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What Would You Put Into A Software Survival Kit?
LosManos asks: "A call for help to the Everyday Heroes that are out there: I have just returned from a 4 months scientific expedition to some of the more remote parts of the South Pacific. As soon as people we met found out that I was a computer guy they asked me to help them and all to often I had to reply that I didn't have the tools.This got me thinking; what should a software toolbox consist of? OS, patches, digital books, compilers, sniffers, servers, harddisk restore apps...? Please remember that the computers I met where often old and slow. The answers to this could be interesting also when you are not several days away from nearest inhabited island. I mean, what is it that most often break? How is it usually fixed? Are more fancy solutions more error prone?" If you were to create a "first aid kit" consisting of CDs, disks, books and other technical utilities you have used to resurrect dead systems, what would you put in it?
"So far I have found:
- A utility for reading and repairing hard disks
- 'regmon' and 'filemon' from Sysinternals
- Video drivers (but I don't know which)
- A diskette for booting MSDOS with CD support
- Digital books (but I don't know which)
- Remote controlling tools, such as VNC
- CDs with OS (but there are hundreds of those)"
And maybe Norton Utilities. Those are great for when things go wrong.
Bring a copy of Knoppix and a copy of FIRE(Forensic Incident Response Environment.
Nothing I've found that those two can't handle.
Gotta have the dead trees in case you can't access digital...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Single-floppy linux boot with a tremendous array of rear-end saving utilities.
In the M$ world, WinZip (or pkzip for dos). I learned the hard way that all my other utilities didn't help much if I couldn't unzip them.
They have the Internet on computers now?
The first thing I try to keep is a list of how to clear the BIOS settings for every computer I manage. You would be amazed at how dumb you feel if you have all these nifty CDROM/floppy based utilities and are unable to make the damn PC boot from anything other than the screwed up hard drive.
The second thing I keep is a NT password recovery disk. About 90% of my problems are based on not knowing the admin password for a machine that has been in some users closet for 3 years. The user suddenly needs the PC on his network, and there I am trying to figure out the admin password. The best disk I have found is here.
The third thing I keep is a Norton Utilities CDROM. You can boot off the CDROM and scan for a virus or diagnose a flaky hard drive.
I also keep a Gentoo live CD. I have thought about going over to Toms Boot Disk, but the Gentoo disk usually does what I need.
Although I don't carry it with me, I also keep a spare hard drive and a Win2k disk with all the latest patches and utilities that my company uses for the standard install. If worse comes to worse, I just move the users hard drive over to the secondary IDE and then install on a fresh hard drive. Then I can copy the users data onto the new hard drive. After that, the users old hard drive becomes my spare for the next user.
I also have a folder with a hard copy of every config for every switch, router, and other configurable device on my network. This folder also has IP address schemes, network maps, building diagrams, and user names and phone numbers. The folder also has a floppy with soft copies of the above, PuTTY, and a TFTP server for uploading into a router quickly.
I try to locate at least one geek for every office. I try to show this geek some of the details about his office. I let him have localadmin for the computers in his office. If the (l)users in his office need a printer reinstalled or otherwise need localadmin access, I direct them to their local geek. This also serves to deflect all the "my home PC is acting dumb and can you fix it" type users.
Finally, I try to write a "Why Stuff Breaks" document for all the major problems on my network. "User in office 12a keeps unplugging the switch so he can make coffee" type comments for common problems can help my minions diagnose a problem quickly.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Leisure Suit Larry
really and truly, I wouldnt take a lot of software out of the country. If you actually read the EULA on some of them, taking them outside of the US is a felony at least. Not that you'd get caught, but you never know who theyre going to call a terrorist nowdays.
Jeff
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Partition magic is golden... and always bring your Windows CDs with you.
Whoa! Hold your fire, linux geeks.
Now, I'm not suggesting that anyone pirate windows (Horrors!), just that sometimes CDs walk off, and you can reinstall with their license by using the key code off the sticker on the box.
Also bring a good current virus scanner with you, (connectivity has its hazards), and tools. When I say tools I'm talking tiny screwdrivers, torx bits (security torx bits and regular), grounding strap, etc. The torx bits are a lifesaver; you never know what kind of screws they use to hold the boxen together, particularly govt. boxen. Spare 'puter parts are also critical when you need to repair stuff.
For instance, I was out in the middle of Saudi Arabia one time (about an hour from the nearest major city) and had a hard drive failure. Complete, total, utter failure. I didn't bring an extra drive... sooo... I had to wait weeks to get a new drive (you don't even want to know how difficult it is to RMA a drive from the middle of a 3rd world country).
Yes, I realize the article was about software... but if the hardware ain't runnin, you might as well use those CDs for coasters.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I'm rather surprised no one mentioned a USB hard drive enclosure along with a laptop (but maybe some one did, I didn't read all the replies because I'd rather do more than that today). It seems to me that one could be insanely useful if your system isn't booting at all for whatever reason.
What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
If you really need to get a file on or off of a PC with no removeable storage, eg broken CD and floppy, then something like FastLynx can be a godsend. If your just using DOS and or Window 9X then the the old DOS interserver is also a way to go, it will even transfer itself over the serial cable (I seem to recall Laplink used to do this as well). FastLynx has the advantage that it can transfer files between XP and say DOS or Linux, over Serial, Parallel, or USB. I haven't used Laplink for years, it may be as capable now.
Oh, and remember a double headed serial cable and appropriate parallel file transfer cable (4 UKP each last time I bought one, cheaper and easier than rolling your own!)
Actually it is rocket science...
is an internet connection - if you hav some floppys, cd-rs, network-cables, a cd-burner, a floppy drive, wireless-lan, ethernet and a modem in your notbook that is everything you need.
:)
some dos/linux/rescue disks and os cds would be good, but you'll never be able to have all tools for everybodys needs, so you need an internet connection to search for them (e.g. on groups.google.com, the best source for tech info on the net imho)
I keep one of those hermetically sealed AOL floppies in my glove compartment. Unfortunately I can't get them anymore. So far I haven't yet had to use up the last one I have.
It's amazing the number of times I've been at someone's house and I need to make a boot floppy and of course they don't have any blank floppies available. I've had to unseal quite a few of those blank floppies to save someone's computer.
I've been doing this for YEARS. Every 6 months I refresh by software kit, not hardware, for hardware I have my home office full of supplies. But, when I'm off at work or at someones house doing a "favor" then I just grab my CD holder with CDs filled into special catagories:
...)
Applications CD1:
Adobe Products (Reader, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, Livemotion, yadda yadda yadda)
Applications CD2:
Macromedia (Allaire) ColdFusion Products
Application CD3:
More Macromedia Products (flash, director, studio mx,
Application CD4:
SQL Monitoring/Dev tools (DBArtisan, etc)
Utilities CD1:
Norton, Web Browsers, Quest Software (Partition Magic, Drive Image, MusicMatch, etc
Utilities CD2:
Smaller tools into directory catagories (MS Plus, mIRC, Compression [WinZip, WinRar, SFX, StuffIt), drivers for most common stuff (network, modem, video), DOS utilities, JPG Viewer, etc.) You get the idea
Utilities CD3:
Cracks and Serial #s, downloaded personal small apps, also a huge repository of other apps (System Commander, Sandra, PowerDVD, etc)
I also bring plenty of blank floppies and different boot dists (Custom Multi boot disk with common CD-ROM drivers)
Be sure to include a bootdisk for SCSI drives.
Like I said, my toolkit is software orientated. For hardware I will be better bringing it to my own home lab/office.