can't jump to superuser after buildwerld

[Christian Walther]

On 19/04/07, KAYVEN RIESE <kayve at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> how in the werld did i manage to remove myself from wheel.  i just
> ran mergemaster -p

Given that "you" means "user account" it's fairly easy: mergemaster
collects all the status of all system and configuration files and
compares them with the fresh files. These new files don't know about
your user, in fact they don't know about anything. Their contents is
the same as files from a fresh install.
When running mergemaster you can choose to leave the current file
intact, which would keep all your changes, but might miss some of the
new stuff that should have been introduced.
Another idea would be to install the new file, which would of course
overwrite your settings. Maybe this is what happened.
If you noticed that you can't do either of these two options, but that
you have to merge both files, you can do so, too. In this case
removing yourself from wheel is also possible.

In the beginning I found it difficult to identify both files
correctly. For example the pathes where the files are located can be
confused easily. You have to keep in mind that the productive files
where copied to /var/tmproot, and that ./etc is actually the brand new
file.
>
> is there any documentation for that command that would explain
> the complex nonsense ..
Maybe a "mergemaster in depth" kind of manual would be a good idea for
all who are unfamiliar with mergemaster, diff and friends.

>
> well.. maybe i just freeked out.  still.. i followed instructions..
> granted somebody told me a different procedure (that i posted and
> was editited out from below) and it made mergemaster -p act in
> a way that i didn't feel prepared for.
>
> right now.. as i explained in the other posting, i didn't really
> follow all the instructions on the makewerld page given below..
> but i am a bit afraid to just jump in the middle somewhere.. hrm..
> i guess starting from the beginning might be right but..

If you're able to move all the data to another machine it's probably
the best solution. After you did the install and configured the
machine you can be sure that everything is up and running again.
>
> ooo.. i am getting that stomache ache agin.
>
> btw.. i dropped to single user mode, vi'ed /etc/group according
> to the instruction and i am now able to jump to root again.
> thx a bunch for that!
>
[snip]

BTW: Please don't top post.