IMHO, this has to be written.

Yes, I'm a happy user of tomsrtbt. Today, Tom's disk saved my life
and my server too....:-)

On a quite critical Linux file server, the Ethernet card suddendly
came berzerked and hanged up the kernel, filling logs and screen
console with silly messages. 

No way to reboot properly, so Big Red Button....

And the root file system was so broken that no boot could be
possible. fsck put a lot of files in lost+found, /etc/passwd was
strangely filled with parts from /etc/motd...:-)

Of course, I run dumps of critical partitions on a regular basis, on
a remote tape drive.

And I had prepared, a few months ago, a rescue disk, with tomsrtbt,
dump/restore and  my custom kernel which may handle all devices on
all my servers (easier than loading modules in critical
situations...:-)).

I booted tomsrtbt, choose my french keyboard, logged in as root,
zapped the broken partition and voil� : a few minutes of rrestore
later, my / partition was there again. A little play with lilo and
45 minutes after the Big Bang, my server went up again. I even had
time enough for lunch...:-)

This was the first time I ever had to handle such a "critical"
situation (my Linux servers are too stable...). IMHO, such emergency
repairs are the most difficult thing to achieve, as, usually, we
never have enough practice of them....

That was my case, but Tom's disk saved my a looot of headaches. So,
thanks again for all that invaluable work.

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