On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 08:18:47PM +0100, Jumping Mouse wrote:
quoted text
> Hi there,  I have inherited an openBSD machine with no root account.  When I
> boot up in single user mode   boot -s and do a   cat /etc/master.passwd | root
> the only thing I get is:  daemon:*:1:1::0:0:The devil
> himself:/root:/sbin/nologin I can't seem to make changes to the master.passwd
> account by using vipw  in single usermode.   I get a message that the file is
> locked or busy.  Can anyone help in what I can do next?  How can I add the
> root account back to the master.passwd file.  thanks.
> 

you are getting this message because / is mounted read-only in single user mode.
to use vipw you will have to manually mount / read/write and mount /usr if it is
on its own partition.

Gilles

-- 
Gilles Chehade
http://www.evilkittens.org/
http://www.evilkittens.org/blog/gilles/