Grml is another Debian based Linux distro for rescue scenarios like this. The small version weighs in a little more at 100MB versus PLoP's 62MB though. If your

Grml is another Debian based Linux distro for rescue scenarios like this. The small version weighs in a little more at 100MB versus PLoP's 62MB though. If your deployment environment doesn't offer NFS/SMB/CIFS you can fetch your images via HTTP from your PXE booted kernel too. Regarding data centers - it can even boot over serial in connection with HP iLO and IBM RSA/AMM out of the box. http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=rescue http://wiki.grml.org/doku.php?id=rescue http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-small-2010.04/ http://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-small-2010.04/ PLoP seems to be a great tool for similar cases, interestingly both are Austrian distributions: http://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux.html#pxel http://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux.html#pxel I've got a grml usb stick with me at all times (now even supports multiboot 32/64bit!). I just recently recovered a relatives' WinXP after a seemingly failed automatic update and did a dll rollback in a couple of minutes. It's a great tool plus it shows you how to use the mighty zsh properly!