It depends. Sometimes the bisection can be done in qemu/kvm/xen or
similar tools. At least if the problem is not too hardware
dependent. And more and more people actually run in such environments.
I can also do it faster with autoboot or nfs root/powerswitch, but
admittedly that's a very specialized setup most people don't have.
Still I agree with your basic point that it should be only
last resort.
-Andi
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