2026-10-04 –, 107 Language: English
Your system does not boot, you enter a rescue shell, and suddenly you discover that your favorite editor is missing. No vim. No emacs. No nano. In such situations, ed may be one of the few tools available.
This 10-minute lightning talk shows how to use ed as an editor of last resort. It is aimed at system administrators, DevOps engineers, SREs, and anyone who may need to repair a Unix/Linux system in a minimal environment.
The line-oriented text editor ed is included in the POSIX standard, so it is practically guaranteed to be present on traditional Unix and BSD systems, and almost all standard Linux distributions, even when /usr is not yet mounted. We will focus on the minimum commands needed to inspect and fix critical configuration files such as /etc/fstab.
You will see how to open a file, print lines, append new content, modify or delete broken lines, save changes, and exit safely. No previous ed experience is required. By the end of the talk, you will have a small but practical survival kit for emergency system repair.
Unix/Linux SysAdmin, DevOps Engineer, Psychological Coach, Lifeguard, Freediver