Emergency mode provides the most minimal environment possible and allows you to repair your system even in situations when the system is unable to enter rescue mode. In emergency mode, the system mounts the root file system only for reading, does not attempt to mount any other local file systems, does not activate network interfaces, and only starts few essential services. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, emergency mode requires the root password.
As soon as the boot process starts, press ESC to bring up the GRUB 2 boot prompt. You may need to turn the system off from the control panel and then back on to reach the GRUB 2 boot prompt. You will see GRUB 2 boot prompt – press “e” to edit the first boot option. Find the kernel line linux16
or linuxefi
or linux
(Each menuentry block that represents an installed Linux kernel contains linux on 64-bit IBM POWER Series, linux16 on x86_64 BIOS-based systems, and linuxefi on UEFI-based systems. Then the initrd directives followed by the path to the kernel and the initramfs image respectively) and add systemd.unit=emergency.target
at the end of the line and then press CTRL-X to boot. System will boot and you will see the root prompt. Parameters, 1, s, and single, can be passed to the kernel as well.
Emergency Mode:
systemd.unit=emergency.target
It should look like this one:
–cut
1:
2: linux16 /vmlinuz-3.10.0-229.7.2.e17.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/centos-root ro rd.lvm.lv=centos/root rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet LANG=en_IE.UTF-8 systemd.debug systemd.unit=emergency.target
3: initrd16 /initramfs-3.10-0-229.7.2.el7.x86_64.img
4:
–cut