On 2/11/2020 1:50 PM, Martin McCormick wrote: > I don't know if things have changed or I forgot how to do this > but I want to boot in to a Debian image and not install it but > invoke a shell so as to clone the hard drive on a Windows machine > to an external hard drive. > > For computer users who are blind, this is a real boon in > situations like this because most Linux systems these days can be > made to boot talking by striking S when the OS starts to boot. > > You hear, in English first, "Choose your language." > > It is, of course, the same setup screen everybody sees so > one needs to set language, keyboard and general location to get > started. > > If one wants, they can go through the setup and install > the whole works but, in this case, I am doing this because I had > a stupid moment and wiped out my Windows home directory > after a batch file (shell script) got away from me and zapped > every file in my home directory instead of one folder I was > trying to zero out. Go ahead and laugh. > > The idea is to clone the internal drive and then try > recovering the deleted files. If something further goes wrong, > I've still got all the pieces. > > I remember doing this same thing a few years ago and > there is some way to break out of the setup screen and invoke a > bash-like shell in order to run mount/umount and dd. Since I > boot it talking, all these applications still talk. After all, > it's unix and the speech synthesizer was patched in to standard > output right from boot. I don't remember exactly what special > key sequence I hit to invoke the shell but need to refresh my > memory or learn the new procedure. > > After learning how to get a relatively new HP Pavilion to > boot from a usb device, I think that most all the UFI-bootable > images will boot. The one I just tried which did boot is > debian-10.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso > > I've also got > > debian-live-10.2.0-amd64-mate.iso and debian-10.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso > > The netinst image is only 350 MB while the dvd-1 image is > about 4 GB. The mate image is around 2.5 GB. > > Thanks for any and all constructive suggestions as to how > to go from Setup to recovery shell. > > Martin McCormick >
Some hints: https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility#Debian_installer_accessibility https://grml.org/faq/#toc HTH. -- John Doe