It works for me when I do

  mount -u -w /dev/sd0a /

True story: a friend telephoned me to say that he was at the top of a
300ft radio tower in downtown Champaign, IL, servicing a computer at the
top, and was he ever in a bind! He could not re-mount his filesystem
read-write. Could I help?  The answer was yes, I could, try "mount -u
-w /dev/hd0a /". It worked. (I will not disagree with you if you think
that 300ft above ground is a stupid place to service a computer, but
that is the way it happened.)

Dave

On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 11:38:22PM +0100, Tristan Celder wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Just completed the NetBSD install onto my old 7600, went through all the
> trials and tribulations to reach a point where I thought I would be able
> to say the install was done! Trouble is... I followed the advice in the
> installer and when the following message came up:
> 
> /etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted.
> Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh:
> We recommend creating a non-root account and using su(1) for root access
> 
> So I typed in the recommended line listed in the installer docs:
> 
> /sbin/mount -u -w
> 
> (had to take out the '/' at  the end of the installer doc line. Didn't
> work.)
> 
> It mounts! But...
> 
> root_device on / type ffs (read-only, local)
> 
> HELP! I can't edit my rc.conf because it's a read only file system :(
> Let alone open vi as it needs to write a temporary file!
> 
> How do I fix this?
> 
> ALSO... smaller problems. Open firmware won't boot automatically, it
> just says 'no alias' or something very similar, and I have to hold down
> apple-option-o-f to get into open firmware. Then I type boot, and it
> loads NetBSD. And... I have applied the open firware patch but my screen
> is still completely mangled, artefacts all over the show, and the edges
> resemble  zebra crossings with confetti spilt over them.
> 
> Help much, much, much appreciated.
> 
> Tristan.
> Unix newbie

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Engineering from the Right Brain
                        Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933