, I can't choose to launch in single-user mode, nor any other mode.  I'm thinking that I would have to build a custom kernal to be able to make it start up in a mode other that default.  That was why I option to plug in another drive and boot from it, then mount the faulty drive on a usb port.


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## phoenix (Jul 11, 2010)

Go through the BIOS to see if there are any options for "Legacy Keyboard Support" or "USB Keyboard" or similar.  This will enable PS/2 emulation for a USB keyboard.


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