Comment 80 for bug 57153

Robert Penz schreef:
> I propose following solution:
>
> 1. add a menu point to grub name "Rescue Mode"
> 2. boot into an low Runlevel
> 3. start a dialog-based console program which has following features
>
> - look for and install updates
> - look at the installation history and remove possible updates (sorted by install time)
> - show last boot log (parses the syslog for the new syslog start and shows the last lines before it.)
> - start networking
> + Show Emergency Information from Ubuntu (lynx without navigation or something like this)
> + Rescue Support Channel (Text based minimal IRC which just joins just the #ubuntu-rescue channel on freenode)
>
> With this even a user which doesn't know anything about the user can get
> help/information.
>
> ps: you can also start that menu if the xserver start fails during
> booting
>
>
This suggestion has some valid points, but I wouldn't mind taking this a
bit further. Why not integrate system restore into Linux and into the
menu? I mean, that is one of the things that I have found very useful in
Windows XP and I know that many XP users have used that feature on more
than one occasion. Mind you, I don't know enough of what this will take,
or if there are any security issues associated with it.

The networking feature looks okay, but might be a bit daunting for
people with only GUI experience. Joining IRC seems nice, but who is
going to answer the repetitive questions from the users that experience
problems. One of the big problems I have noticed over the years is how
difficult it is for end-users to describe and define the problem.
Without that it is difficult to solve it. For the newbie user having an
option to restore everything back to a previous restore point is simple
and straight forward. Beyond that restore point there should be a fast
and easy access to what caused the problem in the first place, otherwise
the end-user will just stop updating his sytem in order to prevent a
similar thing from happening. This requires a set of analyses tools that
could take the information in the various logs, compare it to the same
logs at a previous restore point (the one that was reverted to) and
present a list of things that could be wrong with links to a website for
common and specific solutions. That's the kind of process I can
visualize, but whether it can be implemented.... I don't know.