How to go into Single User mode when Password is requested in RedHat
Sometimes you don't have the password when P2V'ing or just lost password, and adding a "Single" at the end of the kernel line doesn't work, and it still gives you a screen like this:
If you press Control-D, then the system just continues boot.
This is how you get past it:
Single User Mode when asked for root password for maintenance
1. Go to the VM Console (or Physcal Server console)
2. Reboot your machine; press 'Esc' repeatedly until you get to the GRUB menu; you will get something like this:
3. Press Enter, and select the kernel line (#2)
3. press 'e' to edit; Edit the line to get rid of quiet and splash; change 'ro' to 'rw'; and add 'init=/bin/bash'. The line should look something like this:
grub edit> kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/vg_root-lv_root rw init=/bin/bash
Then press "Enter" and then "B" (to boot) then it will give you a root prompt:
And that's it. Of course you could also boot from a ISO file or a DVD, then mount the filesystem and change the password or whatever else you need to do, but this is quicker.
