Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 23:03:38 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@mail.iowna.com> To: Bill Desjardins <bill@carracing.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: single user mode Message-ID: <3A690E1A.58F81248@mail.iowna.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0101191940460.19534-100000@mail.carracing.com>
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Bill Desjardins wrote: > > Hello, > > I checked the man pages and archives but could not find the answer I was > looking for. I have jsut recently picked up some work admin'ing some > remote freebsd boxes which are running 4.0-release. I want to bring these > up to -STABLE, but they are located 3000 miles away, so re-booting into > single user mode is hardly an option since the people I am working with > know nothing about bsd. The question I have is how can I take these > machines from multiuser to single user mode via a shutdown without > dropping the network? is there a way to drop to single user mode from > multi without re-booting? I assume from there I can safely installworld > and finish up with a kernel build and reboot from there. If thats not > possible, what need I be concerned about doing an installworld in > multi-user? I've done installworld without dropping to single-user mode with no problems. It's definately not recommended. It's along the same lines as turning off the power without halting the system first: most times it doesn't hurt much, but you never know when you might do it and the machine won't start again. To minimize that risk, I would stop all processes that aren't absolutely needed. Obviously you can't stop sshd or the network services, but kill inetd and any network daemons that might be spawned, kill syslogd, lpd ... ANYTHING that you can live without for the short period that the installworld will take. The less is running, the less the chance that something will cause a problem. Then run the installworld. The tricky part is the reboot. Because if the system doesn't come back up, there's nothing you can do to fix it! Perhaps you should find someone near the machine and pay for an hour of their time to handle the installworld and reboot for you. Would definately be worth the money. Maybe just find a BSD-wise consultant in that area so that if something goes wrong you know who to call and ask for help. -Bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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