linux - skip init scripts - boot freezes at "setting system clock"

I have a debian system that's freezing in the boot sequence at "Setting system clock". Several sites I looked at recommended changing the init scripts to disallow hardware access to the clock. But, I can't boot! Is there a parameter I can pass to the kernel at boot so that it will skip init scripts?

Answer

There are two main ways of booting in a maintenance mode. Both require editing the kernel boot line in the bootloader (e.g., grub). At the end of the line that looks like kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro, you can add:

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  single to skip starting most services (this boots into runlevel 1; writing 1 instead of single is synonymous); or

  
  


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  init=/bin/sh to skip absolutely everything after the mounting of the root filesystem and run a shell as the single process. This is an extremely minimal environment. Chances are that you'll want to first mount -t proc proc /proc (lots of things depend on /proc being available) and mount -o remount,rw / (the root filesystem starts out mounted read-only).

  
  

Since your problem seems to be with the hwclock invocations, which are part of the system boot, single won't help, you need to go all the way to init=/bin/sh.

Alternatively, you could boot a live CD (or USB stick) and repair your system from there.