Booting Single User Mode Directly - HP Workstation x2000 Getting Started Manual

Linux System Setup and Recovery
Recovering Your Linux System
standard Linux utility. For example, suppose your root filesystem is in
/dev/hda5. Here is how to mount this partition:
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda5 /foo
Where /foo is a directory that you have created.
Now you can run chroot, fsck, man, and other utilities. At this
point, you are running Linux in single-user mode.
If you do not know the names of your Linux partitions, you can guess;
mounting non-existent partitions will do no harm.

Booting Single User Mode Directly

You may be able to boot single-user mode directly. If your system boots,
but does not allow you to login when it has completed booting, try
rebooting and specifying one of these options at the LILO boot prompt:
LILO boot: linux single
LILO boot: linux emergency
In single-user mode, you computer boots to runlevel 1. Your local
filesystems will be mounted but your network will not be activated. You
get a usable system maintenance shell.
In emergency mode, you are booted into the most minimal environment
possible. The root filesystem will be mounted read-only and almost
nothing will be set up. The main advantage of this over Linux single user
is that your init files are not loaded. If init is corrupted or not
working, you can still mount filesystems to recover data that could be
lost during a re-installation.
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