The House is on Fire!

The House Is On Fire!
Crisis Management in Linux

There will come a time in your Linux use when you’ll need to call in the crisis management team. Count on it. No matter how far down the guru path you travel, sometimes stuff happens. The best way to minimize the damage of that heart-stopping moment is to accept that it will happen and be prepared for the worst.

One of the quickest methods to manage crises in Linux is the single user mode. Single mode is not, however, a fix in and of itself. Instead, it provides a way to boot your system in a minimal fashion, skipping all system configuration and jumping directly into a console. Many of the other tools for filesystem repair, etc, are best used in the console. By skipping the configuration files, the process of troubleshooting and repair is greatly simplified.

If your system won’t boot, or if you’re getting odd error message at boot that seem to affect the performance of your system, the single use mode can be accessed as follows.

At the linux prompt, enter:

    single

Easy, huh? With that simple command, you’re dropped into a console. Think of it as “safe mode” for Linux. But hold on - over the next few days we’ll talk about how to use single user mode to put out the fire burning in your Linux system.