Re: [gentoo-user] blocks to fix

[BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com>]

That might work for some scenerios; however, it wouldn't likely for the recent e2fsprogs-lib/ss/com_err fiasco because the booting system would be unable to execute mount and wait until the user either entered the root password for maintenance mode or pressed "CTRL+D" to continue. (Yep, I hosed one of my systems over that issue!) So the system would not be either in a kernel panic nor able to run /etc/conf.d/local.start. So it wouldn't reboot without user intervention.

In most cases that would likely work though.

Ben



----- Original Message ----
From: Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:44:53 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] blocks to fix

Mark Knecht writes:

> Having a second install is a reasonable idea. I suppose I can probably
> install that remotely but I cannot test it remotely (AFAIK) without
> someone handy to choose the right line in the grub menu...

You can use the grub-set-default command to boot another than the default 
entry:

default saved
fallback 0
...
title System A
kernel (hd0,0)/A

title System B
kernel (hd0,1)/B


System A is your default system. When you have installed B, activate the 2nd 
entry with "grub-set-default 1" (grub counts from 0). Put something 
like "sleep 600 & reboot" into B's /etc/conf.d/local.start that will make 
it reboot after a while, unless you are able to log in from remote and kill 
the sleep command.
Now reboot. B will be started. Try to log in. If it fails, wait a little, 
and try again. This time A should be up again.

Unless you have a kernel panic, and the system is just halted. Does anyone 
know if there is something one could do about that?

    Wonko