Recovery mode

As standard all Mythic Beasts colocated or dedicated server customer have unlimited access to remote instant reboots. For Mac Mini and AppleTV dedicated server customers we have made our netboot recovery environment available to customers. Use of recovery mode is unlimited and free. If you are a colocated server customer and would like us to configure netboot recovery for your server, please contact us.

Using the Customer Control Panel under 'Services' there is an option for boot control.

The control panel will give the following options for each dedicated server.

Service	IP	Boot Mode	Authorized Keys
service	ip-address	linux OSX recovery	ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1kc3MAAACBAJ64Uh64nXHhSzlxnLl5kVp6rey nz3TPhP6hcZMvRoLJuQMkpoGsXeHXlM8Jmq2sQSgQ2yOSZjd0M9Wy8X veEVxiK5bkB37ORWmJFvBK1bMbrvLiVkMCMgouY9QpYh33uZ6+yZNTK 8MQQNIzx5mU5QmdYSi+kaH8B0uZO4Z2FrM/AAAAFQD0F571/DqVrAWg Ha2NSed2aHIXrwAAAIAKAHvhPGD0EOJvJFHj+Tz3I+b3YYjESWypdO7 qydlaPqQbvCA0rwnwky+1rMkcJomPUNnF0OpdML55THWkOr5FItIR4D oJm3bFNGmdGl5x2SZbUgmz3GTzLc7GH+CF+6JuyPQdZfOsPCeDmV+FP updm3TqxbdpBPo/RyYDra4txgAAAIEAgZ5+GeRud38GOfrZWJ1JjJBl oF5oLlvCGZfqfL//1jhwwOBHtSOyf7mwVbrbbsTwJi/0H9hwquXf7z+ 5os2/3uR0yCzaFjJRiteyrOGxE5FcOZwcA8Iy9CBIzcbKUnAzW6ovEy HyLY1Xjj36E2ctTGkunso7czKJtR+jRwRLOdI= pete@macbeth

Service

Boot Mode

Authorized Keys

service

ip-address

linux
OSX
recovery

ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1kc3MAAACBAJ64Uh64nXHhSzlxnLl5kVp6rey
nz3TPhP6hcZMvRoLJuQMkpoGsXeHXlM8Jmq2sQSgQ2yOSZjd0M9Wy8X
veEVxiK5bkB37ORWmJFvBK1bMbrvLiVkMCMgouY9QpYh33uZ6+yZNTK
8MQQNIzx5mU5QmdYSi+kaH8B0uZO4Z2FrM/AAAAFQD0F571/DqVrAWg
Ha2NSed2aHIXrwAAAIAKAHvhPGD0EOJvJFHj+Tz3I+b3YYjESWypdO7
qydlaPqQbvCA0rwnwky+1rMkcJomPUNnF0OpdML55THWkOr5FItIR4D
oJm3bFNGmdGl5x2SZbUgmz3GTzLc7GH+CF+6JuyPQdZfOsPCeDmV+FP
updm3TqxbdpBPo/RyYDra4txgAAAIEAgZ5+GeRud38GOfrZWJ1JjJBl
oF5oLlvCGZfqfL//1jhwwOBHtSOyf7mwVbrbbsTwJi/0H9hwquXf7z+
5os2/3uR0yCzaFjJRiteyrOGxE5FcOZwcA8Iy9CBIzcbKUnAzW6ovEy
HyLY1Xjj36E2ctTGkunso7czKJtR+jRwRLOdI= pete@macbeth

You need to supply the authorized keys file on a single line including the ssh-dss and user@hostname parts. If you then select 'recovery' mode and power cycle the dedicated server it will boot into our netboot recovery environment.

Using recovery mode

fsck

To check your disks first you need to see the partition table. To do this you need to use parted.

recovery:~# parted /dev/sda print

Disk /ramdisk/dev/sda: 40.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name        Flags
 1      20.5kB  35.7MB  35.7MB  fat32        EFI         boot 
 2      35.7MB  455MB   419MB   hfs+         Recovery         
 3      455MB   1399MB  944MB   hfs+         OSBoot           
 4      1399MB  1483MB  83.9MB               Media            
 5      1483MB  1535MB  52.4MB  ext3         linux-boot       
 6      1535MB  39.5GB  37.9GB  ext3         linux-root       
 7      39.5GB  40.0GB  537MB   linux-swap   linux-swap       

Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

This tells us where the partitions are so we can check them.

recovery:~# e2fsck /dev/sda5
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda5: recovering journal
/dev/sda5: clean, 16/12824 files, 8971/51200 blocks


recovery:~# e2fsck /dev/sda6
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda6: recovering journal
Clearing orphaned inode 3949937 (uid=0, gid=4, mode=0100640, size=1079)
Clearing orphaned inode 3967306 (uid=33, gid=33, mode=0140600, size=0)
Clearing orphaned inode 3949904 (uid=0, gid=4, mode=0100640, size=3218)
Clearing orphaned inode 3967301 (uid=33, gid=33, mode=0140600, size=0)
Clearing orphaned inode 3949917 (uid=0, gid=4, mode=0100640, size=1319)
Clearing orphaned inode 3964958 (uid=33, gid=33, mode=0140600, size=0)
/dev/sda6: clean, 202333/4636672 files, 3927687/9261665 blocks

We can format the swap partition.

recovery:~# mkswap /dev/sda7
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 536850 kB
no label, UUID=c68eedbe-d405-437d-887b-52b20ed249b8

We can check if the disk thinks that it is broken.

recovery:~# smartctl -d ata -H  /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Chroot

It can be useful to chroot into the dedicated server if we need to repair various things. Additional packages can be installed, services can be started and tested.

recovery:~# mkdir /mnt/root
recovery:~# mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/root
recovery:~# chroot /mnt/root
recovery:/# mount /boot
recovery:/# mount /proc

Reformatting

Debian and Ubuntu can both be readily reinstalled from the recovery console. For an appletv substitute appletv for 'macmini/intel' in the following examples.

mount /resources
cd /scripts/macmini/intel/partition
./partition
cd ../install_debian
./install_debian
cd ../install_kernel
./doinstall

mount /resources
cd /scripts/macmini/intel/partition
./partition
cd ../install_ubuntu
./install_ubuntu
cd ../install_kernel
./doinstall

At this time we don't have end-user friendly scripts for installing gentoo,centos or OSX - please contact us if you'd like to reimage with one of these operating systems.

Please note, it is very important to run the partition script that matches your dedicated server platform.