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Medicine for a Sick Linux Box
Squidgee writes "This is the site for "LIAP: Linux In A Pillbox". It is an interesting recovery distro made in the vein of pharmaceuticals; each floppy based 'minidistro' cures one specific Linux ailment. Or, as Luke Komasta (The creator of LIAP) puts it: "My Linux project contains "pills". Each of them is good for one disease, but it doesn't work good enough for another. When you know what you need a Linux for, you may choose a good pill. And of course, as you know, there is no drug which is good for treating all diseases." It's an extremely interesting approach to Linux recovery, and one that appears to be more effective than the other varieties of floppy/mini-cd based recovery systems. Worth downloading in case you ever need it!"
What pill does it nead for a good slashdotting?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Well, for those who don't have enough experience to correctly diagnose what ails their box, it seems logical to make a diagnosis diskette, one that doesn't fix anything, but might give them a clue which pill has the best chance of fixing their problem.
And does the blue pill disk install windows ??
What disk do you use if your floppy disk drivers break?
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http://www.dennistighe.com
Don't tell me. Lemme guess.
The "Blue pill" returns your Linux machine back to normal function. The "Red pill" puts a trace on the kernel, and "shows you just how deep the rabbit hole goes...."
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
you moron ..... nothing better to say
I still occasionnally download a boot+rescue root disk to repair a screwed-up system that fails to boot, even when said machine isn't running Slack.
I'd rather have everything I need at once, rather than having to switch floppies and reboot for a different function.
For me a bootable CD solution like Knoppix is a much better choice for a recovery disk.
I'd always thought, to a large extent, the frustration of dealing with Windows and Mac had been due to their perverse propensity for the use of abstract metaphors which complicate rather than explicate problems. That may be helpful for new users, but new users Linux users do not tend to be. Do Linux users want to be treated like babies all of a sudden? I know I certainly don't. And, somehow, I don't believe the linux community in general is going to be too impressed with useful utility encased in meaningless, obfuscating metaphors.
put all of them into a CD, which is bootable with isolinux and each remedy (that is the pills) is a root file system to mount - easier to use, faster, isn't it. i think that almost all recent years (5 years old computers) are ok with bootable CDs.
Did you need that stupid analogy for an otherwise good idea?
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
suppositories
I was a tad concerned about the lack of drug-interaction information. I mean, I'd be concerned that if I used the blue pill at the same time as I used the yellow pill, that I'd get some sort of green-pill effect. Likewise, if I used the blue and red, would I get a purple pill? :)
what are some of the "Linux diseases" these disks cure? What if i have a broken floppy drive?
Man that is 'super-funny-post' - rumber one.
lerry good.
Instead of lecithin, vitamin and insulin, we could have crack, lsd and heroin. You could even have a marijuana distro, which of course would be a gateway distro.
now, we just need 2 tone floppy disks that look like gel-caps to go with it
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
You can't fit everything you might need on one floppy, so it's hard to create a Swiss Army Rescue Disk.
Of course, that's why God gave us zipdisks. . .
More than a recovery disk/CD, of which several already exist, I would love a comparison disk. It would be for use after suspecting an attack.
It would boot from floppy or CD, guaranteeing that it would be in control and not trusting the hard drive for anything at all.
It would contain Tripwire-style keys for every system-installed file in the distribution. When booted, it would check each file against these keys, and output a list of files that do not match.
So, if one has been rooted with a good rootkit that modifies the operating system to cloak hacked files, one could then boot this disk/CD and be sure of being completely in control with a known good operating system. All files on the hard disk would be able to be accessed honestly, for a true comparison!
Does such a tool exist already?
It would be fairly easy to add this to the Red Hat installer. In addition to having an option to install, it would have an option to compare an existing system. It would go through the standard installation steps (choosing partitions, etc.) but compare instead of copy. A byte-for-byte comparison could then be done, for true honesty. If any mismatches are found, it would complain loudly, and give you the option at the end of simply overwriting the changed files (under your control, of course, and on an individual basis).
What do you think? Does such a tool already exist? I would love to use it if it does.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
And one pill makes you small. And the one your BOFH gives you won't do anything at all.... Go ask Luser...
Actually, why bother with the floppy stuff if you have a CD that you can boot from? Even a business card CD could hold plenty for whatever kind of Linux tool you'd need for rescue work.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I know, I've got my own pill. It's called the "Stab them in the face with a knife...until THEY DIE!!!" pill.
Some call it "alternative medicine."
kernel, mount, daemon, zombie, thread, named pipe, kill (especially Kill : The Command), jiffies, etc, etc.
The guy's name is Komsta, not Komasta... Do we have a fix-my-spelling pill?
The link to its ftp server seems to be missing...
If you want some working linux distro in a floppy you may look at Tom's. It's my favourite, it helps me install Gentoo Linux on some boxes cannot boot from CDROM.
Besides, you can find list of Linux floppy/CD distros here
The install CD for Mandrake can boot using a "rescue" image, which mounts a full system. It's got all I need to get my system up and running again.
I dont know who should ever need this thing, most distros already have a failsafe way of booting the machine (from cd, floppy or even hd).
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
I would not trust my system in the hands of his creations -- he sounds like a major druggie.
LOL I remember her! What was that song she sung? "I'm a bitch" ??
Unless, of course, you need reiserfs. I'm not sure they've added ext3 support to that, either. No devfs, either, AFAIK. This might have changed since last time I checked.
Of course, there aren't many systems that actually do include these things yet, so that could be the only reason.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
No that was Meredith Brooks. Alanis sang "Isn't it ironic" and such.
viagra for linux?
The only command youll ever need.
I jammed caffiene pills in my linux box's floppy drive...
I just have a boot disk, a root disk, and a CD with the contents of /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, and /usr/sbin. That's enough to repair just about anything. It's also useful for rearranging hard drive partitions, since you don't have the hard drive mounted.
charles bukowski no?
/. reply-post limit sucks greasy cocks - this was a legitimate reply thwarted a half dozen times because im too lazy to log in cocksuckers.
and the 20 second
From the Osiris website:
Osiris is a file integrity verification system that can be used to monitor changes to a file system over time. Osiris consists of a pair of applications, osiris and scale. The first application, osiris, is used to collect specific data from the local filesystem and store that data into a database. The second application, scale, is then used to analyze, and/or compare the differences between two databases.
This also keeps an administrator apprised of possible attacks and/or nasty little trojans. The purpose here is to isolate changes that indicate a break-in or a compromised system.
Wax on, wax off baby!
Women who are pregnant, or think they may be pregnant, shouldn not touch LIAP.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
In Windows land we just reinstall the entire OS to fix pretty much everything.
Amazingly enough with XP I have actually seen cases where less and less things work with each continuous fresh install of the OS though, heh.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Hmmmph. Modern medicine has cured NOTHING!! And they subscribe to the pill for individual ailments. I think that if you take the holistic (or wholistic) approach to computing. Look at the environment which the system resides, and there you will find all the unhealthy problems.
Personally I prefer SuperRescue http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/superrescue/ for system recovery, works remarkably well on a system with a CD-ROM. Give it a shot :)
And the ironic thing is that none of the things she sings about in the song are ironic.
I have a couple of those disks around, find them useful now and then...
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Will it ever be a complete product?
Red Pill
Linux rules, and nothing will tear me away from it! The real world, and the crash world, simply SUCK. Trees can't be tied up searching for Pi. Windows would crash before finding it. Dos would give me several hundred "no command or filename" errors in the process.
I took the Red Pill, and I am proud of it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
They are metaphors, they were meant as metaphors and they are still primarily used as metaphors.
Jargon does not start as jargon, only after it's used has been established in their technical context are they considered the "jargon" or idioms of the field.
Jargon terms have only three origins:
- Metaphors: process, kill, zombie, kernel, pipe, thread, batch, stack, etc.
- Codes and Acronyms: tcp, lisp, java, pc, minix, perl, etc.
- Idiotic Puns: more, less, archie, most shell commands.
Some, like GIMP, UNIX or GNU have mixed origins, but I'll let you decide which origins are present in the mix.
Not only are most computer science terms based on metaphors, very few people expect you to understand them properly without the metaphors. That makes learning concepts more difficult, and makes knowledge incomplete and not-portable.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
The pill that will teach it not to suck
Linux recovery? What would I ever need that for? I thought Linux never experienced even the sightest hiccup, never crashed, never failed in any way shape or form, just runs until the end of time completely unattended and without any degradation in performance or stabiity EVER?
Or did I misunderstand the FUD all these years?
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Tell me if I'm imagining unlikely things, but for those of us for whom linux is still mostly a mystery, how about a diagnostic that checks to see what's wrong, then applies the right "pill(s)" ??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You mean to say that wasn't a troll? All the signals were there, and you're cute little "Oh, I'm an intelligent, insightful martyr" follow up just shows that you were, in fact, just looking for attention.
"The Linux Apothecary"
Which pill do you take if you want to learn to read good and do other things good too?
sic transit gloria mundi
When you reinstall Windows on your dual-boot system and it destroys your partition table (not just the MBR mind you), the "morning after" pill comes in and wipes out the unwanted OS (Windows).
If you can get this to work, let us know about it. Even better, email the guy that runs the site and maybe he can make it available for download as well. :)
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Here's the beginning of Linux Ailment:
#1. Where's the MS Windoze ?
#2. Where's the BSOD ?
And you can continue from here.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A zombie process sticks around until either its parent dies without it being assigned a new parent or until its parent checks its exit status (the 'performing an autopsy' the previous poster mentioned).
The metaphor extends a bit more, because you can't kill a zombie process the way you can kill normal processes - because you can't kill something that's already dead =)
Do Linux users want to be treated like babies all of a sudden? I know I certainly don't. And, somehow, I don't believe the linux community in general is going to be too impressed with useful utility encased in meaningless, obfuscating metaphors.
I will be.
If Linux is ever going to replace Windows as a viable desktop operating system - which I think the majority of the Linux community rightly wants - then it's time to get your head out of the sand and look at the reality.
I'm typing this on a Windows XP box at work. It's not by choice that I am using Windows, in fact, I have defenestrated my home computers despite several problems with Linux as a viable desktop operating system.
This XP box is insipid, insulting, cartoonish, wasteful of CPU cycles and hardware resources. And, I think, Windows is almost at the point where any idiot can use it.
If you've ever done a stint in tech support, you know how the operating system must pander to the idiot who doesn't realize that a case sensitive password must be entered with the Caps Lock in the same mode as it was when the password was created.
Linux should not go this way by default, or else we will drive away both power users and developers.
But there's plenty of room for distributions and tools which are designed to make Linux easy for the proles to handle.
Don't knock them, applaud them. Unless you want to see all Internet protocols commoditized by The Borg.
www.glowingplate.com/dissent
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
for those who prefer suppositories.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Blue Pill Of Death?