Command to restart in Single User Mode?

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dstranathandstranathan
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I dont mean "hold down the S key". I know that one...



I mean the actual Terminal command to restart the Mac in Single User Mode.





Why? I have a beige G3/333 (ADB) and I use a USB keyboard via a PCI USB card. So I can't use the S key at startup (the USB driver loads too late).





Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    i dont think its a very easy thing to do. i'm pretty sure it requires going in to openfirmware. from there, everything is difficult. i'm pretty sure that you have to find out what hard drive your comp is starting off, what bootloader its using, then manually boot off the hd/bootloader with '-s' appended to the bootloader's name. so like, your hard drive will probably be 'hd'. the bootloader dealie is probably '\\\bxi' (i'm pretty sure thats what it is). so you would then boot with this command: 
    Code:


    boot hd\\bxi -s



    if that doesn't work, you can also try 'boot hd\\bxi-s'. if that doesn't work, you may be booting off another drive, or i could be wrong about the bootloader. if you type 'printenv' from OF, it'll list its environment variables. one of them should be like 'boot-disk' or something, or maybe 'boot command'. it'll look (hopefully) similar to 'hd\\bxi', maybe with something different before the colon, maybe a number right after the colon, or maybe a different bootloader. but, whatever it is, try typing 'boot <boot-command-from-printenv>-s'. failing that, try a space befor the '-s'. else, report back with what problems you had. hopefully someone knows an easier way into single-user mode, but this is the only thing i can think of.
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  • Reply 2 of 3
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    start terminal



    kill -TERM 1 (1 being the process id of init)



    Your mac will now be in single use mode.



    Pity the System V init sequences don't work the same or you could just init S for standalone and init 6 for multi user.



    Dobby.
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  • Reply 3 of 3
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by thuh Freak

    i dont think its a very easy thing to do.



    Actually, I think it is.



    Open the terminal and enter the command:



    sudo nvram boot-args="-s"



    It'll now boot into single-user mode each time you restart. TO change it back to normal booting, enter the command:



    sudo nvram boot-args=""
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