New restore/rescue image (or documentation on the current)

[Cheeseboy]

Dear B2/B3 developers (whoever you are these days ),

The USB rescue/reinstall stick has proven to be invaluable over the years, but it is somewhat cumbersome to use:

• 1. I have to set up another DHCP server on my network
  2. I have to access it on an arbitrary IP-address (not that big of a problem, but still annoying)
  3. The OS that it boots into is missing some vital functionality (at least last time I checked):
  • 3.1. LVM2 support
    3.2. GPT-able disk tools
  4. There is no documentation. Example: the "USE_EXTERNAL_SCRIPT" option

Now that USB-sticks with large storage capacity are available for reasonable prices, why not make a "rescue stick" that is more easy and versatile to use?

Please:
- Let us be able to configure it to start a proper Excito-flavour debian system with all the DHCP/DNS functionality the server itself and the LAN needs, so you can easily connect to it through ssh (by name) without the use of additional hardware to act as DHCP server.

-Let it include tools for manipulating LVM, GTP partition tables and all the other stuff.

-Give us templates on how to write simple startup-scripts that will automate processes that we would all like to do. Example: Boot the B3 into recovery mode, automatically use partimage to do a proper backup of /dev/sda1 to a predefined partimage-server on the network. It would save so much time compared to booting the rescue image, do a dd backup, and then still not trust it to be re-storable, so having to pull the disk out of the B3, putting it in a PC and cloning the first partition with CloneZilla, before trying to restore the "dd" image you created with the rescue stick - just in case it doesn't work (as is wont to happen with dd).

- At least give us some documentation (see 4 above) so we can start experimenting with some minimal background knowledge before wrecking our systems.

Cheers,

Cheeseboy

[Ubi]

although I think the startup script is something very few people will use, the possibility to set a fixed IP address would help debugging many support calls on this forum and for that reason alone is cost-effective to implement.

And indeed, if the B3 uses LVM standard it is rather silly that a rescue disk is unable to access this default installation. It would actually be kinda brilliant if the rescue image came with an implementation of clonezilla. For a headless system this would make a lot of sense.