Linux – Configure Suse Enterprise Linux to automatically boot into Failsafe mode

failsafelinuxsles

We have a server which has trouble booting normally. The server is an HP Proliant DL380G6, running SuSe Enterprise Linux 10 Service Pack 2. When we try to boot it, it goes into some sort of disk check. The disk check gets stuck half way through and never completes, meaning that we never get through to the actual OS. Rebooting causes the same issue.

When we try to boot into failsafe mode, the disk check issue goes away. Obviously this is not a long term fix, but for the short term, this does give us a functioning server. However, there are times when we need to perform an unattended reboot of the box (for example if the power goes out).

Is there a way of configuring our server so that it boots into failsafe mode by default?

Thanks,
Rik

Best Answer

If you are booting into fail safe mode by choosing the GRUB entry that says "fail safe", you can do it by editing GRUB configuration.

You can tell GRUB which entry to boot by default.

If you find a line like this in /boot/grub/menu.lst, you can change it to point to the needed entry.

default         0

In the same file, you can find the entries for all operating systems (including the fail safe entry). Note that the indexing starts at 0.