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May 13, 2011

Booting into Single-User Mode


One of the advantages of single-user mode is that you do not need a boot diskette or CD-ROM; however, it does not give you the option to mount the file systems as read-only or not mount them at all.

If your system boots, but does not allow you to log in when it has completed booting, try single-user mode.
In single-user mode, your computer boots to runlevel 1. Your local file systems are mounted, but your network is not activated. You have a usable system maintenance shell. Unlike rescue mode, single-user mode automatically tries to mount your file system; do not use single-user mode if your file system can not be mounted successfully. You can not use single-user mode if the runlevel 1 configuration on your system is corrupted.
On an x86 system using GRUB as the boot loader, use the following steps to boot into single-user mode:
  1. If you have a GRUB password configured, type p and enter the password.
  2. Select Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the version of the kernel that you wish to boot and type a to append the line.
  3. Go to the end of the line and type single as a separate word (press the [Spacebar] and then type single). Press [Enter] to exit edit mode.
  4. Back at the GRUB screen, type b to boot into single-user mode.
On an x86 system using LILO as the boot loader, at the LILO boot prompt (if you are using the graphical LILO, you must press [Ctrl]-[x] to exit the graphical screen and go to the boot: prompt) type:
linux single

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Achar, I have an Issue with My Grub..Initially i was having Vista and then Linux(Ubuntu)..When i installed Linux both Windows and Linux was shown by Grub..
Later I have Updated Vista to Win7 which has erased the existing Grub and now It is showing only Windows..How can i get back my Grub showing both Win and Linux ? Any easy method to get back this ?

Unknown said...

Check my post on grub.conf