RESCUE(8)

📦
version 15.1 · 2 versions
, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1, nixpkgs unstable

okay so this is rescue(8) from the System Manager's Manual, and bestie, it is literally the emergency kit for when your system is having a whole crisis 💖✨

🚨 NAME 🚨

rescue — rescue utilities in /rescue 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so /rescue is a whole directory full of common utilities, and its entire vibe is recovering a badly damaged system 🫶. With the transition to a dynamically-linked root beginning with FreeBSD 5.2, there is a real possibility that the standard tools in /bin and /sbin may become non-functional due to a failed upgrade or a disk error 😭. The tools in /rescue are statically linked and should therefore be more resistant to damage 💪.

But here's the tradeoff, bestie: being statically linked, the tools in /rescue are also less functional than the standard utilities. In particular, they do not have full use of the locale, pam(3), and nsswitch libraries. not me crying over missing libraries 💀

If your system fails to boot, and it shows a prompt similar to:

Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:

the first thing to try running is the standard shell, /bin/sh. If that fails, try running /rescue/sh, which is the rescue shell. To repair the system, the root partition must first be remounted read-write. This can be done with the following mount(8) command:

/rescue/mount -uw /

The next step is to double-check the contents of /bin, /sbin, and /usr/lib, possibly mounting a FreeBSD rescue or "live file system" CD-ROM and copying files from there 💿. Once it is possible to successfully run /bin/sh, /bin/ls, and other standard utilities, try rebooting back into the standard system. slay.

The /rescue tools are compiled using crunchgen(1), which makes them considerably more compact than the standard utilities. To build a FreeBSD system where space is critical, /rescue can be used as a replacement for the standard /bin and /sbin directories; simply change /bin and /sbin to be symbolic links pointing to /rescue. Since /rescue is statically linked, it should also be possible to dispense with much of /usr/lib in such an environment. iconic.

In contrast to its predecessor /stand, /rescue is updated during normal FreeBSD source and binary upgrades. that's the glow-up, fr fr ✨

📁 FILES 📁

  • /rescue — Root of the rescue hierarchy. 🌳

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

The rescue utilities first appeared in FreeBSD 5.2. periodt 💅

👑 AUTHORS 👑

okay so the rescue system was written by Tim Kientzle <kientzle@FreeBSD.org>, based on ideas taken from NetBSD. This manual page was written by Simon L. Nielsen <simon@FreeBSD.org>, based on text by Tim Kientzle <kientzle@FreeBSD.org>. give them their flowers 💐

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Most of the rescue tools work even in a fairly crippled system. The most egregious exception is the rescue version of vi(1), which currently requires that /usr be mounted so that it can access the termcap(5) files. Hopefully, a failsafe termcap(3) entry will eventually be added into the ncurses(3) library, so that /rescue/vi can be used even in a system where /usr cannot immediately be mounted. In the meantime, the rescue version of the ed(1) editor can be used from /rescue/ed if you need to edit files, but cannot mount /usr. no cap, that's the workaround 🫶

cute sign-off: this page is from Debian, dated June 30, 2022, for RESCUE(8) — mwah, go fix that box 💖🦋

📦 where this page comes from