# Make latest FreeBSD memstick installer shell filesystem mount as RW



## watcher00090 (Jan 23, 2022)

Hi,

I can access the shell inside the latest FreeBSD memstick image, but the filesystem there is ready-only. Is there any way to get the filesystem in this shell to mount as read-write? 

Thank you,
James Pedersen


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## T-Daemon (Jan 23, 2022)

Boot the installer memstick image into single user mode, execute `mount -uw /`, edit /etc/fstab , change mount option for root ( / ) from `ro` to `rw`.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jan 23, 2022)

ATTN: *If all my posts need to be read before they're posting then you might as well have answered this.*


Use Single User Mode:


```
fsck -y
mount -u /
mount -a -t ufs
swapon -a
```


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 24, 2022)

Genius, thanks T-Daemon. I would _never_ have guessed that it's a different file system.

For a file that I touched in live mode whilst booted from the installation device, after booting a different system then mounting the volume:


```
% mount | grep ufs
/dev/da1s2a on /media/Verbatim_STORE_N_GO_07B7050762213D03_s2_s2a (ufs, local)
% file /media/Verbatim_STORE_N_GO_07B7050762213D03_s2_s2a/root/touched.txt
/media/Verbatim_STORE_N_GO_07B7050762213D03_s2_s2a/root/touched.txt: empty
%
```

Installation device written from:

FreeBSD-14.0-CURRENT-amd64-20220120-7406ec4ea99-252544-memstick.img

*Postscript*: I mean, different from the `cd9660` file system type, which I previously associated with installers for FreeBSD.


I'll arrange corrections to <https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/faq/#floppy-download> (broken link, mini-memstick missing) and an update to <https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/bsdinstall/#bsdinstall-installation-media>. Maybe also draft what's required for 257347 – Outdated directions to use standard optical media (CDs, DVDs) for installation of FreeBSD.


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## watcher00090 (Jan 24, 2022)

T-Daemon, your solution pretty much solved the problem (the only think I think I did differently was run “mount -rw /“) , thank you! 

James Pedersen


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