Booting System

Breaking into system in single user mode

If using LILO

type: "linux single" at LILO prompt

If using GRUB

In Grub GUI press 'e' to edit
Arrow down to kernel line and press 'e' to edit
At the prompt type single (at end of line) and press <ENTER>
You will be returned to GRUB GUI - press 'b' to boot into single user mode
At this point you get a bare system and a CLI to fix things.

If that doesn't work, boot by typing
linux init=/bin/bash at the LILO boot: prompt

Redirecting console output to a serial port

To redirect the console output to the serial port, the "console=" commands should be added to the end of the kernel line in the grub.conf file as shown below.

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
terminal --timeout=4 serial console
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.9-e.16)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.16 ro root=/dev/sda3 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600
        initrd /initrd-2.4.9-e.16.img