Messed up /etc/profile, cannot start Gnome

[majohnst]

I thought I was being smart and edited my /etc/profile file to add a few system variables. In the process, I screwed up the PATH variable. When I rebooted the computer, gnome won't start. If I drop into a command prompt, none of the basic commands work (ls, cat, vi). Pretty much because I messed up the PATH variable. I always get an error that the bash command was not found.

So how can I edit my /etc/profile to fix the problem?

I thought about using a LiveCD to mount my hard drive and then edit the file, but my hard drive would never mount. And as I mentioned earlier, getting to a command prompt doesn't help because I can't run any command to fix the /etc/profile file.

[algej]

You may have to boot into single user mode, but after getting the command line prompt, either:

# /bin/vi /etc/profile

or

# export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
# vi /etc/profile

should work.

[majohnst]

Thanks, that works.