Editing on the serial console

[Nicola Mingotti]

On 3/7/19 8:51 AM, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2019, 8:42 AM bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 12:10:11PM +0200, Konstantin Belousov wrote:
>>> On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 05:08:07PM +1030, O'Connor, Daniel wrote:
>>>>> On 7 Mar 2019, at 14:24, bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Editing files in single-user mode on the serial console
>>>>> is non-trivial. Both vi and ee have problems displaying
>>>>> the file, ed doesn't really try so it works but isn't
>>>>> much fun. Is there a better option?  When the machine
>>>>> boots single-user it reports "can't read /etc/termcap",
>>>>> is something misconfigured?
>>>> /etc/termcap is a symlink to /usr/share/misc/termcap - if you mount
>> /usr (read only is fine) then it should work.
>>>> ie since you are in single user mode only / has been mounted.
>>>>
>>>> If / and /usr are the same FS them something else is wrong :)
>>> There is /etc/termcap.small, and I remember our libcurses uses TERMCAP
>>> env variable to point to the termcap file.
>> It never occurred to me that /etc/termcap might actually live elsewhere.
>> That's almost certainly the problem. Would there be any drawback to
>> simply moving the file back to /etc ?
>>
> On your system? None at all. I'd copy it, though. In the base system it is
> where it is so new entries get reflected right after install world w/o
> needing to run mergemaster.
>
> Warner
>
>
> Thanks to everybody,

When it all fails you can try "ed", the grandpa of all editors.
It is line oriented, it works under the most disgraceful conditions.
I think I had to use it maximum 3 times in my lifetime.

bye
Nicola