you tried hooking it up to a TV via AV?

/j

Just checking - is this aiming at being analogous to "Safe Mode" so the system starts and runs but can't access/assert a lot of user-settings? If so a really good idea and would probably stop reboot loops!


Have you looked at ways you can transfer data via wifi? As you say, a backup OS might overkill!

Keep it up and my little boot-shell /sbin/preinit script won't be necessary for much

ALTHOUGH, the one advantage a properly syntaxed /sbin/preinit or bootmenu.sh script has is that you don't have to have a flashing-capable utility to get things running.

So, like you said, they do different things. Which is great, because your rescue-OS image provides a final non-reflash-requiring fallback position, for when RobbieThe1st's backupmenu and/or my /sbin/preinit boot-shell and/or pali's recovery console bootmenu item, etc, aren't enough.

Honestly, I wish we could someday reverse engineer the flashing process and the boot process completely (the latter, really, is mostly 'open', if not open source, aside from nolo), because then an entirely optionally enable-able, or at-boot-activateable, recovery shell, could be developed, made stable, and then added in as a feature of the CSSU, whereupon at least those devices would have the built-in fallback position on-device, and ideally most of those people wouldn't touch the actual code, thus avoiding wrongly-syntaxed-code problems.

Of course, either way, there will always come a situation where on-device data is f'cked and we need to break out the on-other-device flasher utilities, and then it's stuff like this to the rescue.

right on, right on!
This is really cool, not like the mostly useless meego rescue-initrd "solution" that left user even without [0-9] on kbd of the "shell" and allowed users to earn a CS degree en passant while mastering the task to mount maemo's NAND ubifs /.

Wrap this into a nice generic linux script to run on x86 which will take care of all the wget and dd and flasher-3.5 --foo and whatnot, and this will definitely earn a ranking among top three most useful maemo packages ever. 'Integration' (as in interoperability) of backupmenu (possibly incl the mtd_debug based raw image handling I suggested, buzzword >loopmount<) and maybe even fiascogen would be the icing on top.


I already offered to NIN101 (on IRC) to help with charging, though robbiethe1st's stuff is based on shadowjk's charging script and thus directly from the creators of (jrbme) charging and vboost and confirmed to be ok.

Also please ping me if you look for help and/or proofreading of the x86-side shellscript

/j

Hi,

nano is the standard editor.

Well, I am sorry, but this is not a final release, more for curious tinkerers at this stage.
----
Because we are only using the keyboard inside rescueOS and nothing else, it is probably a good idea to have localized translation tables. On the other hand, after some time you get used to the default keyboard map. Either way, I have already started a map for the german keyboard layout, it is however not completed. So if anyone wants to finish this, go ahead.

very nice, indeed
+ keyboard features of the Maemo kbd (Ctrl + I = Tab aso.)
+ Sym = Esc (yes, vi works ¦-)
+ boots, of course
+ even boots from ext2

wish list:

• mc / midnight commander?
  it comes with a built in text editor & with a little key settings (Ctrl + I mapped to Tab in the settings) auto completion
  THE ncurses file manager...
  source available from https://www.midnight-commander.org/downloads
  Storage Usage shows it @ 3.8 MB in Fremantle
  there is a MeeGo package according to Community Repo (listed under the last Code box)
• partimage
  very handy backup software; been using it for years on all my PCs (included in SystemRescueCd or compiled on a Linux / GNU box)
• GNU GRUB
  i know, we have already more then enough (too many?) boot menus for the N900, thus maybe a chance to port THE boot menu?

Working nice, boots up...
Wait, this thing can't access /home (of maemo rootfs)?! Then what kind of recovery job am I gonna do with this? AND mass storage drive appeared as "RAW" unidentified format in Windows... Then what use is this for...?

@AndyYan,

Did you read the documentation at all?
http://206.253.166.96/N900/rescueOS/documentation.txt

Nice. I can imagine a OS installer on top of that.

wow .. the thread got bumped almost after a year..