I'm running FreeBSD 9.1-PRERELEASE on a vps running on XEN virtualization, I tried to update it to 9.1-RELEASE but mergemaster toasted my /etc/master.passwd and /etc/passwd so what i have now is a blank copies of the two files.

What i did is use a mounted Live CD and mount my root partition to /mnt and manually re listed every entry to /mnt/etc/master.passwd and /mnt/etc/passwd from another freebsd server. I believe that everytime you edit master.passwd and passwd you have to run pwd_mkdb but this gives me "Read Only File" error.

What I plan to do is enable PermitRootLogin and PermitEmptyPassword first so I can login as root first before I redo necessary changes again. But i have to run pwd_mkdb, so is there a way to run this command from Live CD?