Once upon a time, Adam Williamson <adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org> said:
Boot with `systemd.debug-shell=1` and there will be a root console
available on tty9 from very early in boot. Not sure if it's early
enough for this specific scenario, but it is for a lot.
You can also boot to the initramfs environment by booting with
`rd.break`, from where you can fix up most problems.
Those are okay work-arounds (I didn't know about the
systemd.debug-shell, have to see if I can remember that one), but the
base problem remains: in the default root-locked config, boot errors
stop and require a password that is not set (and systemd internalized
the sulogin call so there's no way to override it with local config).
That is bad user experience and should be fixed.
I always thought the change to prompting for a root password for repair
and single-user mode was odd, since the default boot loader config is
not locked down to prevent going right around such a requirement.
Either lock it all down or make it configurable. Part of my default
system config was to change the sulogin call, until systemd took that
option away.
--
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net>