SCO Xenix stand alone/single user mode???

[TCC Software Developer]

In article <1990 at cadovax.UUCP> mitchell at cadovax.UUCP (Mitchell Lerner) writes:
>
>Lets say my passwd or inittab file or something gets clobbered so that
>my system won't come up multiuser. 
>
>How do I bring up Xenix 2.2.1 in some sort of stand alone or single user
>mode
 
  Unless you have modified or are using a modified init with your Xenix
runtime you should be asked to enter a password for system maintenance
mode or to hit Control D for multi-user mode. If you enter the root or
sysadm password at that point you will be in single-user mode and will be
able to do all the things you asked about. If you are using a modified
init (one that uses a REAL SysV inittab) what you would do is have a
Run Level 1 in which the /etc/rc file is not executed, thus cron and
other multiuser processes will not be started, enter that run level to
do the things you describe.
  As to what to do about a clobbered passwd file (inittab would hardly
matter with SCO's present implementation), the best approach would be
to have a bootable floopy, in fact this is an indispensible tool, if you
don't have at least one around MAKE ONE NOW! This is done using the
command 'mkdev fd', see the manual for details. I found that I needed to
add and delete certain things to make it really useful. Then you need
to boot from it and run divvy on the primary hard drive, you will see
the root file system in terms of its blocks but it will have no name
(this is because you are now in the 'root' of the floppy), give it
some name like hdroot or foo and exit divvy. You can now mount that
file system onto the floppy (mount /dev/foo /mnt) and make any necessary 
repairs or alterations. Be forwarned however that the big weakness with
bootable floppies is that they have a very small swap space and will
panic easily if you run large processes like vi, even ls'ing a directory
has caused this. It is an emergency tool, keep things on it like a
reduced passwd file so you could cp it onto the hard drive if necessary.

>which works better for getting specific stuff off (e.g. /u/osas/data/* or
>/usr/bin/???), cpio or tar)? 
 
I find tar more convenient for access to specific items from a backup, its
one weakness is that wildcards do not work on extraction. This is easy 
enough to get around however. I would always suggest backups with multiple
formats in any case.

					Hope this helps,



-- 
Jack F. Vogel
Turnkey Computer Consultants, Costa Mesa, CA
UUCP: ...!uunet!turnkey!jack 
Internet: jack at turnkey.TCC.COM