Editing /etc/vfstab when system will not boot.

[Sean7174]

Had a recent issue on a Sparc 5 with the vfstab file. The machine had 2 hd’s in it. The boot drive was target 1 (upper slot). The drive at target 3 (lower slot) was unused and needed to be removed because it was making loud noises. When I removed it, I moved the drive that was at target 1 to target 3(default with 1 drive). When I tried to boot, it failed because the vfstab was still pointing to target 1 slices. The only way I could find to recover was to put the drive back into the upper slot, reboot, modify the vfstab, and move it back.

I have had other issues like this before where the machine would not boot because someone messed up the vfstab file. In this case, the machine had a second drive that was bootable. Booted on it, mounted the other drive, repaired the vfstab and was back in business.

My questing is, how can you edit files from the “ok” prompt where the drive failed to mount?

Thanks

 

[KenCunningham]

As far as I know you should boot from CD, mount the drive and edit whatever you need to. I've never used Jumpstart, but presumably this could also be used?

 

[Sean7174]

These machines do not have cd-roms in them. But this technique is not too far off from what I have been doing. (Booting off of the other harddrive.)

 

[daFranze]

as Ken says: you need a what sun calls "diagnostic boot device"; this can be CD or net. If you don't have CDROM you have to setup Jumpstart/bootserver.

http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/retrieve.pl?type=0&doc=finfodoc/27794&display=plain

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years