Safe use of generalized inverses Suppose I'm given a linear system $$Ax=b,$$ with unknown $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$, and some symmetric $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$ and $b=\in\mathbb{R}^n$. Furthermore, it is known that $A$ is not full-rank matrix, and that its rank is $n-1$; therefore, $A$ is not invertible. However, to compute the "solution" $x$, one may use $x=A^+b$, where $A^+$ is a generalized inverse of $A$, i.e., Moore-Penrose inverse. 
What is the characteristic of such solution? More precisely, under which conditions will $x=A^+b$ give the exact solution to the system (supposing the exact solution exists)? Could one state that in the above case, with additional note that $b$ is orthogonal to null-space of $A$, the generalized inverse will yield the exact solution to the system? 

Let $\tilde x = A^+b$. Then obviously $A\tilde x = AA^+b$. But since $AA^+$ is an orthogonal projector, and specifically $I-AA^+$ is the projector to the null space of the Hermitian transpose of $A$, $\tilde x$ is a solution iff $b$ is orthogonal to the null space of $AA^+$, that is, orthogonal to the null space of the Hermitian transpose of $A$.
