On Feb 25, 2012 9:14 AM, "Grant" <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> I need to test a kernel config change on a remote system.  Is there a
> >> safe way to do this?  The fallback thing in grub has never worked for
> >> me.  When does that ever work?
> >
> >
> > You can press ESC in the Grub screen and it will take you to text-only mode.
> >  There, you select an entry, press "e" and edit it.  Press ENTER when you're
> > finished, and then press "b" to boot your modified entry.
> >
> > That way, you can boot whatever kernel you want if the current one doesn't
> > work.
>
> I can't do that remotely though.  I'm probably asking for something
> that doesn't exist.
>
> - Grant
>

Situations like these that made me decide with great conviction to always deploy my servers virtualized, even if the box in question will only host a single VM.

Now, if I lost my intelligence for a couple of seconds and somehow ended up with a VM that's no longer accessible remotely, I just connect to the virtual console.

The flip side? Now I'm getting too daring/careless, and the uptime now drops below my (self-imposed) target of 99.99% :-P

Rgds,