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Re: how to make Debian less fragile (long and philosophical)



* Michael Stone said:

> > Also, it means you don't have to explain to hold down shift and type
> > init=/bin/sash real quick to your grandmother.  You have to explain to hold
> > down shift and type emergency (though IMHO "recovery" would be better under
> > the don't-panic theory... especialy if you are doing consumer tech support),
> > which is, yes, only a hair better, but better it is.
> 
> Better how? You've made the easiest step of the whole process marginally
> easier by saving four words of the explaination. The process is
> mechanically just about identical. And now the person is sitting in
> front of a prompt like this:
Hello? Are we on Earth, or I'm missing something? Ever had to deal with a
rookie and trying to explain to him how the boot process works and that he
has 2 secods to type "so many strange things"?

> What do they do now? If you can walk them through the procedure to go
> from ">" to a working system, you can just as easily walk them through
> the requirements for getting to ">". I can't even imagine a document
> which can impart enough information to recover a severely damaged system
I can imagine a program to diagnose all the standard stuff - whether it is
in place and whether it works ok and then present the user a nice screen
saying:

The DEBIAN-FAILURE.txt file has been created in the /root directory. Mail
that file to this or that address for assistance or follow the suggested
repair steps to fix your problem. And then a list of suggested steps... A
small expert system...

marek

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