> You don't really get that far if your root FS is unmountable.
Hmm... if it truly can't be mounted, then the system can't read
`/etc/passwd` and then whether there is a root account or not makes
no difference.
In the "usual" case where the root FS is readable but fsck found errors,
then indeed the normal boot steps will require a root password, but you
can normally circumvent this with `init=/bin/sh`.
If this fails because `/bin/sh` is affected by the filesystem's
inconsistency, then you need to resort to the initrd's debug shell,
e.g. with something `break=local` IIRC.
Of course, the existence of a root password can occasionally be handy
for things like `rsync` (strictly speaking, you can probably arrange
for rsync to first log in as a normal user and then use `sudo`, but
it requires a fair bit of fiddling, IIRC).
Stefan
