How to Activate and use rescue mode on a VPS

Rescue mode is a tool provided by Truehost Cloud for you to boot your VPS into a temporary operating system. You can then access your system in order to run diagnostic tasks and resolve various issues such as:

1. Resetting your user password to regain access
2. Diagnosing network problems
3. Repairing a broken operating system or kernel related issues.
4. Fixing a misconfigured software firewall
5. Testing disk performance
6. Perform data backup.

Access your Truehost Client Area Portal

1 Go to Services -> Click on Your VPS server ->

2. Click on the Rescue mode Icon

3. Enter your desired root password and click enable rescue.

Login to the server using the set details

root@11.22.33.44

Once you are connected, you will notice you are now logged in to the server in rescue mode as below.

root@rescue

Next, verify the attached disks with this command:

lsblk

The result will look similar to the following example output:

root@rescue:~# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda 254:0 0 2G 0 disk
└─vda1 254:1 0 2G 0 part /
vdb 254:16 0 30G 0 disk
├─vdb1 254:17 0 29G 0 part
└─vdb2 254:18 0 999M 0 part

In rescue mode above, vda is the rescue mode disk and vda1 is the primary rescue partition mounted on / partition.

In this example, the primary disk of the VPS is vdb and the system partition is vdb1 (indicated by the size).

Mount this partition with the following command:

mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt/

Your files are now accessible from the mount point /mnt:

cd /mnt

ls

You should then see your file system displayed:

bin boot dev etc home lib lib32 lib64 libx32 lost+found media mnt opt proc root run sbin snap srv sys tmp usr var

Navigate to home folder for your files

Navigate to /var/lib/yourdatabases

Before you can manipulate this partition however, you need to open it for write access which you can do with the following command:

chroot /mnt

In our case, I’ll generate a backup of lint_whmcs database.

tar -cvzf lint_whmcs_backup.tar.gz lint_whmcs/

Move it to home or a remote server.

mv lint_whmcs_backup.tar.gz /mnt/home/

Once you have completed your actions in rescue mode, reboot the VPS again in the regular mode

NOTE: For most changes you make to your server via SSH while in rescue mode, you will need to mount the system partition.

IMPORTANT :

Do not confuse the / directory with the /root directory. The /root directory is the home directory of the root user. The /root directory is sometimes referred to as slash root to distinguish it from the root directory.