Boot my Gen 4 VPS into single-user mode

When you can't access your server using normal methods like SSH or the control panel (WHM/cPanel or Plesk), you may be able to boot into single-user mode using your Recovery Console.

1. Go to your GoDaddy product page and select Manage for your server.
2. Select the Server Actions dropdown menu, and then Recovery Console.
3. Send Ctrl+Alt+Delete through the console.
   • If you see a selectable menu: Select through the menu to send Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
   • If you don't see a selectable menu and you're using:
     • Mac: Select the focus of the console and then select Ctrl+Option+Cmd+Delete.
     • Windows: You must pass Ctrl+Alt+Delete through your browser's Developer Tools.
       1. In your browser, enable Developer Tools (Chrome, Firefox, or Safari).
       2. Go to the Console tab.
       3. Enter sendCtrlAltDel() at the prompt at the bottom of the Console tab and select Enter.
4. In the Recovery Console, the GRUB menu should quickly appear in the SPICE window. Stop the boot process by selecting the focus of the window and selecting Esc.
5. Select the Up and Down arrow keys to navigate to the entry you wish to edit, and select the E key to edit the GRUB entry (this is not persistent).
6. In the line that starts with linux or linux16, replace ro with rw init=/sysroot/bin/bash.
   
   Required: For Ubuntu servers, update ro to rw in the same place but init=/bin/bash (no sysroot) should be added instead and it must be added to the end of the line after any other kernel commands.
7. Remove any param for console=.
8. Select Ctrl+X.
9. At the prompt, start a new shell with the correct root with chroot /sysroot (unless on Ubuntu).

Once in single-user-mode, you can change the root password, enable direct root SSH access, delete files or disable the firewall. When you’re ready to boot into multi-user mode, you can use reboot –f.

More Info

• Use the Recovery Console.