Early Shell Access

In some cases, the system may fail to boot due to the failure of a critical service. If this happens, you can follow these steps to diagnose the issue with systemd services:

  1. Increase the systemd log level using the previously mentioned option, and load the image.

  2. Reboot the system. As expected, you will encounter a boot failure.

  3. Force reboot the machine. When the machine starts again, interrupt the bootloader and add the following to the bootloader command line:

    rescue systemd.setenv=SYSTEMD_SULOGIN_FORCE=1

    To modify the bootloader command, select the boot option and then press the e key.

  4. You will now enter an early shell environment. Here, you can access the logs from the previous boot using journalctl. The logs will help you identify any service failures.