Boot your machine in single user mode (boot -s) and
use plain vi and pwd_mkdb soon after that.

There's no need to use vipw when running in boot -s.

On Nov 19, 2007 5:18 PM, Jumping Mouse <kafriki@hotmail.com> 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.
>
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