Re: Just an offer

Stevie O (stevie@qrpff.net)
Fri, 17 May 2002 17:52:35 -0400


At 05:30 PM 5/17/2002 +0100, Athanasius wrote:

> It strikes me that this is also in part a LILO 'problem'. We could
>use some way to tell LILO to only boot a given image _once_ as the
>default, and thence reboot to the normal default. Combine this with any
>of the methods for remote reboot (hardware watchdog, other machine wired
>to reset, whatever) and you can easily recover from a futzed new kernel.
> I'm sure LILO can find room for a single byte 'flag' for such things
>and an extra per-config option in /etc/lilo.conf.

Erm, this *IS* possible.

excerpt from `man lilo`:

---
       /sbin/lilo -R - set default command line for next reboot

-R command line This option sets the default command for the boot loader the next time it executes. The boot loader will then erase this line: this is a once-only command. It is typically used in reboot scripts, just before calling shutdown -r'.

---

/etc/lilo.conf:

image = /vmlinuz-stable label = Stable_Kernel root = /dev/hda1 read-only

image = /vmlinuz-test label = Test_Kernel root = /dev/hda1 read-only

---

test_kernel.sh:

#!/bin/sh

lilo -R 'default=Test_Kernel' && reboot

---------------------

Normally, LILO will boot the first image listed (in this case, the Stable_Kernel) by default. However, running 'test_kernel.sh' will -- for one time only -- make the default kernel be the Test_Kernel.

The only thing left is to make the kernel (or, if something goes wrong there, userspace) reboot if something isn't working okay.

--
Stevie-O

Real programmers use COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE

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