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TIFU by rebooting before rebuilding my initfs (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I had a super fast but small SSD and didn't know what to do with it, so I was playing with caching slow spinning LVM drives. It worked pretty good, but I got interrupted and came back a few weeks later to upgrade the OS. I forgot about the caching LVM, updated the packages in preparation for the OS upgrade, then rebooted. The LVM cache modules weren't in the initfs image and it didn't boot.

I should know better. I used to roll my own kernels since Slackware 1.0. I've had build initfs images for performance tweaks. Ugh!

Where's my rescue disk?

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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Rescue disk 🤣 It's hard enough to find a drive much less a disk.

Next time keep your old kernel around a while, you can always boot it to fix a goof instead of messing around with rescue images.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago

    🤦‍♀️ I've never considered this, but it's the simplest solution and makes perfect sense. I'm always so diligent to keep my system clean to save a few megs.

    This particular server is an old PowerEdge server I'm using to learn server stuff on and a practice home lab. Unfortunately, it won't boot from SD card, so I have a few DVD RW's in a drawer. I've read that there's a SD slot inside that you can emulate a floppy, but haven't explored it.

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    • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    A Gentoo LiveUSB and some chroot would save your day!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Adding a netboot.xyz EFI boot menu entry can be useful if you do not need a live system often and do not have a USB stick when you do.

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    • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Aren't you supposed to add modules by putting them in some config file so they get added automatically?

    Fixing your problem should also be achievable from single-user/rescue mode too, no need for a rescue disk.

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