Comment 21 for bug 512253

Robbie, thanks for reopening the ticket for this "bug." To give some more context underscoring the end-user's perspective that this is defective behavior, imagine that an Ubuntu 10.04 server is racked at a co-lo with no bootable ISO in the drive. Now think about what happens when someone fat-fingers something in /etc/network/interfaces and reboots the machine.

Even with ILO access to the box, the most convenient thing s/he can do to recover from this is to configure a PXE boot from some image somewhere, if that's possible. If that's not a possibility, or it's more trouble than it's worth, it's off to the car to drive to the co-lo with a Live CD in hand. This is exactly the situation I was in just a few hours ago.

Certainly one could come up with end-around schemes to resolve this issue remotely, but that's not the point. The point is that if this server were running Debian (for example), it would simply complain, boot, and allow me to fix the mistake via ILO without having to muck with booting from a live network image or driving to the datacenter.

I hope that helps. A "fix" would be much appreciated. Thanks!