On 4/18/19 1:15 PM, Beartooth wrote:
On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 21:21:40 -0700, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 4/16/19 9:08 AM, Beartooth wrote:
Last week, for instance, I managed to so foo a brand new laptop that anything I did on the login screen killed it. (I'd've tried a repair if I'd been able to remember how to boot straight into single user, or find out again how. I spent a few days trying, and then just put the install disc back into it. <sigh>)
Add "single" to the kernel command line. You will need the root password.
Remember, the minute I typed my password at the login screen, I lost all electronic contact. No response to mouse nor keyboard. The machine eventually displayed an error message, and sometimes after another long interval a second error message. But that was all.
You edit the grub entry from grub at boot time. Put "single" and the end of the kernel line. It's not permanent, it only affects that boot.
At the login screen, before typeing, you could try pressing CTRL-ALT-F3 to get to a console and see if that works.
I *believe* that, IF (big if) I could get the machine to boot from a live medium, I'd've been able -- somehow -- to use that live OS to mount the hard drive, and edit its grub.conf or something. But I never really knew how to do the mount.
The easiest one is to use the netinst image. There's a rescue option on the boot menu. That will give you an option to automatically mount the installed system. Doing that will also trigger a full selinux relabel of the system, so if you're sure you didn't mess up any labels, you can delete the .autorelabel file from the mounted root to avoid that.