Tips & Tricks with the kernel cmdline

This document summarizes the different boot parameters that can be passed on the Linux kernel command line. Not just limited to Finit.

debug, or --debug
Enable debug mode. The former syntax also enable kernel debug, and the latter only in Finit. Debug messages are printed to the console until a syslog daemon has been started.
init=/bin/sh
Bypass system default init and tell kernel to start a shell. Note, this shell is very limited and does not support signals and has no job control. Recommend using, and modifying, rescue mode instead.
panic=SEC
By default the kernel does not reboot after a kernel panic. This setting will cause a kernel reboot after SEC seconds.
quiet
Suppress kernel logging to console, except for warnings and errors.
rescue
Start Finit rescue mode; no network, no fsck of file systems in /etc/fstab, no /etc/rc.local, no runparts. The configuration is read from /etc/rescue.conf, can be modified by the operator.
single, or S
Single user mode, runlevel 1, in Finit. Useful to debug problems with the regular runlevel. All services and TTYs in [1] will be started, so a tty [1] @console nologin configuration presents you with a root console without login.
splash
Display Finit splash screen with progress at bootstrap and shutdown.

For more on kernel boot paramaters, see the man page bootparam(7).

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