SULOGIN(8) System Administration SULOGIN(8)
NAME
sulogin - Single-user login
SYNOPSIS
sulogin [options] [tty]
DESCRIPTION
sulogin is invoked by init when the system goes into single user mode.
The user is prompted:
Give root password for system maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):
sulogin will be connected to the current terminal, or to the optional tty device that can be specified on the
command line (typically /dev/console).
After the user exits the single-user shell or presses control-D at the prompt, the system will continue to
boot.
OPTIONS
-e, --force
If the default method of obtaining the root password via getpwnam(3) from the system fails, manually
examine /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to get the password. If they are damaged or nonexistent, sulogin
will start a root shell without asking for a password.
Only use the -e option if you are sure the console is physically protected against unauthorized access.
-p, --login-shell
Specifying this option causes sulogin to start the shell process as a login shell.
-t, --timeout seconds
Specify the maximum amount of time to wait for user input. By default, sulogin will wait forever.
-h, --help
Print a help message.
-V, --version
Output version.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
sulogin looks for the environment variable SUSHELL or sushell to determine what shell to start. If the envi‐
ronment variable is not set, it will try to execute root's shell from /etc/passwd. If that fails it will fall
back to /bin/sh.
AUTHOR
sulogin was written by Miquel van Smoorenburg for sysvinit and later ported to util-linux by Dave Reisner and
Karel Zak.
AVAILABILITY
The sulogin command is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive ⟨ftp://
ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.
util-linux Jul 2012 SULOGIN(8)
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