True Stories of Knoppix Rescues 335
Omniscientist writes "We've all been there: Our system is on the edge of death and we need to either fix it or retrieve important data that still remains hidden away in its dying clutches. LinuxDevCenter has a funny article on a heroic tale of a sysadmin relying on Knoppix to save the day. I for one, always make a boot disk in case of problems, but Knoppix can turn a bad day into a good one for just about anyone. Perhaps every administrator should have a Knoppix CD on reserve."
I use it on crapped on WIndows boxes too.. (Score:5, Informative)
Damn Small Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Other distros work, too (Score:5, Informative)
Knoppix - a lifesaver (Score:3, Informative)
I've also used Toms root boot disk - which is linux based but much smaller (designed to fit on a floppy).
Recently, I've been using Kanotix distro which was derived/inspired by Knoppix. Its debian sid based and includes many more drivers built in - my laptop wireless works out of the box with Kanotix and the ndiswrapper. It includes 'captive-ntfs' which lets me mount NTFS as writeable (important when modifying those registry hives). Kanotix website is in both German and English. I wont link to it since I haven't asked permission.
Knoppix website (Score:3, Informative)
I recommend downloading it via bit torrent here [uni-kl.de].
RTFM (Score:5, Informative)
Really, if you wanna flame him, you'd be safer pointing out that this is just some guy dicking around on his home machine and managing to not scrag his mp3 collection thanks to the wonder of Knoppix.
Re:Why is this a story? (Score:3, Informative)
"The first and only time I experimented with out-of-spec IDE cables was on my main workstation."
And he had a reason for out of spec cables: he couldn't reach the connector on the motherboard.
For not reading GRUB parameters, well, there's just no excuse for that.
Re:Why is this a story? (Score:3, Informative)
One other thing.... avoid doing dangerous admin commands when highly stressed or tired. I once deleted an entire directory I didn't intend to because I forgot the directory was hardlinked to another location.
As a result, 10 Virtual Servers, including a domain controller, suddenly blinked off. I had blown every one of them away in one misguided command.
Re:Knoppix to the rescue (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Re:I use it on crapped on WIndows boxes too.. (Score:5, Informative)
Aside, I use Linux bootables (Gentoo mostly) for checking the life of my HDs. I run a Gentoo machine (installed near 3 year ago). hda has seen a LOT (even before I put Gentoo on it - it was an MDK drive after it was a Win* drive). I've noticed SMARTd telling me latley that his life may be running short these days, but, after a e2fsck, it's fine.
It's only a 10G drive (I have 4 others, much larger, in this box), but he needs to be replaced soon.
Aside, I've saved a LOT of Win* Servers / laptops / desktops with "Live CD's".
PLD RescueCD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I agree, but... (system design) (Score:3, Informative)
i use
i even take it one level further now by putting anything i need (especially development tools/kits) as vmware disc images. this way, i can easily move stuff between machines - and, i just need to install vmware to get started (beats installing everything again).
operating systems should be something you can swap in/out without putting any of your valuable data at risk. hell, if you wanted to use a bootable linux from CD, and rom everything from a ram drive - why shouldn't you?
i wasn't sure how to interpret this article. first, a guy who screws up his own systems; then tries to get acclaim on the "recovery stories". did anyone miss the guy wrote a book on this as well? seems like a publicity stunt.
what happened to the old linux slackware days where all you needed was a boot and root floppy disc and you were all hunky dorey. nothing like vi'ing
INSERT (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to suggest a Knoppix-STD alternative, why not name one that's intended for data recovery and system restoration...
The only recovery disks that I've found worth using are a custom gentoo based live-cd and INSERT
Knoppix-STD or some other live disk is good for imaging and file recovery, but lacks real utility... like editing a windows 2000 registry, or doing vfat/ntfs hacking
Go Ahead, try INSERT [inside-security.de] (and yes, i know it's Knoppix Based)
Re:Virtual to Virtual migration (Score:1, Informative)
tar cf - . | (cd
Take a lunch break. When you get back, everything's been moved to your squeeky clean new drive. Then just dd the first sector or 2 off the old disk (the bootloader), and dd it onto the new one, & yer done.
3.8? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DD and boot records? (Score:4, Informative)
Oddly enought, I found out the answer to that last night (and I wasn't even asking about that particular problem):
dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1
Got that from this [seul.org] site. So take their word for it, not mine.
Re:I use it on crapped on WIndows boxes too.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DD and boot records? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Virtual to Virtual migration (Score:3, Informative)
tar -cf - . | if cd
Now, if
PEbuilder is what ive been using. (Score:3, Informative)
It's easy to customize with plugins that you can create, download, and add. The UBCD for Windows [ubcd4win.com] is a must have for pebuilder and makes it a real powerful tool. from browsing to e-mail, web browsing, disk recovery and lots more. I basicially used one of these CD's as my PC's OS while I was waiting for Dell to send me a new hard drive when the one in my machine at work crashed.
More Shameless Plugging (Score:3, Informative)
People are using knoppix for this all the time; I can tell by the amount of email I deal with on the subject.
Re:HOWTO: Recovering the root Password (Score:1, Informative)
Depends on the distribution; Debian-based systems want a root password before they'll give you a shell prompt in single-user mode.
Re:I use it on crapped on WIndows boxes too.. (Score:4, Informative)
I've noticed SMARTd telling me latley that his life may be running short these days, but, after a e2fsck, it's fine. /me shrugs. I still need to replace him regardless.
Er, yes.
SMART handles stuff such as "this drive takes several tries before reading the right data" or "this drive has remapped a lot of bad clusters lately". Its much more than filesystem integrety checking, and even if fsck is fixing your problems now, you might want to see why smart is pestering you.
More Info [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not always the best tool for the job (Score:3, Informative)
As an exmaple: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/chapter