Boot Repair Session/App

A couple conclusions can be drawn from the discussions about encryption recovery/backup:

• there needs to be a disk/startup recovery process where users can correct boot errors
• Plymouth is insufficient in terms of what it can do UI/translations/a11y-wise
• the OS could be booted into into a minimal recovery environment (similar to initial-setup session) à la macOS
• in this recovery environment, users are presented with a GTK/libadwaita recovery application

Boot Repair

When it occurs

• hardware was replaced, the firmware was updated, or the bootloader was replaced with malware.
• manually invoked?

Things it needs to do

• allow users to input their recovery key (that was given to them during initial-setup).
• communicate that they only enter the key if the reason they are in the recovery environment was their doing
  • i.e. a system update they initiated, or a hardware change
• show ways to access support documentation for the situation, e.g. URL/links or included documentation

Other functions?

• disk utility?
• restore from backup?
• present a repair option that re-installs the operating system

Caveats

Providing an action to repair/re-install the Operating System implies that an installer is present, this may vary by distro.