Re: making your system robust

[Hans-Peter Jansen]

On Monday 28 June 2004 13:37, Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:
> On Saturday 26 June 2004 22:57, Robert Millan wrote:
> > Yes, when user has two systems configured in menu.lst (say, A and
> > B), and per has set to boot A as default. Sometimes per'll want
> > to boot into B just once, and wants a quick command to do it, no
> > editing of menu.lst.
>
> I don't know what A and B are in reality, but is your concern only
> whether it is one command or not? Why do you hesitate to modify
> menu.lst by your script?

Well, assume A is an old kernel and B is a new (freshly installed) 
one, and the system is a dedicated root server, located at some 
provider, thus no physical access.

Now, when rebooting, you will want to boot once into B, and if that 
fails, automatically fall back to A (hopefully, the system isn't 
frozen on boot, or at least some remote reset means exist..)

See, you will want to boot B once, and if things went right, make B 
the default, but if things go mad, you won't have a chance to 
intervene: in this case, most likely the provider will restore some 
default image, and you have to start __all__ over again... :-(

OTOH, people want grub on such systems, since it removes at least 
_one_ point of failure, compared to lilo. I'm sure, I don't need to 
sell you this one ;-)

Pete