Recently our /etc/fstab got screwed up preventing us from SSH-ing into the server after a reboot. So we were given KVM access to our server.
Once seting up Java to allow unsigned certificates--hint: under the Java Control Panel click the "Security" tab, and slide the "security level" to the bottom "Medium" . We were then greated with a message:
'give root password for maintenance or press ctrl+d to continue"
Come to find out CTRL-C and CTRL-V doesn't work, you have to type the pass by hand--this was very tedious since my root pass is extremely complex.
So once in I soon realized that the system was mounted as "read-only"; meaning that you couldn't make any changes to it; or in other words, completely useless at this state.
Read-only file system
So to fix this error, we have to remount our partition with READ and WRITE.
mount -o rw,remount /
That should do it. Now you can make any necessary adjustments as needed.