OK, I before I start let me just say that I was, and am, VERY tired.

I was just finishing up a setup of Debian putting the finishing touch on things. I had everything set up nicely and was just tweaking a bit. I had a .bashrc and a .bash_profile saved on a CD along with a other configuration files and was copying it to my home directory. When I try to log out for the changes to take effect I notice that I was root. Which is uncool since I used the "cp .bashrc .bash_profile ~" command. Copying the files to the "/root" directory. Upon realizing this I quickly try to become root again to fix this mistake... segmantation fault, thank you very much. (After typing my password.) I then log out and type "root" at the login prompt along with my password (I don't know why I thought that could possibly make a difference) but nothing happens and the login prompts appears once I press enter after typing my password. Getting pretty desperate I manually restart my computer hoping against hope that would make a difference. It didn't. I then had a brilliant idea, or so I thought at the moment. I rebooted manually again and gave the kernel boot option "init /bin/sh" thinking I'd gain root privileges and be able to modify these files. The filesystem, however, decided to be read-only, not allowing my to even use a text editor.

And, now, here I am. Desperately looking for help. If anyone could please help me, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks.

One more thing, though. I did try and view /root/.bashrc and /root/.bash_profile. The .bashrc file showed up like it was supposed to, like it hadn't been copied over, and the .bash_profile file simply wasn't there. I'm 100% sure I did "cp .bashrc .bash_profile ~". I can't view root's .bash_history file, though, due to permissions and the .bash_profile and .bashrc files in my home directory are still the default ones. That's why I'm assuming this is the problem. It could be something else, though, couldn't it? What then?

ANY help at all will be greatly appreciated.

Don't you have a root/boot disk?

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

Actually. No, I don't.

My only way out is a reinstall, isn't it?
I hadn't really finished setting this up so it shouldn't be too bad to set it up again, just frustrating.