I also did the 8 steps from the page linked in the step 1 of the above link.
Now I login to this new root…and can’t do anyhing else. This comment from the above link summarizes my situation…
dimgs Aug '19 Now, when I boot it asks the root password, which I set with the above instructions. After that, I put the new root password and I am to the shell as root. What I should do to bring the GUI and login to my desktop? I tried the “startx” command, but nothing happened.
…I will continue troubleshooting as I want to recover some files from this installation - otherwise I would have just installed Fedora again. I haven’t used my Fedora laptop for more than two weeks, typing this from Windows.
By default, Fedora Workstation installations do not have an enabled root (no password is set). As a workaround, you can boot with parameter systemd.debug-shell=1 and then you can switch to tty9 to find a root shell, no authentication required. Here you can troubleshoot the failed boot, or even passwd root if you want to enable root.
@znam, just so you’d better understand the problem you’re having.
When Fedora can’t boot normally (that’s the problem number one – the root of your troubles), it tries to launch an emergency console. In some cases it can’t do so (problem number two) – which makes it harder to troubleshoot the first / real issue.
You’ve managed to resolve problem number two and are able to login to emergency console. Now we need to understand why Fedora can’t boot in the first place. Please post here any error messages you see before you get dumped to emergency console (maybe as screenshots).
Also @youssefmsourani provided some general steps which can help in your case (step number 2 with fsck being my favorite) – have you tried them?
Hi everyone,
I have tried to bridge this problem by attempting to install Fedora once again (and once again) and using USB stick to boot. Now I have several partitions and still using USB flash drive to boot. It is a complete mess.
The main reason for this is, in my opinion, that Fedora installation comes, WITHOUT WARNING, without admin access. That is unacceptable. On the other hand, I also can only blame myself for not carefully studying everything and assuming that modern OS software is ‘plug and play’ - it is not.
I am looking for a good book on learning partitioning in Fedora and understanding how I can resolve the mess I created. I just downloaded v 34. I don’t have where to install it as my 1TB drive is useless, I am just using the flash drive.
I will post more details on how my partitions look in my next message, probably tomorrow.
Thanks everyone for your help and my big suggestion is - give admin rights to users! Don’t let them be helpless when issues happen!