Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2012 14:10:29 -0700 From: Devin Teske <devin.teske@fisglobal.com> To: Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org> Cc: Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com>, =?iso-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>, Devin Teske <dteske@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New Boot Loader Menu Message-ID: <DA8D6935-039D-4228-ABB6-59F43398D2F8@fisglobal.com> In-Reply-To: <5071EAB2.4060003@freebsd.org> References: <0655B56F-AD43-402B-872C-568378E650F9@fisglobal.com> <86k3v21qsx.fsf@ds4.des.no> <3EB58454-7820-43C4-911E-7DEF2D02C880@fisglobal.com> <86fw5q15f9.fsf@ds4.des.no> <D61F7ED5-76C3-453D-878A-F0C678198C87@fisglobal.com> <A5FE9B8C-742B-45E0-85EB-1092A7D58D04@gmail.com> <5071EAB2.4060003@freebsd.org>
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On Oct 7, 2012, at 1:48 PM, Julian Elischer wrote: > On 10/7/12 12:52 PM, Garrett Cooper wrote: >> I'd like to see sketches or a general idea of what you have in mind befo= re investing too much time in a direction that doesn't bear a lot of fruit.= I'm sure others here agree. > It'd be interesting to see if we could get a boot loader that has an opti= on to boot a backup > image, or maybe off network.. I know that by the time we got this far we = are supposed to be > beyond that, but who knows what is actually possible. >=20 > I'd love to see a picoBSD image available for booting in emergencies. Whe= ther in it's own partition, > or just a file in the root partition (or wherever) that can be loaded as = a root filesystem. > having the ability to recover from really bad screwups is why you need th= e menus in the first place usually. >=20 > not sure what is really possible. >=20 *huge smiles* Have you been talking to old VICORians about what I've been working on here= ? haha It's like you stole a page out of my playbook. I've been working on this for years (slowly making the infrastructure chang= es in DruidBSD to accommodate this, and slowly trying to work that code bac= k into FreeBSD). NOTE: DruidBSD at it's core (when it's not being re-purposed as a multi-med= ia FreeBSD universal installation platform) is actually smaller than PicoBS= D. In the past month, I used DruidBSD maybe 5-dozen times to rescue an unboota= ble system. Which system? the system I was developing the boot loader on (h= aha). Everytime I would make a mistake (and subsequently end up in BTX halt, pani= c free guard1, or other fatal condition), I simply reboot, boot DruidBSD, a= nd within 3 keystrokes I have my system mounted read-write with all the too= ls I need to fix it. In less than 20 seconds, I've often corrected my mista= ke and have a working system again. NOTE: You can try it out yourself. I made publicly-available the latest ver= sion recently as part-of the FreeBSD-9.0_Druid-1.0b57.iso up on druidbsd.sf= .net (boot the ISO, select "freebsd", then select "Interactive Disk Repair = Shell" and answer guided questions to create a working environment copaceti= c to fixing even the worst situations). It even has a mode where it will st= art SSHD from the boot media so that *someone-ELSE* can log in remotely and= fix your non-bootable system (which we've had to use before -- it's a real= life-saver when someone in Manila for example has no FreeBSD knowledge but= can at least boot a system with a CD and answer some basic questions). Here's a screenshot that shows that DruidBSD has had the ability to swap ou= t the root filesystem image with a "rescue image" for nearly a decade (this= one screenshot taken 3 years ago): http://twitpic.com/16spp2 --=20 Devin _____________ The information contained in this message is proprietary and/or confidentia= l. If you are not the intended recipient, please: (i) delete the message an= d all copies; (ii) do not disclose, distribute or use the message in any ma= nner; and (iii) notify the sender immediately. In addition, please be aware= that any message addressed to our domain is subject to archiving and revie= w by persons other than the intended recipient. Thank you.
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