Re: failsafe booting..

[Andrew]

> > At boot time the bootloader would change the default kernel to the
> > failsafe one and boot the new kernel. Thus if the new kernel hangs, the
> > machine will after a certain amount of time reboot ( with the help of a
> > watchdog card designed for this purppose).
> 
>   I don't think this is always possible. That depends on how the
> kernel hangs. If your kernel panics "successfully", that would be
> possible. But if you kernel hangs up in an unintended manner, it is
> quite difficult or impossible to reboot the machine, because, for
> example, the kernel might disable every interrupt lines. As you may
> know, this very often happens when you develop a kernel.


nope ... we do not intend to reboot via the kernel we will wire a card to
the reset button to physically reset the machine, this is not a problem.
the problem lies in the bootloader. 


> > So basically I wanted to know if something like this has been done
> > before in grub or other bootloaders, if not is it possible/feasible ? Or
> > is it a completely stupid way of doing things ? Are there other ways to
> > achieve what I want ?
> 
>   I don't think it is feasible. As Linus Torvalds says, kernel
> development shouldn't be so easy.

why not ? I'm looking for a way to change the kernel which is being booted
automatically rather than from the grub prompt, if we can choose at the
console what kernel i wish to boot ? why can't I have some mechanism of
changing the kernel which is booted automatically. perhaps i did not
explain it well the first time.....


thanks
Andrew