On Sat, 26 Aug 2017 at 12:41:49 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 10:36:16AM +0200, Edward Bartolo wrote:
>> So, this is again an advice that should be obvious for anyone, bold
>> enough to delete parts of the file system, that can result in system
>> breakage.
>>
>> There is a betwitched command, tar, that can be used to create
>> archives of any directory. So, the obvious action to me is, make a
>> tar.gz archive before deleting any system directory. That way, you
>> will be empowered with recovery in the ill fated event of breakage. In
>> the event of boot failure you can use the backup (.tar.gz) file to
>> repair the damage restoring bootability.
>
> Assuming, of course, that you have some other way of booting the
> machine so you can still run commands to restore the files.

It depends by the severity of the malfunction. You could have damaged the
system not badly enought to prevent you from getting a login terminal.

An emergency boot partition or device is always a good thing to have,
anyway.


Alessandro