SAMS Teach Yourself Unix in 10 Minutes

Single-User Mode

Single-user mode is a Unix system mode from bootup created for administrative and maintenance activities, a mode where the machine has no network resources and can only support a single user logged in. Single-user mode will absolutely demand complete control of the system. When the system is in this single-user mode, whoever is logged in becomes root. This is, however, a minimal system startup state so don't fear, it is merely for diagnostics. If you do become interested in repairing a non-booting Unix system, or want to try to repair problems in your system, you may want to learn about this mode. Only the root partition is mounted, so only commands that reside in the root file system are available. As well, every Unix machine ...