can't jump to superuser after buildwerld

[KAYVEN RIESE]

my settings got trampled. it's weird.  i had my prompt set up to
have pwd in the path and i customized the root prompt to do a similar
dingy followed by a # instead of a % and it was like really
weird how su - still got my root prompt back.  that's how it
werks now..i have been too lazy to fix my user settings..

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Christian Walther wrote:

> 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.
>