Home / ubuntu / Questions / 15284
Accepted
Naftuli Kay
Asked: 2010-11-29 14:09:11 +0800 CST

How to boot to root shell when GRUB recovery menu fails to load a shell?

  • 772

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.

root recovery-mode

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    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 ?

    • 17

  2. 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?

    • 2