Re: Does a bad /etc/fstab entry of a 'spare' drive prevent system booting?

On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 12:41:30 +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>     Cannot open access to cosole, the root account is locked
>     See sulogin(8) man page for more details

Does the system have a root password, or did you leave that blank
during installation, and have been administering it entirely with
sudo the whole time?

Unfortunately, if you leave the root password blank, there is no way
to enter single-user mode during boot -- because you must supply the
root password to do that.  A lot of people are not aware of this,
because it's so rarely needed.

Instead of booting into single-user mode, you can try booting directly
into a root shell (init=/bin/bash and so on).  You should search the
web for full instructions on how to do that, because there are a few
steps involved.

If you ever do get the system back to a working state (defined as having
the root file system mounted read-write), you should consider setting a
root password at that time, so that single-user mode will work.