On 5/19/24 8:58 AM, Mike Wright wrote:
For the first time ever I had a need for the "rescue" kernel. Using that grub entry brought up a system that required a root login. I have not had a root password on any distro since I can't recall. Oh, I remember, edit the command line and put it in runlevel 1. hahahaha! Grampa, what's a runlevel? I ended up booting off of a USB (ventoy is awesome!) to bring up some distro, mounted the borken system, did my magic, rebooted and was back in business.
Point being: what good is a rescue kernel when the canoe has no oars?
The rescue kernel option has all the kernel modules. It's primarily useful for if you've changed hardware to something that uses different drivers that weren't being used before. By default, the initramfs only has the drivers needed for the current hardware.
The rescue kernel option is not any different than the regular options for fixing a damaged fs. There is an issue that if it can't boot, it asks for the root password even if that hasn't been set. There has been some discussion about it, but no solutions yet.