Oops I need runlevel 1

Question

So I have a bug in a script in my init.d directory and bottom line...I can't completely boot the pi.

How can I boot into runlevel 1 (single user mode) so I can fix the bug?

Answer 1

That's not exactly a way to enter runlevel 1, but there is "safe mode" boot option in raspberry Pi firmware. To enable it, you have to insert a jumper between pins 5 and 6 on P1 (GPIO) header when booting.

If you do this, bootloader will ignore the config.txt file (except from avoid_safe_mode option which can be used to disable this feature) and will try to boot kernel_emergency.img (if available) instead of kernel.img.

Default kernel_emergency.img has special emergency initramfs build in and it will boot to this busybox based OS so that you can fix the problems in your OS manually (or change kernel boot parameters to run runlevel 1 at next boot). Remember to run sync before powering down since reboot or shutdown commands may not work.

Answer 2

If you want to access and change SD card Linux partition files from Windows you can do it with one of these utilities.

Answer 3

I couldn't find a way to force the pi to boot into runlevel 1 so I fired up a fedora live disk I had laying around and used the terminal to remove the script in question from the /etc/init.d directory