On 7/26/22 16:39, Chris Murphy wrote:
OK thanks for the responses so far. I have followup questions for
everyone, even if you didn't previously respond.
Do you think a graphical rescue environment would be helpful in troubleshooting system
problems?
No, a graphical environment implies too many things have to be working (gfx drivers
etc.),
rescue should be doable in minimal environments (root shell, possibly run in an initrd
rescue image).
Do you think a graphical rescue environment using volatile storage,
would be useful? i.e. similar to a Live boot, by default no changes to the system or Live
user environment would be written to persistent media; e.g. Firefox cache files and
history, or even installing software, would be entirely lost on reboot from this graphical
rescue environment
What would this be useful for?
Sort of using another computer without touching the broken one.
Do you think a mechanism for system snapshots and rollbacks would be
useful in troubleshooting system problems?
No. We should stay away from all the bad ideas done elsewhere.
Do you think a snapshot+rollback mechanism would be more or less
useful than a graphical rescue environment, for troubleshooting system problems?
Both are minimally useful.
The best way to debug problems is booting to a minimal root shell,
with mounted filesystems and network access to get packages.
It used to be "1" or "init=/bin/bash" in grub.
Today it is complicated:
- grub hides itself and is difficult to interrupt
- UEFI gets in the middle
- secure boot is in the middle
- proper system operation requires many things: systemd, NetworkManager, ...
- anything graphical requires daemons left and right: dbus, gconf, key agents, ...
Despite all this, booting a USB rescue image is still the ultimate
way to fix things (especially with chroot).
Regards.
--
Roberto Ragusa mail at robertoragusa.it