> ok, I am sorta having urgent problems, i would appreciate any help you 
> guys can offer...
> 
> so it all started when I decided to compile my own kernel.  when it 
> finished compiling, I felt adventurous, so I thought I would try it.  not 
> surprisingly, it didn't work.  while starting up, it stopped with the 
> message "/etc/rc.conf not configured", which puzzled me a little, so I 
> used the installer utility to change kernels back to the old one that I 
> had been using that I knew worked.  when restarted, it gave me the same 
> error message, about rc.conf.  I figured maybe the file got changed 
> somehow, so I downloaded etc.tar.gz using my powermac and copied the rc, 
> rc.conf, rc.subr, and rc.lkm files into bsd (just to be safe).  

I think it's trying to tell you that you've not configured rc.conf;
it's a new, factory default filesaying "set me up!"

> now when i try to boot, I get the message "could not exec 
> /usr/libexec/getty for /dev/ttye0: file does not exist" (or something 
> damn close to that).  Using the installer utility, /usr/libexec/getty 
> exists, and I rebuilt all of the devices and verified that /dev/ttye0 is 
> there.  I also rewrote my /etc/fstab and verified that all of the 
> partitions were there.

Does /dev/ttye0 exist? I think Colin's right that your filesystem is hosed.

Start up single-user and fsck the root partition.

Take care,

Bill