Patent ID: 8271833

Claim:
A distributed system configurable to communicate in a network, the distributed system comprising: a plurality of computational devices coupled via the network; a distributed operating system controlling the plurality of computation devices; and a storage partition that stores the distributed operating system and a backup copy of the distributed operating system, wherein the distributed system performs: receiving, by a boot loader, an indication to load the backup copy of the distributed operating system; loading, by the boot loader, the backup copy of the distributed operating system; and rebooting the computational device with the loaded backup copy of the distributed operating system, wherein a first indicator stores a location of the backup copy of the distributed operating system, and a second indicator stores a location from which the boot loader loads the distributed operating system, and wherein the loading of the backup copy of the distributed operating system further comprises: copying, by the boot loader, the location of the backup copy of the distributed operating system from the first indicator to the second indicator; reading, by the boot loader, the second indicator to determine a location from which to load programs to reboot the computational device; and initiating, by the boot loader, a loading of the programs to reboot the computational device from the determined location.