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Asked: 2018-03-29 01:16:56 +0800 CST

Linux: Rescue a system remotely after boot failure

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Context

I have two linux based servers which are remotely located. It has already happened twice: after a system or kernel update, the system wasn't responding/reachable over ssh anymore (configuration errors or disk failure, ...). I had travel to the location to rescue the server. When the boot process fails, the systems lands in the emergency/rescue shell which need to be administrated locally.

Question:

Is there a way or a feature of the bootloader to monitor the booting process (i.e. a watchdog), if the system is stuck after some time, a timeout triggers a the system reboot with a different image with network capabilities, ssh, ... (stored on a dedicated media, i.e USB key) in order to be administrated over ssh ?

Thanks

linux

1 Answers

  1. If you can't afford KVM-over-IP or iLO/DRAC/ILOM hardware you can hook up a raspberry pi on the serial port of those systems. Then configure grub to use serial as console, example - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/working_with_the_serial_console - google for your distro. And you will be able to do almost anything remotely apart from administering the BIOS and doing OS reinstall. For those to work as well you will need special MB that also supports output via serial port.

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