xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man8/rescue.8 (revision 6cb10275d08f045e872662c371fe2f2724f2f6e6)
1.\"	$NetBSD: rescue.8,v 1.9 2014/03/18 18:20:40 riastradh Exp $
2.\"
3.\" Copyright (c) 2003 Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org>
4.\" Copyright (c) 2003 Simon L. Nielsen <simon@FreeBSD.org>
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28.\"  FreeBSD: src/share/man/man8/rescue.8,v 1.3 2005/11/10 15:42:51 kientzle Exp
29.\"
30.Dd April 5, 2012
31.Dt RESCUE 8
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm rescue
35.Nd rescue utilities in
36.Pa /rescue
37.Sh DESCRIPTION
38The
39.Pa /rescue
40directory contains a collection of common utilities intended for use
41in recovering a badly damaged system.
42With the transition to a dynamically-linked root beginning with
43.Nx 2.0 ,
44there is a real possibility that the standard tools in
45.Pa /bin
46and
47.Pa /sbin
48may become non-functional due to a failed upgrade or a disk error.
49The tools in
50.Pa /rescue
51are statically linked and should therefore be more resistant to
52damage.
53However, being statically linked, the tools in
54.Pa /rescue
55are also less functional than the standard utilities.
56In particular, they do not have full use of the locale,
57.Xr pam 3 ,
58and nsswitch libraries.
59.Pp
60If your system fails to boot, and it shows an error message similar to:
61.Pp
62.Dl "init: not found"
63.Pp
64try booting the system with the boot flag
65.Dq Fl a
66and supplying
67.Pa /rescue/init ,
68which is the
69.Nm
70.Xr init 8 ,
71as the init path.
72.Pp
73If your system fails to boot, and it shows a prompt similar to:
74.Pp
75.Dl "Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh: "
76.Pp
77the first thing to try running is the standard shell,
78.Pa /bin/sh .
79If that fails, try running
80.Pa /rescue/sh ,
81which is the
82.Nm
83shell.
84To repair the system, the root partition must first be remounted
85read-write.
86This can be done with the following
87.Xr mount 8
88command:
89.Pp
90.Dl "/rescue/mount -uw /"
91.Pp
92The next step is to double-check the contents of
93.Pa /bin ,
94.Pa /lib ,
95.Pa /libexec ,
96and
97.Pa /sbin ,
98possibly mounting a
99.Nx
100installation CD-ROM
101and copying files from there.
102Once it is possible to successfully run
103.Pa /bin/sh , /bin/ls ,
104and other standard utilities, try rebooting back into the standard
105system.
106.Pp
107The
108.Pa /rescue
109tools are compiled using
110.Xr crunchgen 1 ,
111which makes them considerably more compact than the standard
112utilities.
113.Sh FILES
114.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /rescue" -compact
115.It Pa /rescue
116Root of the
117.Nm
118hierarchy.
119.El
120.Sh SEE ALSO
121.Xr crunchgen 1
122.Sh HISTORY
123The
124.Nm
125utilities first appeared in
126.Nx 2.0 .
127.Sh AUTHORS
128.An -nosplit
129The
130.Nm
131system was written by
132.An Luke Mewburn Aq Mt lukem@NetBSD.org .
133This manual page was written by
134.An Simon L. Nielsen Aq Mt simon@FreeBSD.org ,
135based on text by
136.An Tim Kientzle Aq Mt kientzle@FreeBSD.org .
137