On Mon, 16 Mar 2020 at 21:58, home user <mattisonw@comcast.net> wrote:
Let's go back to the core problems and need.

The problems:
1. Fedora Live (made last week, on a USB-2 stick) sometimes freezes
shortly after the boot is done.  That is, when I'm typing or scrolling,
the display stops changing, the cursor does not respond to the
trackball, and nothing happens when I type. The only thing I can do is a
hard reset.

This can be hardware or a driver issue.  Graphics is a prime suspect.
Live distros are useful for checking hardware compatibility.   

To narrow the problem down to your graphics card and associated drivers,
you need to remove the card and use onboard graphics.   

If you still have the problem using onboard graphics, try an older Fedora
Live version or Ubuntu.   You can also remove all non-essential hardware 
additions, or swap in substitutes (starting with keyboard and mouse).
 
2. Sometimes, when shutting down Fedora Live (normally or via hard
reset), the CPU fan really surges for a while.  Then bios displays a
warning that the cpu is getting too hot.  This is why I've been trying
to check hardware.

Does this still happen using onboard graphics?  Does it happen using 
other live distros.  I suggest Ubuntu 18.04 LTS because it is very 
popular so may have other users with the same hardware.   
 
3. Often, when I want to boot from a bootable USB-2 stick, I'm not given
that option.  The boot process goes directly to the normal grub menu. 
No invitation and no time to hit F2 or the delete key to enter the bios
display.

If you have Windows 8 or10 installed, it has a "fast boot" mode that bypasses
the normal boot process (using "hibernation"):

https://askubuntu.com/questions/452071/why-disable-fast-boot-on-windows-8-when-having-dual-booting

  
 
These are serious problems, not cosmetic issues, personal preference
issues, or minor inconveniences.  I'm a little surprised and concerned
that no one has said anything about these, though 1 and 2 were noted
both in this thread and in my previous thread.

Conclusion and need:
It will be very difficult and time consuming (but not impossible) to use
Fedora Live to diagnose and fix certain kinds of problems.  Fedora Live
is not a good tool for this.  Thus my desire for a hard drive
rescue/emergency/dracut (or whatever it should be called) boot option in
the grub menu.

Rescue boot is intended to deal with configuration problems or a failed/corrupt
disk.   It is not suitable for hardware diagnostics.   Some vendors do provide
bootable diagnostic DVD's.  As I mentioned previously, certain PC models have 
well known failure modes that can be found via Google.

 

Questions:
1. Has anyone experienced problem #1 above that I'm having with Fedora
Live?  If no, what am I doing wrong, or not doing that I should be
doing?  If yes, it's good to know so I really have good justification
for submitting a bug.

You need to rule out hardware.  If your system works properly using a different
Live distro, then a bug report is in order.   I just replaced an elderly name
brand core i7 desktop where some binary blobs are no longer included in 
distros due to lack up upstream maintenance.  With a bit of manual configuration
it ran Fedora 31 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, but the core i5 replacement is 
smaller, quieter, much faster, uses a fraction of the power, and can be 
expected to run reliably.
 
2. Has anyone experienced problem #2 above that I'm having with Fedora
Live?  My sense is that the problem is most likely with Fedora Live, but
before making any "accusations", I thought it best to first check my
hardware.  My hardware seems fine.  If no one else is seeing this
trouble, then what else should I check? Otherwise, I believe I have
really good reason to submit a bug.

"Seems fine" is not a diagnostic test.   Your symptoms suggest a hardware/
driver problem.   
 
3. My sense is that problem #3 above can't be an OS defect. Does the
system have to be off for a certain minimum amount of time to "forget"
something from the last period of time being up, or from the last boot?
Otherwise, I'm really lost on this problem.  Any suggestions?

Blame Windows.    There have been instances where an OS loads 
firmware that prevents normal reboot until the system has been 
powered off.

I believe it makes the most sense to get the questions, bug submissions,
and corrections to what I'm doing done first.  Then we can go back to
gettinga hard drive rescue/emergency/dracut (or whatever it should be
called) boot option installed and added to the grub menu.

With hardware that has been around for years, there is good chance that
others have encountered the same problems.   If you can narrow things 
down (by disabling Windows fastboot and using onboard graphics), then 
Google may provide useful answers.

--
George N. White III