On Oct 17,  2:04am, Steve Blinkhorn 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?

     You've never actually told us exactly what you did.  However, from
the various messages I gather that you have a 3.0 kernel and a 3.0
base.tgz (plus possibly others) installed, but not a 3.0 etc.tgz, and
you have all the 3.0 tarballs on the system.  Given this, there is no
way that you are going to be able to log into the box.  You will have
to poke the reset button.  Here is the procedure that I would follow:

- as soon as the machine starts to boot, hit the spacebar to stop the
  boot sequence and type 'boot -s' to boot single user
- fsck
- mount -a
- unpack (tar xvzpf) the etc.tgz tarball in its own directory
- postinstall -s <above directory> fix
- fix anything it complains about (most likely some users and groups
  will need to be added manually)
- reboot

At this point, you should be mostly ready to go.  There may be some
minor things that you need to fix up.  You may also want to have a look
at /etc/defaults/rc.conf to see what new things have been added and
update your /etc/rc.conf.  You will want to get sshd running.  And, at
this point, you should have a mostly functional NetBSD 3.0 system.

} Thanks for all the help so far.   My ISP says "no-one uses NetBSD so
} we don't have any CDs".   I think I may want to find a new ISP.

     Apparently your ISP flunked logic; otherwise, they would know that
it only takes one user of NetBSD to prove their statement false.
However, I'm not sure that it is their responsibility to have CDs on
hand for every system that somebody might put in their co-lo centre.
You may want to leave a NetBSD 3.0 CD behind for future emergencies.

P.S. I have remotely upgraded NetBSD 1.6.x systems to NetBSD 3.0
before.  So, it is possible if you do things in the right order and do
it very carefully.

}-- End of excerpt from Steve Blinkhorn