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Repairing important files in 10 steps

Forgot your root password? Made a silly mistake in the file system table? It will happen, rather sooner than later. Here is what you can do in such situations. In the example below, we have a problem with /etc/system which is on the /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 device.

1. Find Solaris installation media, e.g. the CD's.

2. Boot from Software CD 1 of 2 in single user mode:

   OK boot cdrom -s
   

3. Do a file system check on the troubled device before mounting it:

   # fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0
   

4. Mount the device onto a temporary directory on the CD:

   # mount -F ufs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a
   

5. Set your terminal variable so editing files won't have to be done on a single line:

   # TERM=sun
   

   TERM can be any one of your favorite terminal emulations, e.g. TERM=vt100 will also work.

6. Don't forget to export TERM, this is plain sh, not bash or some other more advanced shell:

   # export TERM
   

7. Edit the erroneous file:

   # vi /a/etc/system
   

   Take out the errors, write and quit.

   Note that you cannot edit /etc/vfstab, because this is the virtual file system table from the CD-ROM, which is read-only as you know. We need to repair the vfstab from our boot disk, which we just mounted on a temporary directory on the CD.

8. Change back to a directory on the CD-ROM, e.g. with the cd command with no options.

9. Unmount your boot disk from the CD:

   # umount /a
   

10. Reboot the system. Use the init 6 command, not the reboot command!