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I haven't used it from a USB key myself but after some googeling it appears it is possible. The LNX-BBC kit at http://lnx-bbc.org/ has saved my bacon several times! Of course I started using it when people thought a business card CD was a good idea.....does that make me old? You young whipper snappers and your fancy USB keys!

Dont forget these, any one will provide the needed/wanted tools for recovery.

Forensic and Incident Response Environment: http://fire.dmzs.com/
Linux Bootable Business Card: http://www.lnx-bbc.org/
Ultimate Boot CD: http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/
Knoppix Security Tools Distribution: http://www.knoppix-std.org/
SystemRescueCd: ahref=http://www.sysresccd.org/rel=url2html-26348h ttp://www.sysresccd.org/>

I think the wave of the future isn't live DVDs, but GNU/Linux distros you can boot off the USB thumb (or pen) drive that hangs off your neck. The prices and capacities of such drives continue to fall such that 2GB versions are now within an employed geek's price range.

Having a bootable necklace is way cooler than a live DVD, almost like the stuff of a James Bond movie. For when was the last time you brought along a 12 cm data DVD to a rave party?

Here's one. It only tops off at 128MB though. So it's little more than a bootable business card.

If you join, you can get a spiffy little GNU/Linux distro on a business card sized CD with your membership details on :o)

Thanks! Here's my list. The stuff I carry is usually for cases where I can't access the network or hardware. If the machine sees the network, I've got it made.

I mentioned these two, but here are details.

chntpw, reset NT/2k/XP passwords with the full bootable floppy version.

Bart's network boot disk built into a 2.88 meg image allows a huge load of network drivers, and with a copy of ghost I don't ever have to mess with building boot floppies for ghost again. I also included basic DOS utilities for manipulating the HDD and testing.

Bootable CDs with floppy images can be useful, and Bart provides a handy utility for building them. Put a disk image of chntpw on a bootable CD with other goodies per instructions at Bart's site.

I also carry Knoppix or perhaps a nice Bootable Business Card with lots of network drivers. With read-only NTFS access and networking, I've stripped data off of drives I couldn't even access for a fresh NT/2k install. Pour it across the network, and you're a hero. Also good for a slow clone with dd, or an emergency Remote Desktop Client. If you pick a livecd with a nice recent version of kparted, you can resize live NTFS partitions (I used SystemRescueCD). I've needed to do this more often than I'd have expected. Knoppix's NTFS tools were less useful at the time.



I'm looking forward to using the Captive NTFS drivers, but that seems less neccessary with one more set of tools from Bart's site, the bootable XP/2000 pre-execution environment in BartPE. These allow full access to NTFS, as well as providing an environment you can run Adaware and other Windows tools from. One of these made my day last week. It's dog slow to boot, but running Adaware or other utils (chkdsk, AV, undelete), from NOT the boot drive is great.

I'd really like to see one of those Business card size CD's in BSD form. The Linux ones have saved me more times than I can count.

And now we have CDs that fit in your wallet and can do much much more. Except the one in my wallet keeps breaking. :( Is it that I need to lose weight, or is there some other trick?

And now we have CDs that fit in your wallet and can do much much more. Except the one in my wallet keeps breaking. :( Is it that I need to lose weight, or is there some other trick?

I carry two bootable BCDs in my wallet. Like you I use Damn Small which I think is the best general purpose/desktop mini-distribution.

LNX-BBC is also worth having. The Free Software Foundation prints this one on their membership cards.

It has a flexible build system for customising your own version of the distribution and contains a number of networking and hardware utilities which DSL doesn't out of the box.

I've found the Linux Bootable Business Card to be very useful for simple repair work and you can keep it in your wallet.

linux bbc

Well, KDE is a very large package. That might be a big part of the problem. However, I suggest you investigate a Linux distribution called Knoppix. If your 1GB system has a bootable CD-ROM drive, then none of your operating system need reside on the hard drive at all! On one CD they have the entire KDE environment, the KOffice suite of applications, OpenOffice.org suite, and many many many other useful applications. Not only that, the boot process autodetects a wide variety of hardware and automatically enables it.

Failing that, you might check out something like LNX-BBC, which fits an entire GNU/Linux operating system onto a bootable CD. But the point is that a very workable version of GNU/Linux most certainly can fit on a 1GB drive. but probably not Debian 3.0 or Mandrake with the KDE option selected.

Yes, both MS Windows and the average Linux distro suffer from code bloat, but when you got XP on that system, what apps were available? When you go installing something like a stock KDE environment, you're probably pulling in a lot more functionality than you would ever get from a raw Windows install.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1

For anyone thinking "that won't work on Windows", you can get a linux boot CD at the Linux-BBC project, or get them with a FSF membership. Or use knoppix if you want a full installation on bootable CD.

Oh yeah, and stop reccommending Windows for corporate desktops.

Debian
Business rescue cd
Linux-BBC
RIP Linux
Damn Small Linux (50 meg!)

Not as much space on these as a full distro, and these are live cds, so basicly a mini-knoppix style thing. Might be worth looking into to have as a quick fix for a bad computer....

PS: the RIP in RIP Linux stands for "Recovery Is Possible"

That's the gist of the LNX-BBC. It has a very cool package building system called GAR. See the lnx-bbc website

If you are facing size restrictions (older, smaller hard drives) or wanting to work with smart-card-bootable systems, check out: Damn Small Linux which fits everything into less than 50 megabytes, as does the bootable business card distro.

The LNX-BBC (Linux Bootable Buisness card) is all you really need.

http://www.lnx-bbc.org

Bring Knoppix and LNX-BBC -- the former on a full-size CD in a bag or backpack, the latter on a business card CD in your pocket.

I've used both Knoppix, as said above, and it's a full-featured distro with KDE3 and the works, but I've also recently stumbled upon LNX-BBC, a distro that works off of a business card CD. Pretty handy for keeping in your pocket or wallet because it's so small. It's not so much GUI-based, but if you're comfortable with the command line (and for what you're doing, you most likely are), it's a wonderful tool. And, it's being updated literally every night. I'd give it a try. There's a huge list of CD-based distros here: http://lwn.net/Distributions/index.php3#cd

I highly recommend using LNX-BBC or LinuxCare for any type of rescue/administrative on the fly work.

LNX-BBC is small enough to fit on one of those business card cds and is aimed towards people who know what they are doing; (read: no man pages).

Linuxcare is another great linux toolkit for administrative work.

Check out this page for a list of other linux bootable toolkits. Cheers!

Linux users, where floppy rescue disks are still the norm.

Check out Linux Bootable Business Card

You can't boot from a USB device, can you?

I tend to carry a small collection of bootable media with me such as tomsrtbt on a floppy, LNX-BBC, White Glove, PLAC and a few others. (yes, even a DOS boot disk) They can be very helpful in cases such as upgrading a mobo for a Win98 machine, where the mobo can't see the CD-ROM until you install a driver... from a CD-ROM.

while many of you probably hate IE as well I thought some might find this humorous.. if you visit the BBC home with IE a JS error occurs pointing to a permission error on the file at: http://www.lnx-bbc.org/iesuckssohard.htc Im glad they dont mind annoying some of the people that come to their site to help or learn more about what they are doing. I know, the haters are probably saying, if you are using Linux you wouldn't be using IE anyway - well when Im using a non-linux machine I will keep using IE until I see a compelling reason to switch (and a tabbed interface isn't one) or when my customers all switch to something else...

Imagine being able to put a full-featured Debian package on a business-card-sized mini-CD's that you can always keep in your wallet!

It's called LNX-BBC. Debian-based bootable CD in less than 50 mb, perfect for putting on a business card CD. I carry it everywhere I go.

And get the nightly builds, their last stable release is a year old.

Orange

There's another Debian-based bootable distro, called LNX-BBC. It is only 50 megs, but you can still install Debian from it and apt-get all the packages you want.

http://www.lnx-bbc.org/

Well, I use a SUSE version of LILO for cool animations at bootup. I have a few kernels in the startup menu - the version installed by Debian, and various versions of 2.2 & 2.4 (in case the new one, say, doesn't properly load sound, apm, or pcmcia drivers). But I do tend to keep a rescue cd or two around anyway.

Actually, the Bootable Business Card CD works quite well for this task.

Obviously, this article was about NEW computers (which have NO problenm booting from CD) and not ancient ones with crappy BIOS's.

how do you as a person who is responible for dumping old equipment ensure that your company erases sensitive data so that it cannot be recovered by anyone.

I'll give you the 5-second summary:

• You can't erase it so that it can never be recovered.
• But you can make it expensive/impractical to recover.

Previous /. threads have gone on at length on the various creative ways people who care (gov't, military) destroy the hardware utterly. If you overwrite each bit on the disk several times, though, it'll require expensive hardware analysis to recover anything - which is beyond most criminals.

It's the same old issue - risk equals value times danger. The danger that someone will send your disk to hardware analysis isn't that great for most people, so wiping it a few times is probably good enough.

One good way to wipe - stick a bootable Linux CD in (I like Bootable Business Card myself) and 'dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda'. Lather, rinse, repeat - or better yet, put it in a bash 'for' or tcsh 'foreach' loop. It takes a while.

Want to verify you're wiping everything? Use /dev/zero instead of /dev/random for one pass, then do 'hexdump /dev/hda' which should run for a while and then report that it found nothing but 0's on the disk.

A Linux distribution with a BSD-like ports system. How revolutionary.

I wrote the gnu make libraries that it uses, and the system is getting more and more robust as time goes on.

Of course, GAR is in itself a sort of packaging system, so the GARNOME tree is only as good as the dependencies it provides. You'll still have to install all of the other software.

GAR was designed originally with the idea that slackware users could just "make install" to upgrade to a newer tree of packages, but that was before I discovered that backing up your data and installing Debian was much quicker.

That said, GAR's main purpose is to build the complete filesystem tree for the LNX-BBC CD-ROM image. Ultimately we hope to have a complete GNU system packaged within it.

Now, what you could do, if you're willing to restrict yourself to x86 machines bootable from CDrom, is make yourself a little customized BBC (help out with GAR, it rocks!) with all the apps you need, then burn a bunch of copies and carry 'em around, leave 'em at work, etc.

Unfortunately, then you're still stuck with what to do with data. But hey, P2P's the hot pick of the year, right? Get together with a bunch of friends who have constant internet access and set up a little P2P network to share your docs across a number of physically-seperated machines. You'll have to figure out something more cagey for taking care of sensitive data, but I suppose if you trust the people you're P2Ping with and encrypt using keys stored on the BBC (you could even restrict access to the P2P network based on keys), you'd probably be pretty safe.

I suppose if you're using that kind of encryption, you probably don't want to leave the BBCs all over the place like I suggested, but whatever. I digress.

I'm guessing you're looking for something a bit easier, though. :P

Now, what you could do, if you're willing to restrict yourself to x86 machines bootable from CDrom, is make yourself a little customized BBC (help out with GAR, it rocks!) with all the apps you need, then burn a bunch of copies and carry 'em around, leave 'em at work, etc.

Unfortunately, then you're still stuck with what to do with data. But hey, P2P's the hot pick of the year, right? Get together with a bunch of friends who have constant internet access and set up a little P2P network to share your docs across a number of physically-seperated machines. You'll have to figure out something more cagey for taking care of sensitive data, but I suppose if you trust the people you're P2Ping with and encrypt using keys stored on the BBC (you could even restrict access to the P2P network based on keys), you'd probably be pretty safe.

I suppose if you're using that kind of encryption, you probably don't want to leave the BBCs all over the place like I suggested, but whatever. I digress.

I'm guessing you're looking for something a bit easier, though. :P

Nowa days every one has a cd burnner and CDRs are
dirt cheap. Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes?

I agree. I use LNX-BBC, which fits on a credit card sized CD. Meaning you can carry it round in your wallet or whatever, and have it at hand for all occasions.
It has an X window system, which even includes some games (to play when you are waiting for that fscking fsck!), and a full browser.

What is really useful, beyond the usual suite of maintanance/repair tools, is the comprehensive network tools. This is why it can be quite useful to carry around. It means you can put it into a windows box (e.g. on a windows only network) and use it for debugging a network problems. Or l337 activities.......

I find the bootable CD-ROM distributions more useful. They contain things like X with a window manager and web browser, net connectivity via ethernet or dialup, XFS and Reiser support, and other useful goodies that would never fit on a floppy distro. And CD-ROM drives are dirt cheap, and nearly as pervasive as floppy drives.

My two favorites are related branches, LNX-BBC, a spinoff from Linuxcare's bootable toolkit, found here. Both have advantages over the other, and will fit on credit-card sized CD's, so you can fit 'em in your wallet (try that with a floppy :-)

Another cool one, which also has the advantage of letting folks try a more full-bodied Linux without installing anything, is DemoLinux. It even contains StarOffice on a fully self-contained bootable CD-ROM. Very cool.

-me

All the rave, those floppy disk linux distros. Over the past few years, I've learned to love tomsrtbt (Tom's RootBoot).

Then, last year, I found some Business Card CDRs, which hold 30-50mb and fit in your wallet.

Naturally, I wanted a super-utility boot disk. My ideal was high; mix tomsrtbt with a standard Win98 boot disk (essential for flashing) and a few other tools. Multiboot? Now there's a tough subject. Even with the best guide to making bootable cdroms I could find, it was hopelessly difficult.

When I saw this post on Slashdot, I knew I had to post this little story. In researching it, I actually found an answer to the question I wanted to pose to all of you; does anybody know of a linux distribution for these business card cdrs.

LNX-BBC is just that. Anybody tried it? Anybody know of another one? Anybody made a multi-boot linux/dos businesscard cdr? ...I want the iso!

Instead of a floppy, why not use a cdrom? It can hold alot more, has faster load times, and many other features.
PLAC - Portable Linux Auditing CD

LNX-BBC

LBT

The features of the first link is that it uses a 2.4 kernel and Xfree 4.1 (and more).

The selling feature of the second is that you can rsync/cvs its development tree, and thus insert your own tweaks into the card.

I'm not screamingly familiar with these versions, but the older BBC they gave away at LinuxWorld really rocks. Not just you're booting the Linux OS from CDROM, but it will handle networking, windowing, and webbrowsing. (And it has repair tools that I thankfully haven't had the need to demonstrate.)

A sign of true geekness would be a linux distro on a credit card sized CD permanently stored in the wallet. Perhaps Slackzip would fit?

They need a placeholder for all these bootable live cdroms I keep on seeing everywhere now. They are great for quick recovery jobs, and its always handy to have a linux distro that fits in your wallet.

LBT from Linuxcare
LNX-BBC
Portable Linux Auditing CD

Wonder if you can burn a (small) ISO or other bootable CD on 'em?

I posted a brief note about Linuxworld on my own site a couple of days ago. The things that caught my eye?

1. Lots of embedded vendors showing off their stuff.
2. Ximian's great booth!
   Great presenters, interesting products, and a great looking booth. Impressed me enough that I built a new system just to play around with the Ximian desktop. The Linux desktop lives!
3. The Linux Bootable Business card session
   The folks from LNX-BBC.org put on a great session about bootable Linux CDs in general and their impressive LNX-BBC in particular.
4. Rick Moen's The Sysadmin's Secret Weapons session.