In article <200607011256.k61CufdE003131@body.prd.co.uk>,
Steve Blinkhorn  <steve@prd.co.uk> wrote:
>Well, I lost my connection to my remote machine, so I'm going to have
>to go physically to the site.   A power cycle brought the machine up
>to the extent that I get a telnet prompt, but than a "pam_start
>failure" message.    So I presume it's in multi-user mode, network
>configured etc. etc., just lacking the pam config stuff.
>
>Given that I shall be in a hostile environment (i.e. without my
>various LAN machines around me) and a distance from base I would
>appreciate collective wisdom on how I approach my task.   Comments on
>the following?
>
>1. Boot with a pre-PAM (1.6, 2.0) CD-ROM and install the base.tgz set.
>Reboot, fetch the pam stuff, then reboot under 3.0 and install the 3.0
>base.tgz set.
>
>2. Make a CD-ROM containing just the PAM stuff, boot from a 3.0
>CD-ROM, then mount the CD with the PAM stuff on, copy it over and then
>reboot from hard disk.
>
>3. "Upgrade" entirely to a pre-PAM version, just not installing the
>etc.tgz set, and go from there.
>
>4. Any other suggestions.

Boot single user, mount root read-write, bring up the network manually,
ftp a pam.tar.gz from somewhere and un-tar it. (or if you have a usb
or floppy or cdrom read it from there).

christos