Emergency, cannot boot 4.10

[Bill Moran]

Lists <sfulton-lists at esoteric.ca> wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> My 4.10 server is halting during the boot process because the 
> kern.maxfiles entry in /etc/sysctl.conf is corrupted or wrong (though I 
> have not changed it in some time).  What I want to do is simply remove 
> that entry from the sysctl.conf file, but I cannot even get into the system.
> 
> I have a presentation later today based on some of the work I've done on 
> that server -- if someone could clue me in on how to best get in to fix 
> that file, I'd really appreciate it.  I've tried the Brazilian LiveCD 
> ISO, without success -- the keyboard mappings are for Portugeuse, not 
> English.

Can you boot in single user mode?  At the countdown during boot, press
a key to interrupt the boot, then enter 'boot -s'.  Hit enter when it
asks you for a shell and do:
fsck -p
mount -a

You should then be able to fix the offending entry.

As a side note ... the last version of FreeSBIE I used had a menu to
allow you to choose your language at bootup.  Perhaps your version is
a bit old?

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com