Hi Chris, Thanks. You're the only response so far to that post. Symptoms are consistently the same for all 3 commands (init 1 - telinit 1 - shutdown now). Happens at least on Ubuntu 14.4 and Mint 17. Does not happen on Ubuntu 10.4. Screen briefly flashes. Screen goes totally black. Power remains on. No disk activity. No response to ctrl-d ctrl-alt-del ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-alt-F2, etc. Hitting reset button or power cycling results in a reboot that includes a disk integrity check. Darnedest thing. First time I think I've ever seen basic Linux commands that didn't work. Looking forward to learning the cause/solution. Otherwise I'll have to learn how to create a GRUB menu and add a persistent (remains after kernel upgrades) "boot to single user" option. Regards, Carl Turney Bayswater On 06/09/14 09:59, Chris Samuel wrote:

On Fri, 5 Sep 2014 10:32:46 AM Carl Turney wrote:

...

Systems consistently crash when I give any of these commands (in Ubuntu 14.04.1 and Mint 17)...

I don't have a system to test it on so can you describe the crash please?

thanks, Chris

On Sat, 6 Sep 2014 10:41:46 AM Carl Turney wrote:

Thanks. You're the only response so far to that post.

Eep. So I tested at work on my laptop there when I powered it up for the day and...

Symptoms are consistently the same for all 3 commands (init 1 - telinit 1 - shutdown now).

...that's expected, they're all effectively synonyms (or they should be)...

Happens at least on Ubuntu 14.4 and Mint 17.

Does not happen on Ubuntu 10.4.

Screen briefly flashes. Screen goes totally black. Power remains on. No disk activity.

I get the same behaviour here up to this point too, just a black screen. This is Intel graphics so no nasty binary drivers to complicate the issue.

No response to ctrl-d ctrl-alt-del ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-alt-F2, etc. Hitting reset button or power cycling results in a reboot that includes a disk integrity check.

For me CTL-ALT-DEL does work, it drops back to the graphical login for a second then reboots cleanly. But yes, it appears shutdown to single user mode doesn't work there. Interestingly systemd on CentOS7 interprets "shutdown now" as "poweroff" whereas "telinit 1" works as you'd expect it to. cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

On 08.09.14 20:38, Andrew McGlashan wrote:

On 5/09/2014 10:32 AM, Carl Turney wrote:

...

Anyone: Any suggestions about the new versions of Ubuntu and Mint crashing when trying to shift from multi-user mode down to single-user mode?

(Note: Am NOT talking about booting into runlevel 1.)

What distinction is supposed to exist here? At http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SysVinit_to_Systemd_Cheatsheet under "Runlevels/targets ", we see: Sysvinit Runlevel Systemd Target Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1, s, single runlevel1.target, rescue.target Single user mode. which is pretty bog-traditional, at least to my eye.

...

Systems consistently crash when I give any of these commands (in Ubuntu 14.04.1 and Mint 17)...

init 1 telinit 1 shutdown now

... in spite of documentation saying I can do those very things.

Looks like a systemd situation to me.....

http://dynacont.net/documentation/linux/Useful_SystemD_commands/

It's a good thing it's easy to alias commands, since: $ systemctl list-units --type=target isn't much of an improvement on: $ who -r # Good from solaris to ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, over several # decades. $ runlevel Erik -- At the Victorian [era] version of the X Factor, the talent show format was stripped right back to its bare bones. Just six contestants and a stage, each and every man singing his heart out to impress the judges. While carrying a pig. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28982145

On Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Erik Christiansen wrote:

...

http://dynacont.net/documentation/linux/Useful_SystemD_commands/

It's a good thing it's easy to alias commands, since:

$ systemctl list-units --type=target

isn't much of an improvement on:

$ who -r # Good from solaris to ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, over several # decades.

$ runlevel

Progress! You must eat your progress! -- Tim Connors