Re: [Nolug] How to boot linux single?

Dave Prentice wrote:
> Does anybody know how to boot Linux single on Redhat 8.0 starting with
> Grub? I have a donated box for which I don't know the root password,
> so I need to get in and change it.

Sure. At the grub menu, you can hit 'e' to edit the current entry. Go
to the kernel line, and then add 'single' to the end of it.
Alternately, you can add 'init=/bin/sh'. 'single' will tell it to boot
to single-user mode, but often, it will still ask for the root password.
  'init=/bin/sh' will just run /bin/sh instead of /sbin/init. If you go
that route, you'll need to remount / read-write by hand:

mount /dev/hda1 / -o remount,rw

Change the password, then mount it read-only by hand before killing the
power (a normal shutdown won't work).

If for some reason it doesn't have any valid entries at all, you can hit
  'c' at the grub menu to go to the grub command line. Going from
memory, and assuming that you are booting from hda1, I think the
commands are:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro
boot

Finally, a perhaps better way is to boot from a boot-disk/CD, mount the
partition, and then change the password that way.

Hope this helps,
Kevin

> Thanks,
> Dave Prentice
> prentice@instruction.com
>
>
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> Nolug mailing list
> nolug@nolug.org
>

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Received on 09/09/04