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[Help] Am I cooked?

eguoeguo Member
edited April 2025 in General

Is there any hope of fixing this? I rebooted and this appeared on the noVNC console. Pressing Enter doesn't do anything cause my root account is locked.

Comments

  • tentortentor Member, Host Rep

    You can inspect the problem from a live cd / rescuesystemcd

    Thanked by 2eguo nullnothere
  • Myb u can try recovery mode?

    Thanked by 1eguo
  • beanman109beanman109 Member, Host Rep, Megathread Squad
  • eguoeguo Member

    @tentor said: You can inspect the problem from a live cd / rescuesystemcd

    The provider told me that they don't allow mounting livecd or any systems for recovery. Guess there's not much to expect from a $10/year deal. Also mb for not creating more frequent backups, that's a lot of user data gone (last backup was month ago).

  • Which provider does not have rescue system in place? name and shame.

  • @eguo said:

    @tentor said: You can inspect the problem from a live cd / rescuesystemcd

    The provider told me that they don't allow mounting livecd or any systems for recovery. Guess there's not much to expect from a $10/year deal. Also mb for not creating more frequent backups, that's a lot of user data gone (last backup was month ago).

    Never done it myself but can you not use GRUB to boot in single user mode or something like that?

    Thanked by 2nullnothere eguo
  • @eguo said:

    @tentor said: You can inspect the problem from a live cd / rescuesystemcd

    The provider told me that they don't allow mounting livecd or any systems for recovery. Guess there's not much to expect from a $10/year deal. Also mb for not creating more frequent backups, that's a lot of user data gone (last backup was month ago).

    Before you destroy it, try to run bash as the init (by editing the boot screen/options via the VNC console) - you can reset the root password and mount the files (and bring up the network or just fix and reboot).

    It looks like /dev/vda1 is clean - so there shouldn't be any data loss.

    Thanked by 3eguo admax n1njax
  • tentortentor Member, Host Rep

    @eguo said: The provider told me that they don't allow mounting livecd or any systems for recovery.

    Name and shame pls

  • eguoeguo Member
    edited April 2025

    @tentor said: Name and shame pls
    @stefeman said: name and shame.

    The provider is Cloudserver.

  • eguoeguo Member
    edited April 2025

    @nullnothere said: Before you destroy it, try to run bash as the init (by editing the boot screen/options via the VNC console) - you can reset the root password and mount the files (and bring up the network or just fix and reboot).

    It looks like /dev/vda1 is clean - so there shouldn't be any data loss.

    I can't find what you are refering to. Recovery mode doesn't work because of the locked root account

  • Booting into recovery mode or using a live CD to fix the fstab file will work.

    Thanked by 1eguo
  • You are storing actual data on a $10/yr vps with no remote backup (supposing those data are important)?

    And you edited fstab with prompts from chatgpt or some qualityless tut?

    Thanked by 1thane
  • eguoeguo Member
    edited April 2025

    @itachikonoha said: And you edited fstab with prompts from chatgpt or some qualityless tut?

    I added a swapfile to the fstab and that must have caused this issue.

    @itachikonoha said: You are storing actual data on a $10/yr vps with no remote backup (supposing those data are important)?

    Data was of slight importance, the time to rebuild the entire thing is worth more than the data tbh. I made a backup on upon setting it all up so I'll be able to get it back without going from scratch, albeit without the data.

  • @eguo said:

    @nullnothere said: Before you destroy it, try to run bash as the init (by editing the boot screen/options via the VNC console) - you can reset the root password and mount the files (and bring up the network or just fix and reboot).

    It looks like /dev/vda1 is clean - so there shouldn't be any data loss.

    I can't find what you are refering to. Recovery mode doesn't work because of the locked root account

    There's a way to edit the kernel parameters in GRUB.
    For instance at the beginning of this blog post: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-set-kernel-boot-parameters-on-linux

    Perhaps try something like this: https://tekneed.com/boot-to-single-user-mode-in-linux-rhel-centos-78/

  • eguoeguo Member
    edited April 2025

    @fredo1664 said: There's a way to edit the kernel parameters in GRUB.

    What parameters would I use? Booting into emergency mode doesn’t help as the root account is still locked. Interesting, I never knew you could do that in GRUB.

  • @eguo said:

    @fredo1664 said: There's a way to edit the kernel parameters in GRUB.

    What parameters would I use? Booting into emergency mode doesn’t help as the root account is still locked. Interesting, I never knew you could do that in GRUB.

    No idea. Last time I messed with single user mode it was to rescue a Linux installation, 20 years or so ago. In my memory though, it worked.

    Thanked by 1eguo
  • eguoeguo Member

    @fredo1664 said:

    @eguo said:

    @fredo1664 said: There's a way to edit the kernel parameters in GRUB.

    What parameters would I use? Booting into emergency mode doesn’t help as the root account is still locked. Interesting, I never knew you could do that in GRUB.

    No idea. Last time I messed with single user mode it was to rescue a Linux installation, 20 years or so ago. In my memory though, it worked.

    Thanks for your help. Unfortunately, single-user mode won’t work for this case.

  • emperoremperor Member
    edited April 2025

    Mby try with chroot if you can mount iso
    https://www.turnkeylinux.org/docs/chroot-to-repair-system
    EDIT i skipped this

    @eguo said: they don't allow mounting livecd

  • @eguo said:

    @nullnothere said: Before you destroy it, try to run bash as the init (by editing the boot screen/options via the VNC console) - you can reset the root password and mount the files (and bring up the network or just fix and reboot).

    It looks like /dev/vda1 is clean - so there shouldn't be any data loss.

    I can't find what you are refering to. Recovery mode doesn't work because of the locked root account

    What you need to do (roughly):

    1. Grub screen - pick the recovery boot option and press "c" to EDIT the command line options.
    2. Change the line that says "linux /boot/vmlinuz... root=... ro single" to include "init=/bin/bash" at the end

    This will essentially run in single user mode but will spawn a bash shell (as root).

    Now you can do the following:

    1. mount -o remount,rw /
    2. passwd (and change the root passwd)
    3. sync
    4. mount -o remount,ro /

    Try to reboot (and it may not work nicely but just force a reboot). This time it should allow you to use your new root password (step 2 above) and do whatever you need.

    All this is based on everything being in /dev/vda1 (which looked clean).

    Hope this helps.

    Reach out here - esp. if your data is valuable so that you don't needlessly clean/destroy files that you need on the VM.

    It is VERY unfortunate that your provider doesn't let you boot into a simple recovery CD to get your files back.

    Thanked by 2eguo n1njax
  • @eguo said:

    @tentor said: Name and shame pls
    @stefeman said: name and shame.

    The provider is Cloudserver.

    @eguo said:

    @tentor said: You can inspect the problem from a live cd / rescuesystemcd

    The provider told me that they don't allow mounting livecd or any systems for recovery. Guess there's not much to expect from a $10/year deal. Also mb for not creating more frequent backups, that's a lot of user data gone (last backup was month ago).

    Da fuck mate @cloudserver

    Thanked by 2admax nghialele
  • @cloudserver Let this man be allowed to mount live cd to fix the booting in easier manner. Then disable it again.

    Thanked by 1nghialele
  • It says they use SolusVM. I have never in my life used a SolusVM VPS that doesn't have some kind of rescue mode.

    Thanked by 1suyadi92
  • eguoeguo Member
    edited April 2025

    @nullnothere said: What you need to do (roughly):

    You saved me mate. I have gotten everything back. Ended up going in and editing the /etc/fstab (there was on extra space that messed it up). Thank you everyone for the suggestions. Closed the ticket with the provider.

    Thanked by 1nullnothere
  • @eguo said:

    @nullnothere said: What you need to do (roughly):

    You saved me mate. I have gotten everything back. Ended up going in and editing the /etc/fstab (there was on extra space that messed it up). Thank you everyone for the suggestions.

    Glad you got everything back.

    I hope you're first taking backups of the VM :p

    Also, get a better provider - you should be able to access much better rescue tools and them not supporting it is a big red flag.

    Thanked by 1eguo
  • eguoeguo Member

    @nullnothere said: I hope you're first taking backups of the VM

    What I just did :)

    Thanked by 1nullnothere
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