Bug#457044: test booting ability without actually booting
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On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:08:53AM +0100, tech@mediaforest.net wrote:
> Hello
> Is there a way to test or check the boot process without actually booting ?
> Because rebooting a remotely hosted server without any garanty that it
> will be able to start, is a bit like russian roulet... one time it
> reboots one time it doesn't and if it doesn't nothing else can be done
> except starting the box with a floppy or a live cd to try to find the
> problem's cause which is rather difficult on a distant machine.
I don't think so.
But you can have a look at the alternative ramdisk-generator yaird. It
makes most decisions at ramdisk build time rather than at boot time like
the standard tool, initramfs-tools. The idea is to fail at kernel
instal/update time in case of trouble, rather than creating a ticking
bomb on your system: Usually you have better time to resolve problems
while upgrading packages than when booting the machines.
As an added bonus the generated ramdisks are quite small, as they only
contain enough to reestablish the same root filesystem as was active at
ramdisk build time.
The main backside of this approach is lack of flexibility: The generated
ramdisks deliberately contain the least possible smartness, so you
cannot boot into a different partition or change the boot disk to use a
different controller (into something requiring a different driver). And
build fails if core drivers in the new kernel behave differently from
the currently running one - as is the case when switching from the old
PATA drivers using hd* devices to the new ones using sd* devices, or
when the ACPI video driver recently started promoting itself as having
keyboard functionality. Then you need to temporarily use a different
tool like initramfs-tools.
But when things break, they do so at kernel install time, not at system
boot time.
- Jonas
- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
- Enden er nær: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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