To boot Ubuntu 24.04 into rescue mode, you don’t need external tools or third-party ISOs. The GRUB bootloader offers a built-in way to access a minimal recovery shell. Here’s how you can do it manually.
Reboot your system. As soon as your machine starts, hold the Shift key (on BIOS systems) or press Esc repeatedly (on UEFI systems). This should bring up the GRUB menu.
Select the Ubuntu entry and press e on your keyboard to edit the boot parameters. Use the arrow keys to find the line that starts with linux. It usually looks something like this:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-6.8.0-xx-generic root=UUID=xxxx ro quiet splash
Now modify this line. Replace ro quiet splash with rw init=/bin/bash so it looks like:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-6.8.0-xx-generic root=UUID=xxxx rw init=/bin/bash
Once done, press Ctrl + X or F10 to boot.
You’ll now land in a root shell without needing any password. You can now run recovery commands like:
mount -o remount,rw / passwd root fsck /dev/sda1
To reboot normally after finishing your rescue tasks:
exec /sbin/init
If that doesn’t work, use:
reboot -f
Using Recovery Mode from GRUB (Alternative Method)
From the GRUB menu, choose Advanced options for Ubuntu.
Pick the kernel version with the (recovery mode) suffix.
Wait for the Recovery Menu to appear. Select root to drop into a root shell prompt.
You’ll have a read-only root filesystem by default. Remount it as writable:
mount -o remount,rw /
From here, you can do typical rescue tasks, such as repairing packages:
apt update && apt install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
Or reconfigure networking:
dhclient eth0
This method is safer if you want Ubuntu to manage the init process correctly after the rescue session. These steps are especially useful if you’re running a VPS on KVM or Proxmox without access to a rescue ISO. Just make sure you have GRUB access and console access through your VPS panel (e.g. noVNC or serial console).
