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

Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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?
> 
Yes, fairly standard I think (though I will maybe reconsider now).

> 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.

Simply booting from a Debian 13 USB stick allowed me to fix the fstab
entry and the system boots OK now.

I will probably add a root login. :-)