Re: Single user mode

Nicholas J. Leon (nicholas@binary9.net)
Mon, 13 Jan 1997 18:54:59 -0500 (EST)


On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, Norm Henderson wrote:

# Hey George...
#
# I feel for ya, I've had the *exact* same thing happen over here, even
# though I had no hacker, I just deleted /etc/passwd accidentaly... :) but
# you're on the right track, single-user mode is the way to go for stuff
# like that, and to use it, when you see the "Loading Linux...." or
# whatever boot message you have, just hold down the left shift key (do
# this before the message, to be sure), and a 'boot:' prompt should
# appear. press tab to see what labels you have, and then type in the
# name of your favorite label, followed by the word "single".
#
# It would look like this:
#
# Loading [L-SHIFT]
# boot: [TAB]
# Linux
# boot: Linux single [ENTER]
#
# that should do it... from there, you'd have full, unadulterated system
# access...

I feel I should add that if for some odd reason single user mode fails to
boot into a usable system, you can force a shell to be launched
IMMEDIATELY after the kernels init's by :

LILO

boot: linux init=/bin/sh

This is perfect for when you do something REALLY stupid or if your box
can't get past the rc files stage.


N!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas J. Leon nicholas@binary9.net
"Elegance through Simplicity" http://www.binary9.net/nicholas

SF/F Reading Suggestion #1: Apprentice Assassin by Robin Hobbs