Description of problem: I did a fresh install of Fedora Core. When I booted, I edited the grub kernel line to add "nogui single" and then booted. As I wathced the boot process, I could see the message for switching to runlevel 5 and booting continuing. I immediately did a ctl-alt-delete to reboot (I did not want the system starting before I did some things). I then again edited the grub kernel line to add "nogui single" and again booted. This time (and every time after that I specify single) the system went into single user mode. How reproducible: Yes, but it is a real pain -- it seems to take a fresh install and the first boot after install to have the problem.
There's nothing specific about the first boot that should cause it to ignore command line parameters - firstboot runs well after it chooses a default runlevel. Perhaps grub is screwy?
Did you maybe hit esc instead of enter after adding command line arguments?
I don't feel like screwing up the system that I first tested on so I will be trying this on a laptop I want to put fedora on. It will not be exactly the same but I believe it will have the problem. I actual saw this problem some time ago (either the RHL 8 or RHL 9 beta cycle). At that time, it seemed to be ignoring "single" every time and going right into firstboot. This time when I did the ctl-alt-delete and reboot and single "worked" the second time is when I got interested. Any specific information I can get you to respond to NEEDINFO? I would not be pushing this except that I believe there is a real need sometimes to get into single user mode the very first time you boot the installed system. One of the tests I will run is to let the boot process which should have gone into single user mode but instead when into runlevel 5 and look at /proc/cmdline.
The code that determines what run level you go into and whether to start rhgb is 100% independent of firstboot, and does not care how many times you boot the system. Hence, this sounds like a 'can't happen' thing at first glance.
Oops ... pilot error! OK, I would swear that I had seen this "problem" with an earlier release but that was with the same "pilot" so I may have done something stupid like spelled "single" as "singel" or whatever and never noticed. I ran three separate fresh installs and inital boots with "nogui single" specified -- one on real hardware workstation, one on a laptop and one as a vmware guest (where I first "noticed" the "problem") ... they all worked this time so I must assume a pilot error. I did not mention vmware initially because of the aversion of Red Hat folks to look at vmware problems and I just "knew" I had seen the problem on real hardware. For vmware, I need to get in and fixup the XFree86 support/configuration so that firstboot, etc. work OK right from the start. Anyway, this bug report is now closed.