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I bought a load balancer that runs the application on of FreeBSD. I found the configuration file that has all the settings and login information for both the admin and read-only users. I logged in as the root user, but when I try to alter any files using vi (the only editor installed) I get a read-only filesystem error. I tried chmod 777 file, and when I do ls -l I can see that root has read, write, and execute privileges, but it still won't let me write to the file. What do I need to do to make this file writable?

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This question is kinda vague, but it sounds like you are confusing read only file permissions with a read only file system, as mschuett implies in the answer below. – Adam Feb 20 at 20:38
You should get the documentation for the load balancer and use it with the correct interface. Trying to change things on the underlying FreeBSD layer can have disastrous effects and at the very least it will not behave as you expect. In all ways you should ignore FreeBSD as much as possible. – bahamat Feb 20 at 22:07
It's impossible to answer this without knowing how the appliance is set up. Do you have a model number? What is the filesystem layout: post the output of mount. Where is the file you're editing located? – Gilles Feb 21 at 0:59

migrated from serverfault.com Feb 20 at 20:31

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It's not that the file isn't writable; the filesystem itself is mounted read-only. Use mount to check the mount options and mount -u -o rw <mount_point> to remount the filesystem writable.

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