Allow vi (or a more friendly editor) to work in single user mode

[grahamperrin]

Spun off from #68 (comment)

… critically, vi does not work.

`vi: No terminal database found

[probonopd]

Have you tried nano?

[probonopd]

Don't forget mount -uw / to mount r/w

[grahamperrin]

Thanks, I had performed the mount command on previous occasions.

Continuation of the VirtualBox session:

[probonopd]

Seems related:

• https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-bugs/2005-April/012630.html
• https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=termcap&sektion=5

Maybe you can figure something out.
Are we still shipping vi? It may be a candidate for removal to get the ISO smaller.

[grahamperrin]

Result of exit – an unexpected halt:

Expected: exit to multi-user mode.

Guest machine reset. Reproducible with a simple exit immediately after gaining the command prompt in single user mode:

2021-01-02.07.47.mp4

hello-13.0-CURRENT-2d0fc2a-amd64.iso

---

I see (probably older) hello-13.0-CURRENT-488dd3a-amd64.iso at https://github.com/helloSystem/ISO/releases – I'll retry with that.

The same with today's hello-0C139-12.1-amd64.iso: unexpected halt in response to exit.

[grahamperrin]

vi

#75 (comment)

… may be a candidate for removal to get the ISO smaller.

I dislike vi but removal may be highly contentious.

Defocusing from single user mode

It's not yet clear whether my (environment) preference for nano in lieu of vi is contributory to mergemaster misbehaving; see the foot of https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2021-January/078083.html.

[probonopd]

I dislike vi but removal may be highly contentious.

I see, it is currently in base... let's not remove it for now then.

[probonopd]

Can we close this issue since nano works?

[grahamperrin]

Above #75 (comment) I could not find nano in the file system.

More generally, commands such as these fail unexpectedly in single user mode:

• find
• which
• uname

[probonopd]

Let's not change any FreeBSD defaults for single user mode. That is "low level stuff" and it best works if it is 1:1 FreeBSD.

[probonopd]

Please clarify that with "single user mode" you mean a Live system booted with -s or an installed system booted with -s.

Only the latter should work as usual in FreeBSD. The former is not for users, only for the developers of the Live system.

You will land here:

ISO/overlays/ramdisk/init.sh

Line 45 in 1adff8e

echo "Starting interactive shell in temporary rootfs ..."

[grahamperrin]

To clarify:

• booting from FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-amd64-20201224-3cc0c0d66a0-255241-disc1.iso in single user mode works as expected – uname and the other commands
• booting from a helloSystem .iso in single user mode does not allow use of the commands

[probonopd]

Yes, because the single user mode in helloSystem is used to debug its ramdisk. So I think this works as intended.