Booting Debian to single user with SCSI Raid

[Dan Coutu]

I'm having difficulties trying to boot a Debian 3.0 system to single
user on a Compaq ProLiant 380 system. This has a SCSI Raid array
and so drives are named /dev/ida/c0d0p1, /dev/ida/c0d0p2, etc.

I've determined that boot is on c0d0p0 and root is c0d0p1. I've
tried to boot with the Debian install cd (disk 1) and entered

rescue root=/dev/ida/c0d0p1 1

at the boot: prompt but it gives me a kernel panic every time,
claiming that it can't find the device.

I've tried to see if I can stop the lilo boot process to kick it
into single user mode but that doesn't fly either. At one point
in the boot process it allows me to hit Enter to get a shell
prompt. But this turns out to be pretty useless. I can see what
files are available in the ramdisk by using "echo *" and there is
a mount command but of course it also will not mount the drive.

The basic problem I've got is that the system seems to be getting
wedged when it tries to start X. I cannot get an alternate console
window on the thing and the network doesn't startup either. So I
have no way in to modify the init config so that it doesn't try
to start X anymore.

Any ideas are welcome!

Thanks,

Dan