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!"

Comments

Diagnostic disk?

[Dr. Spork]

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.

Naw..

[FreeLinux]

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.

Re:Naw..

[bogie]

Yea I just downloaded it last week and I'm really impressed. Things you can do with it off the top of my head.

Emergency disk repair via a nice gui!
Network scanning via nmap and ethereal. How cool is it to be able to plug into a compromised network and scan it without worrying about your system.
Ssh and vnc for admin without having to install it on your machine. This is great if you only have access to windows machine and don't want to have to download/install and software.
Secure web surfing. Want to check your email or do something else online that won't leave cookies etc on the local machine?
Great way to demo for people new to linux and let them learn linux without fear of them destroying their machine. This really would work great in a classroom setting and sure as hell beats having to reghost the machines every day.

You get a usuable full featured linux system on any machine with a cdrom. It really is very usuable as a desktop on any half decent machine. The only time it felt slow was when launching Open Office. Every other app launched faster than I though it would.

I know its not a new concept and others are available but its the best I've used so far,and should go in any admin's toolkit.

Dear god

[screwballicus]

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.

Would like comparison disk

[Krellan]

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.

A better name?

[Alien Being]

"The Linux Apothecary"

Re:Hardly new

[Tony-A]

Where the developers strive to reinvent the wheel, hundereds of times over.
Yeah, and you're thinking the first wheel was perfectly round and smooth?