# Dell Recovery Manual

Ubuntu Documentation Project
&legal; Mario Limonciello mario_limonciello@dell.com

Creating and using &app; Media.

## What is &app; for?

&app; can be used in the event that something disastrous happens to your computer causing it to not boot or perform as well as it did when first shipped to you.

It's recommended that you create Recovery Media when you first receive a machine, mainly so you don't forget until it's too late.

This tool can also be used to run recovery directly from the Hard Disk, for the event that you have done something bad to the system causing to perform suboptimally. See for details.

## Creating Recovery Media

To create recovery media, select the first option in the &app; tool, titled "Build OS Media". You will be asked what media type you want to create. The tool will dynamically detect what your machine supports and only offer the appropriate type(s).

### Possible Media Types

DVD, USB, ISO destination types

The amount of time it takes to create the recovery media will depend on a variety of factors including but not limited to, system speed, memory quantity, other runnings applications, and target media quality.

If you choose the "ISO" type media, the ISO image will be stored in your Downloads folder within your home directory. You can burn it to a DVD using any standard DVD burning tools, and to a USB key using USB-Creator for Ubuntu.

## Recovering your system

This section of the document will walk you through how to recover your system from either the hard drive or recovery media that you previously created.

### Recovering from the Hard Drive

If you encounter a scenario that your machine is misbehaving, but your recovery partition is intact, you will be able to run the factory OS recovery from the hard drive.

If your machine is able to boot up and log into the OS, select the "Restore System" option in the &app; tool.

#### &app; Welcome Screen

If your machine is unable to boot up, press shift at the BIOS screen to bring up the Ubuntu bootloader. Select the last option on the list: "Restore Ubuntu to factory shipped state"

#### GRUB OS Chooser

Either scenario will bring up the following confirmation screen before proceeding with recovery.

#### HDD Recovery Confirmation Screen

### Recovering from previously created recovery media

If your machine is no longer booting and the recovery partition is not intact, you will be able to run the recovery from the DVD or USB media you created earlier.

While booting your machine, press F12 at the BIOS post screen. This will display a list of possible device. Choose the appropriate media that you burned earlier.

#### HDD Recovery Confirmation Screen

A Dell logo will appear. Press enter to boot into the OS recovery wizard.

You will be brought to a recovery screen allowing you to rebuild entirely to factory state, or to resize your existing OS install. If you choose the second option, the installer will not build a recovery partition, but will keep all data intact.

#### DVD and USB Recovery Screen

## Build-to-Order (BTO) Custom Images

The &app; tool includes an additional more advanced mode that allows you to apply additional granularity to the type of image that is generated. This mode can be used to insert additional drivers, and applications into the generated image.

If your system does not contain a recovery partition, the tool will automatically launch in BTO builder mode. If your system contains a recovery partition, but you want to forcefully launch in BTO builder mode, run the tool from command line like below.

Command line

  Execute the following command: `dell-recovery --builder`

### Base OS image

The first page in BTO builder mode is the base OS image. Normally you will want to select an Ubuntu ISO image to use. It is recommended that you use a DVD or custom built ISO image. This is because CD based images won't contain some proprietary drivers and language packages. Due to this deficiency, there will be a reduced experience when using them.

Alternatively, if you are running the tool on a system with a recovery partition, one of the available options will be to use that recovery partition for the base OS image.

#### Base OS Page

### Factory Install Development (FID) Overlay

The second page in BTO builder mode is the FID overlay selection. This is the special sauce that is added to all Ubuntu images to allow them to work properly in a Dell factory environment as well as a custom recovery solution on a customer's system.

If you are using a recovery partition or existing BTO image, you will be able to optionally skip this page and use the FID overlay included in the image.

Otherwise, you will want to select the "FID framework enclosed in a debian package". You will be able to either build the debian package from the currently running dell recovery version or provide a .deb from launchpad or a similar source.

#### FID Overlay Page

### Drivers

The drivers page allows additional unconditionally installed drivers or scripts to fit into the OS installation process. These can be in the form of Debian packages (debs) or specially crafted FISH packages that are designed to hook into the install process. The details for these packages is out of the scope of this help guide however.

#### Drivers Page

### Applications

The applications page is only applicable to machines being installed within a factory environment. It allows you to add applications that are tied to Service Release Vehicle identifiers (SRVs) so that they can be conditionally installed during factory process.

One of the early steps of factory process will analyze the contents of System Descriptor Record (SDR) to see which SRVs were called out in the order. The SRVs that are called out in the order will be included in the rest of the process. Any SRVs that were not called out in the order will be removed from the target system.

When choosing to add an applicatin, you will be asked to provide the SRV associated with it. Without accurately filling in this data, the process will not install these applications.

#### Applications Page