Bug#457044: test booting ability without actually booting
On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 11:03:33AM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 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.
yaird breaks on every upgrade and has several troubles.
please don't advertise it as it doesn't help at all.
> 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.
they lack several things and aren't that small.
kexec is worth a look. kexec allows you to bypass bios,
but test on your local box first.
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