F10 - boot - how to get into interactive boot?

[Robin Laing]

Hello,

Sure, I know to press 'I' but on two machines, it has been a nightmare. 
  One machine it never worked.

With faster machines, there is no time to press the button.

I found it wouldn't work if the normal Fedora splash screen was up on 
the screen.  I had to press escape to get it to work.  If I pressed to 
soon, the keyboard wouldn't work at all.  It all happened so fast.

On the second machine, I never got it to work.

This machine has encrypted partitions and the password prompt makes it 
harder.

I can just get the Esc button pushed in time for the password to be 
requested.  I then press 'I" right after pressing 'Enter.'  I get a 
whole bunch of 'I's" before and after the notice but it still continues 
into udev and on into a normal boot.  I never could get it to work.

Is there a way to get into interactive mode from grub?

When in the boot process is the keyboard input scanned for the 
Interactive?  Before or after the message to press "I"?

And is it a "I" or "i"?  I have tried both.

[Tom Horsley]

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:37:25 -0700
Robin Laing wrote:
> Sure, I know to press 'I' but on two machines, it has been a nightmare. 
>   One machine it never worked.

I always assumed that was just a joke message :-). It certainly
has never behaved any differently for me with or without the I

[Todd Denniston]

Robin Laing wrote, On 02/03/2009 09:37 AM:
> Hello,
>
> Sure, I know to press 'I' but on two machines, it has been a nightmare. 
>  One machine it never worked.
>
> With faster machines, there is no time to press the button.
>
> I found it wouldn't work if the normal Fedora splash screen was up on 
> the screen.  I had to press escape to get it to work.  If I pressed to 
> soon, the keyboard wouldn't work at all.  It all happened so fast.
>
> On the second machine, I never got it to work.
>
> This machine has encrypted partitions and the password prompt makes it 
> harder.
>
> I can just get the Esc button pushed in time for the password to be 
> requested.  I then press 'I" right after pressing 'Enter.'  I get a 
> whole bunch of 'I's" before and after the notice but it still continues 
> into udev and on into a normal boot.  I never could get it to work.
>
> Is there a way to get into interactive mode from grub?
>
> When in the boot process is the keyboard input scanned for the 
> Interactive?  Before or after the message to press "I"?
>
> And is it a "I" or "i"?  I have tried both.

I think I have had either work, though all is confusion as when I have to use 
it, for some reason I seem to be in panic/hurry up mode. :)

perhaps edit /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and add a `sleep 1` before and after the
  echo -en $"\t\tPress 'I' to enter interactive startup."
line.

If that works for you, may I suggest filing a bug against the output of
`rpm -q --whatprovides /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit` such that the next version of 
that rpm includes the sleeps?

[Tim]

On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 07:37 -0700, Robin Laing wrote:
> And is it a "I" or "i"?  I have tried both.

I've not tried 10 yet, but with prior versions I've had to madly hammer
away at the "I" key, and the shift key, before I got any response.
Which always means that several services get started, as per defaults,
before I get into interactive mode.  Thanks to the lack of success /
difficulty of success, I've never worked out whether the shift key was
required.

Since then, if I've noticed booting get stuck on a particular service,
I'll force a reboot, and boot up in single mode, then edit the services
that will start.