HI Folks,

I am looking to build a boot disk(s) that would start a system in a remote location and fire up an ssh server on boot so I could then ssh in and do any required maintenance like filesystem repairs or whatever.

It would ofcourse also have to have the basic commands like ls, mount, fsck, etc....

I find the Slackware boot/root disk combos are a very good set of emergency disks and basically just need to add sshd on top of it.

Is anyone aware of any projects like this or know of any reason why it wouldn't work?

Any thoughts are welcome.

Thanks, Ian

I'd opt for a bootable CD to give you more elbow room (if you were thinking of a floppy originally).

Assume you mean:

1) Remote server dies
2) Someone on site sticks boot disk in and initiates reboot (power cycles is necessary)
3) Loads from cd / floppy, allowing you to come in over the wire and fix stuff?

look at having the the keys for ssh on a floppy so sshd can load them from there - makes changing them easier than remastering the cd.