repair v.7 installation

[ivoras at gmail.com]

On Nov 28, 2008 10:38pm, PJ <af.gourmet at videotron.ca> wrote:

> 6. When in single user mode, cannot access /usr or /var

In single user mode only the root file system is mounted. Mount the others  
manually.

>
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> So, now I get the feeling that the installation is completely screwed.  
What I would like to recover is onle a bunch of files on the /usr partition  
like the web stuff for apache and some other files.
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> What are my options? is there a way I could access these files?
>
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> It is rather strange, or is it, that I have had problems with sata hdd  
connectors. In general I find that the connectors for the ps mouse and the  
sata connectors are rather mickey-mouse... they are often getting bad  
connections and without any intervention to the computer housing or  
innard... gremlins or strange vibrations?
>

There's not enough information to conclude exactly what is wrong with your  
machine but if you have hardware problems, you should immediately buy a new  
drive (USB drive will also work), boot the machine in single-user mode,  
mount the relevant file systems read-only and transfer important files to  
the new drive.

If you still want to reinstall /repair the existing system, AFAIK,  
FreeBSD's default installer has an "upgrade mode", in which you'll need to  
tell it which partition/slice was originally mounted where and it will  
proceed to install the base system. It will not touch your home directories  
or /usr/local.