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ECH

N

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RHEL 6 Alternate Boot Methods

Troubleshooting boot failures or system misconfigurations requires practiced knowledge of
the alternate access methods visually outlined here. Use an earlier run level to avoid an
errant one, drop in quick by displacing init, or perform a system rescue as a final recourse.

RHEL 6 Alternate Boot Methods

July 27, 2013

Page 1

T

ECH

N

OTE

RHEL 6 Alternate Boot Methods

Troubleshooting boot failures or system misconfigurations requires practiced knowledge of
the alternate access methods visually outlined here. Use an earlier run level to avoid an
errant one, drop in quick by displacing init, or perform a system rescue as a final recourse.

rc.sysinit

System Initialization

•

Sets the hostname.

•

Mounts the proc and sysfs filesystems.

•

Activates SELinux if it is set to enforcing or permissive.

•

Initializes hardware using modprobe to load device drivers.

•

Starts the udev device manager.

•

Sets kernel parameters as defined in /etc/sysctl.conf.

•

Starts RAID arrays and device mapper for LVM devices.

•

Checks the root filesystem and remounts it as read/write.

•

Enables disk quotas if they are defined.

•

Forces fsck to run if the system was shut down uncleanly or if a

filesystem has exceeded the time or number of mounts since it was
last checked.

•

Mounts the other filesystems defined in /etc/fstab.

•

Starts swapping.

•

Dumps the current contents of the syslog ring buffer into /var/log/dmesg

so it will be available later.

RHEL 6 Alternate Boot Methods

July 27, 2013

Page 2