RESCUE(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						 RESCUE(8)

NAME

     rescue -- rescue utilities in /rescue

DESCRIPTION

     The /rescue directory contains a collection of common utilities intended for use in recovering a badly damaged system.  With the transition
     to a dynamically-linked root beginning with FreeBSD 5.2, there is a real possibility that the standard tools in /bin and /sbin may become
     non-functional due to a failed upgrade or a disk error.  The tools in /rescue are statically linked and should therefore be more resistant to
     damage.  However, being statically linked, the tools in /rescue are also less functional than the standard utilities.  In particular, they do
     not have full use of the locale, pam(3), and nsswitch libraries.

     If your system fails to boot, and it shows a prompt similar to:

	   Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:

     the first thing to try running is the standard shell, /bin/sh.  If that fails, try running /rescue/sh, which is the rescue shell.	To repair
     the system, the root partition must first be remounted read-write.  This can be done with the following mount(8) command:

	   /rescue/mount -uw /

     The next step is to double-check the contents of /bin, /sbin, and /usr/lib, possibly mounting a FreeBSD rescue or ``live file system'' CD-ROM
     (e.g., disc2 of the officially released FreeBSD ISO images) and copying files from there.	Once it is possible to successfully run /bin/sh,
     /bin/ls, and other standard utilities, try rebooting back into the standard system.

     The /rescue tools are compiled using crunchgen(1), which makes them considerably more compact than the standard utilities.  To build a
     FreeBSD system where space is critical, /rescue can be used as a replacement for the standard /bin and /sbin directories; simply change /bin
     and /sbin to be symbolic links pointing to /rescue.  Since /rescue is statically linked, it should also be possible to dispense with much of
     /usr/lib in such an environment.

     In contrast to its predecessor /stand, /rescue is updated during normal FreeBSD source and binary upgrades.

FILES

     /rescue  Root of the rescue hierarchy.

SEE ALSO

     crunchgen(1), crash(8)

HISTORY

     The rescue utilities first appeared in FreeBSD 5.2.

AUTHORS

     The rescue system was written by Tim Kientzle <kientzle@FreeBSD.org>, based on ideas taken from NetBSD.  This manual page was written by
     Simon L. Nielsen <simon@FreeBSD.org>, based on text by Tim Kientzle <kientzle@FreeBSD.org>.

BUGS

     Most of the rescue tools work even in a fairly crippled system.  The most egregious exception is the rescue version of vi(1), which currently
     requires that /usr be mounted so that it can access the termcap(5) files.	Hopefully, a failsafe termcap(3) entry will eventually be added
     into the ncurses(3) library, so that /rescue/vi can be used even in a system where /usr cannot immediately be mounted.  In the meantime, the
     rescue version of the ed(1) editor can be used from /rescue/ed if you need to edit files, but cannot mount /usr.

BSD
								   July 23, 2003							       BSD