[ale] Forcing RW on boot

[Chris Fowler]

On Tue, 2010-03-30 at 14:31 -0400, Brian Pitts wrote:
> On 03/30/2010 12:57 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> > I've dealing with a server that has been hacked and mount is corrupted.
> > I can not remount root as rw so what I'm trying to do is pass command
> > line arguments to the kernel via grub to do it.  I've specified 'rw' but
> > it is still ro and I'm passing init=/bin/sh.  My goal is to upload
> > pieces off a CentOS 5.4 install image to boot into a serial mode so that
> > I can reload the box over the Internet.  
> 
> Is there a separate /boot partition that you can write to? If so, drop
> something like Tiny Core Linux [0] on it, set grub to boot that and
> start ssh, and repair things from there.
> 
> Another idea if you can write to /boot would be to use rom-o-matic [1]
> to generate a gpxe [2] image bootable by grub (lkrn format). You could
> then use gpxe to boot another distribution over http. Instead of setting
> up your own, you could just the lkrn and server from boot.kernel.org

I'm pretty much stuck with what I've got.

I think the future systems I'll add the following.

1.  A reboot command that follows instructions
2.  A busybox binary with no symlinks and is statically linked that I
can use in emergency
3.  CentOS rescue CD in grub so I can boot alternative.
4.  CentOS load CD in grub so I can reload.

#4 will help me not ask users to burn CDs for me.  I ship CDs with the
servers, including a reload cd that in under 10 minutes can make the
server whole again, but people lose them.