[PATCH] mkinitrd rescue mode

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 15:16 -0400, Jeffrey Layton wrote:
> Essentially this patch adds some functionality to mkinitrd and nash.
> This adds some tools to the initrd images (busybox and fsck, in
> particular), and adds a function to nash to allow running a shell before
> the switchroot occurs.

This will have a relatively significant impact on the size of the
initramfs and thus on the memory profile.  Although I see it's not
enabled by default, which is at least a plus  It also won't handle
filesystems other than ext3.

> This gives you some ability to troubleshoot booting problems, and gives
> the ability to do some rescue-type work without having to boot to the
> CD. This is a big plus for people that run boxes remotely and don't have
> easy physical access to them.

PXE, copying the pxeboot vmlinuz/initrd into your grub.conf and a few
other things can give you a way to boot rescue mode without having to
put in a CD.  If you're having to run mkinitrd with different command
line arguments, then you've already lost if you've really hosed your
system badly.

Honestly, I'd really rather see improvements to rescue mode than
something like this.

Jeremy