Re: APEX and the it's environment

[Rod Whitby <rod@whitby.id.au>]

Marc Singer wrote:
> I would like to clarify the recovery path for a bad APEX reflash.  If,
> for some reason, they lose power while erasing and rewriting APEX,
> they will have a system that won't boot.  It may be useful to have a
> feature of upslug that can write just the second-stage loader.  This
> way, they can restore their system without performing a complete
> reinstall.

I'm not sure that the download protocol in the first stage bootloader
supports that.  I believe it's either a full-flash rewrite, or a rewrite
from the start of second stage bootloader (i.e. directly after SysConf)
to the end of the flash).

IMHO, what needs to happen is for the Debian installer to have some sort
of recovery filesystem in the flash, so that you can reflash the d-i
image and choose the recovery option (which mounts your disk, and
reflashes your latest kernel and initramfs).

I'm not familiar enough (yet) with the d-i functionality to know how
feasible this is, but the experience of over 2 years and tens of
thousands of Unslung and SlugOS users shows that a recovery filesystem
in flash is a real requirement for a device with no console.

-- Rod