Re: Using a Debian Live image to Invoke a Rescue Shell
On 2/11/2020 1:50 PM, Martin McCormick wrote:
> I don't know if things have changed or I forgot how to do this
> but I want to boot in to a Debian image and not install it but
> invoke a shell so as to clone the hard drive on a Windows machine
> to an external hard drive.
>
> For computer users who are blind, this is a real boon in
> situations like this because most Linux systems these days can be
> made to boot talking by striking S when the OS starts to boot.
>
> You hear, in English first, "Choose your language."
>
> It is, of course, the same setup screen everybody sees so
> one needs to set language, keyboard and general location to get
> started.
>
> If one wants, they can go through the setup and install
> the whole works but, in this case, I am doing this because I had
> a stupid moment and wiped out my Windows home directory
> after a batch file (shell script) got away from me and zapped
> every file in my home directory instead of one folder I was
> trying to zero out. Go ahead and laugh.
>
> The idea is to clone the internal drive and then try
> recovering the deleted files. If something further goes wrong,
> I've still got all the pieces.
>
> I remember doing this same thing a few years ago and
> there is some way to break out of the setup screen and invoke a
> bash-like shell in order to run mount/umount and dd. Since I
> boot it talking, all these applications still talk. After all,
> it's unix and the speech synthesizer was patched in to standard
> output right from boot. I don't remember exactly what special
> key sequence I hit to invoke the shell but need to refresh my
> memory or learn the new procedure.
>
> After learning how to get a relatively new HP Pavilion to
> boot from a usb device, I think that most all the UFI-bootable
> images will boot. The one I just tried which did boot is
> debian-10.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
>
> I've also got
>
> debian-live-10.2.0-amd64-mate.iso and debian-10.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso
>
> The netinst image is only 350 MB while the dvd-1 image is
> about 4 GB. The mate image is around 2.5 GB.
>
> Thanks for any and all constructive suggestions as to how
> to go from Setup to recovery shell.
>
> Martin McCormick
>
Some hints:
https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility#Debian_installer_accessibility
https://grml.org/faq/#toc
HTH.
--
John Doe
Reply to: