no permission for root???

[joda pain]

I have ran a fresh install on the same hard drive 3 times. I log into
root without any problems. When I try to run simple commands like
checking virtual consoles (/etc/ttys) I get a "Permission denied". I
don't understand why this is happening. I can't access any admin
properties because of permissions. What am I doing wrong??? I'm using
vr. 5.4

Example:
login: root
password:

NetwerksBSD# /etc/ttys
/etc/ttys: Permission denied

There must be someone or some place I can get an answer for this question.
Right now i gather all my answers from man pages & FreeBSD Handbook
online http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html