Total newbie installed RH 7.3 on Toshiba Satellite to learn Linux.

PCMCIA not working at boot time, so I go interactive & skip that initialization and the GUI comes up. Want to drop GUI and to CLI but could not change the config data...seem to have mis-keyed root id/pwd during install. Was told I can fix if in single-user mode. Using GRUB, how do I boot in single-user mode?
Thanks

Perhaps try 'telinit 1' ??

At boot time, did 'c' to get to command line (bash shell)....
TAB shows commands but 'telinit' not one of them. and is rejected...tried 'terminal' but dunno options....
Alll the linux folks around here use LILO - anybody using GRUB?

Think I did something like this in the past; afraid can't remember the details; you'll probably have to look it up in 'info grub' - perhaps the menu.lst or menu.conf or whatever, configuration file, section.

Am not a pundit on this at all, but the thing looks a bit odd:

Is the problem that you haven't got the root, superuser, password? And the machine says you may get round this by using single user mode?

I cannot gainsay the machine, but surely it's a bit odd: It implies superuser priveliges are had by anyone who logs on single user. Bugger all point in the password then??

On the surface you can only reinstall.

No promises here but you may want to try this. When grub comes up highlight the OS you want to boot and then hit "e", for edit, twice. Put the word "failsafe" right after where it points to the root partition. Then hit enter and then "b" for boot.

If that works, you may have to mount the root partition something like this. Try to change password first then do this.

You should get a command line then. Type in passwd and then change the password to one you know.

I'm not sure if that will work but it shouldn't mess up nothing if you try.

No promises though.

Instead of failsafe, putting '1' or 'single' will also work.

Did some searching and single is better. You should already be mounted and just need to change the password. Should also work with lilo.

Thanks for the correction. Never had to do it before.

Later

In the grub boot menu, press a, and add init=/bin/bash to the command line. When you get to the bash prompt, type passwd, and enter the new password (You won't see it as you type). Then reboot, and you should be able to use that password to become root.