[HowTo] Reach a minimal system

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Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆

Even in the case your system requires fixing in order to work again, there is usually still a way to reach a usable mode in order to acquire system information and logs. By usable, we mean a system in which you can at least access files and input commands, and not necessarily a graphical desktop: [HowTo] Use the terminal / TTY

You have various options:

- Booting normally

- Accessing TTY with Ctrl+Alt+F2

- Booting without login manager

  • At the Grub menu, make your selection and hit E to edit the kernel boot line.
    :star: If the Grub is hidden, tap Esc or Shift on boot to make it appear.
  • Append the runlevel 3 to the kernel boot line:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-X.XX-x86_64 root=UUID=XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX rw 3
  • Resume boot with F10

- Accessing a terminal from a liveUSB

  • If you have a Manjaro liveUSB, open a terminal and access your installation with:
manjaro-chroot -a
  • If you have a liveUSB for another distribution, open a terminal and access your installation following this guide: chroot - ArchWiki
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I’m not sure if I should Edit the post, or just write this comment, or both. :slight_smile:

To make it clear that users are using systemd, I think the above line should be changed to:

  • Append runlevel 3 to the kernel boot line, which corresponds to the systemd target multi-user.target, or append systemd.unit=multi-user.target to the kernel boot line.
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Considering such boot modification is (usually) needed for otherwise unbootable systems, i’d rather put suggestions involving less typing, so that it is less error-prone.
The association with systemd target is relevant though, i’ll add a link for documentation sake. :+1:

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For Wayland users:

I’d suggest changing Ctrl+Alt+F2 to Ctrl+Alt+F3 as, at least on the systems I own or manage, TTY1 is used for the GUI and I’m also presented with a GUI login screen on TTY2.

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It’s not just Wayland. I’m on X11 KDE Plasma and that now uses TTY2 (TTY1 just shows boot messages). This is something that has changed recently, I’ve seen other people mention it, but I don’t know why or exactly when.

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This was an old thread, more than one year old.

What is your problem?
and it should be it’s own post/thread - not just appended here

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It’s a [HowTo] that is linked to near the top of the sticky [HowTo] Find system information that gets posted many times a day to new users. Might be a good idea if it was up-to-date and correct.

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This thread is still open and searchable.

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Exactly.