I recently installed OpenBSD 3.6 on a box, configured it so the default console was com0 since I've got a nullmodem cable and hyperterminal, rebooted, all was well, except editing in pico or vi had strange responses to backspace and inserting, so I figured I'd edit /etc/ttys to change the console at com0 to vt100 instead of the vt220 that it was at... I rebooted and realized I must have made an error... no biggie, I thought, I'll just reboot from the CD and mount the /dev/wd0a volume that has my etc and edit the file... Well that works but there's no editor except ed!?!?! I can't get ed to do anything for me, so I try mounting my partition that has /usr on the harddrive to get access to vi, but that aborts with errors I guess because the ramdisk is so damned small... So here I am with a system that I can't access because I can't edit a simple file... Does the boot CD really have to be a 3.4mb iso? can't it be a little larger to accomodate a simple text editor like vi???

- any advice on editing a file on my harddrive when I can't boot from the harddrive? Can OpenBSD really be this arcane? Linux doesn't complain about this stuff! BTW, I tried booting from a slack disk thinking I could mount my volumes through slack, but fdisk doesn't recognize the BSD FFS partitions...


HELP!!!

What's stopping you from using a BSD based live CD?

http://www.freesbie.org/

I am downloading it as we speak, thank you for the info on that... The question still remains: why is the functionality not built into the OpenBSD ISO to boot into an environment that has at least the basic editing options... Seems strange that I've got to pull down a 550mb iso in order to edit a 1k text file... any more ideas beyond this? Thank you though, this is an interesting lead.

I'm guessing because the CD is just what is needed for doing the install.. a rescue CD might be out there, but it's not the install CD.

You could always put vi, on a floppy and load it from the CD.

Again, good suggestion, but I think there is an issue with that. The boot CD generates a real tight ram disk, and it seems there's very little room for any executable in that space. I was seeing the ram disk having 120kb space left after a CD boot, and for some reason it seems like vi can't work in that space. Maybe I'm missing something, but after mounting all my HD volumes which contain the binaries for a number of different editors like vi and pico, they all seem to have failed when trying to execute. I think you're right that the OpenBSD CD iso is meant for one very specific task, seems like that could have been expanded to be more functional, but oh well...

Also, the floppy on the machine I'm doing this on is dead, so there's not much room for a vi floppy. That's what I get for getting a machine for 5 bux at the Princeton University Surplus Center.

I got that FreeSBIE thing going (quite neat BTW, the GUI is real slick, and a ton of applications, like the Knoppix of BSDs!), but I am afraid I don't know how to get my HD partitions mounted so I can edit them. I see the disk offers up a nice VIM app as well as other editors, but when I try to mount or even touch a file it let's me know that everything is read-only... Is there a portion of the filesystem where I can make a directory and mount a partition to it? And what is the drive assignments for hard drives? dmesg shows me /dev/ad0 for what looks like my harddrive, but I'm not sure. What would be the equivalent to OpenBSD's /dev/wd0a ?

Thanks so far for the help, I'm not answering the question I have, but I'm learning a lot of auxiliary info along the way...

I never had any problem editing stuff with VI after booting from the CD and choosing [s]hell. You need to mount the additional paritions at a specific directory, I think it was /mnt2. I distinctly remember doing exactly what you're trying to do (i.e. boot from CD and mount /usr so I get VI) before on a few occasions, I just can't remember where it has to be mounted at. You might need to supply the full path to it (/mnt2/usr/bin/vi, etc).