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Can't seem to boot into root shell in recovery mode from GRUB. I try booting into recovery mode from the GRUB menu and don't ever get a shell, just log messages from the kernel bootup. Ctrl+Alt+F1-F12 don't really give me anything important either.

2 Answers 2

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u can manually edit ur grub file. For example, when booting up, press Shift to get into grub2, and press e to edit the commandline, change the commandline: append init=/bin/sh

linux init=/bin/sh

and if you are lucky, you can get in a shell. How to boot GRUB2 into the simplest Linux shell ?

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  • Thanks for the answer. I'm new-ish to kernel boot parameters, so yeah. Main thing was that I needed to uninstall Gnome-Do as it would lock up the computer and would start on boot. I don't have the computer in my possession anymore (it was a friends), so I unfortunately can't test your solution, but I'll take you at your word. Dec 1, 2010 at 6:27
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Selecting 'recovery mode' should normally give you a menu from which you can choose to get a root shell or various other options. If you don't get that menu, something is broken. What are the last few messages you see?

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  • If you're selecting "recovery mode" that in itself means something is broken...
    – bukzor
    Jul 5, 2019 at 17:20

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