x86 fail-safe vs single user mode

[Roberto Ullfig]

I have an x4500 that uses GRUB to boot. By default it has a fail-safe
boot mode listed in the GRUB menu, which looks to be different than
single-user.

fail-safe:

kernel /boot/multiboot kernel/unix -s
module /boot/x86.miniroot-safe

single-user:

kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot -s
module /platform/i86pc/boot_archive

Basically, I just want to know the difference and when installing
patches should we be doing that from fail-safe or single-user?

[Tim Bradshaw]

On Aug 20, 5:23 pm, Roberto Ullfig <rull...@uic.edu> wrote:

> Basically, I just want to know the difference and when installing
> patches should we be doing that from fail-safe or single-user?

Failsafe boots it from some ramdisk (the miniroot) which I think aims
to have enough tools to, say, do a recovery of some kind. single-user
boots it from the real disk. So use single-user.