How to Boot Oracle Virtual Machine into Single User Mode

Virtualbox

Single user and rescue modes are final resort when dealing with unbootable Linux systems. Other than this, there could be couple of reasons for which you need to boot your Linux operating system into Single User mode, like password reset, correcting system core files corruptions, running file system check, or editing boot loader files etc.  Booting your system into single user mode needs a bit of technical knowledge of the operating system. Oracle Virtual machine is one of the most widely used free tool to create virtual machines on Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems. Here are detailed steps on how to install and use oracle Virtual Box.

Booting Virtual Machine into Single User mode

If you are using oracle virtual box and need to reset password for any virtual machine or perfume any maintainanace task, here are steps on how to boot your virtual machine into Single User mode.

  1. First of all reset your virtual machine, you can not perform such operations on a running Linux operating system.
  2. Once your Linux virtual machine is booting up, immediately press “e” while it is on the initial boot screen.
  3. It will display a screen with multiple options, press down error key and bring control on second line i.e. the kernel line. Here press “e” again to edit your Linux virtual machine’s boot parameters.
  4. Append “single” at the end of kernel line.
  5. Hit Enter and it will take you back to the main screen, now simply press “b” and your Linux virtual machine will boot into single user mode.
  6. There you go, you are into single user mode now, reset passwords or perform whatever system maintenance tasks you want from here.

Conclusion

Oracle Virtual Machine is extremely easy to use virtualization tool; keeping your virtual machines well managed and backed up is important. Hope you find this article useful, do let us know in comments please.