Systemd: how to get into rescue mode

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Mon Jan 6 11:18:08 UTC 2020


On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 08:43, Volker Wysk <post at volker-wysk.de> wrote:
>
> Thank you for your answer, but I think you've missed the point. I can't
> type any command after doing "systemctl isolate rescue.target". What I
> type isn't displayed. Nothing at all happens. It doesn't look like a
> rescue shell is running.

Aha! TBH I was going to say something similar to "Little Girl" -- that
most of that stuff _shouldn't_ work.

I had not realised that systemd has also eliminated single-user mode.
It is occasionally useful. I also deeply miss runlevel 4, which is
full multitasking but no GUI -- that is often useful for
troubleshooting graphics driver issues, especially in my case with
nVidia binary driver issues.

This is one reason I am looking at other distros, such as Devuan,
which do not use systemd. I do not like it, and I do not like GNOME 3,
and desktop Ubuntu is very centred on these now. Unity was great and
good enough reason to tolerate systemd, but with no Unity and only
much the same choice of desktops as any other distro, well, there are
reasons to reconsider now.

I deeply wish Ubuntu had followed a more conservative, minimal
direction with Unity 8, such as basing it on Wayland (or even some
other existing display server) instead of trying to build their own as
well.

In years to come I think we will realise what a massive missed
opportunity for all of Linux the cancellation of Unity & its related
technologies was.

> I've got the "systemctl isolate rescue.target" command from that
> article in the LinxUser magazine. They advise to do it when making a
> backup, so there are no more files which are being used by running
> services.

I am at a loss why this does not work. Are you still doing complex
things involving LVM and so on underneath?

All I have to offer is very limited, and can be reduced to 2 suggestions.

[1] Always have a bootable USB key with your current version of your
distro on it. This is the primary troubleshooting method these days,
not single-user mode or relatives thereof. Make sure it's current
enough to be able to mount your root and home filesystems,
_especially_ if you are doing anything exotic.

[2] Familiarize yourself with booting the kernel and initrd from
removable media, but mounting and running root from the hard disk.
This is a real life-saver sometimes.


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