Comment by jitl

You can boot regular macOS directly to a root terminal in “Single User Mode”. This was easier on Intel macs of yore but is also possible on M1+

Below content from https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/28/startup-modes-for-m1-mac...

Launch 1 True Recovery, open Terminal, then run “bputil -a” (without the quotes) to downgrade system security and allow for more boot arguments. You might need to restart after this step.

Then, run [nvram boot-args=”-s”] (without the square brackets). Restart to launch Single User Mode.

Once in Single User Mode, run these commands (in the following order) to mount the root volume group:

1. mount -P 1

2. /usr/libexec/init_data_protection

3. mount -P 2

Future restarts will always launch Single User Mode first. To stop launching Single User Mode, run [nvram boot-args=“”] (without the square brackets).

To restore your system to full security, run “bputil -f” (without the quotes). If you choose to run that command in macOS, prefix “sudo” to the beginning.