The following procedures are provided in this section:
How to Boot to a Single-User State to Resolve a Bad root Shell or Password Problem
In the following instances, you must first shut down a system to analyze or troubleshoot booting and other system problems.
Troubleshoot error messages when the system boots.
Stop the system to attempt recovery.
Boot a system for recovery purposes.
Force a crash dump and reboot of the system.
Boot the system with the kernel debugger.
You might need to boot the system for recovery purposes.
The following are some of the more common error and recovery scenarios:
Boot a system to a single-user state to resolve a minor problem, such as correcting the root shell entry in the /etc/passwd file or changing a NIS server.
Boot from the installation media or from an AI server on the network to recover from a problem that is preventing the system from booting or to recover from a lost root password. This method requires you to mount the boot environment after importing the root pool.
x86 only: Resolve a boot configuration problem by importing the root pool. If a problem with the file exists, you do not have to mount the boot environment, just import the root pool, which automatically mounts the rpool file system that contains the boot-related components.