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)"

Comments

Re:Google Search results:

[ender81b]

Not only linux rescue but Knoppix as well, can't recommend that enough. I also find a number of other things quite handy, i'm a windows pc tech workign with about 500 computers and this is what I carry in my backup when i go around and do maint.

• Leatherman - Always carry one with you. Has damm near every tool you will ever need to fix a computer
• Norton Ghost - Ghost images of computers are so very, very, very,very helpful of a trick/tool
• Every copy of windows you can find with there respective boot disks
• A Laptop with NIC/Modem. seriously helpful if you need drivers off the internet and a computer is broken.
• The largest collection of drivers you can find. Just grab em and keep them. Drivers aren't that big and ever my collection (a few thousand) doesn't exceed 1 gbyte
• Maxtor/IBM/WD/etc hard disk testing software. Each company puts out it's own disks with these testing utilities on them. Search their pages to find the respective ones you will need.
• mcafee viruscan, updated w/ a emergency repair disk(I prefer to use 4.x version. Still updated regularly and works quite well). Self-explanatory
• Windows Service Packs, etc just in case they only have a modem connection

Looking through my backpack that's about all I can find.

Roll your own bootable CD

[bravehamster]

About two years ago I created my own bootable CD that contained the Cab files for Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME, along with scripts for unattended installs for each of them. This CD has saved me countless of hours. Can't really do the same for 2000 and XP, more's the pity. I also made a second CD that contained a full install of Internet Explorer 6 for all OS versions. It's amazing how many problems you can fix in Windows just be installing the latest version of IE. I also carry around of set of floppy disks with me:

Maxblast - Maxtor tool for copying hard drives, works with other brands too. I prefer this to Ghost.
Powermax, SeaDiag, HDDiag, WD Lifeguard - Various manufacturers HD diagnostic disks
Offline NT password and reg editor - Need I say more?

My FSF membership card...

[bgog]

The Free Software Foundation membership card is a bootable linux CD in the shape of a card. It has many nice utilities and it's Linux!

Re:On the other side of the fence...

[BWJones]

Re:On the other side of the fence... Indeed.

This has got to be one of the most flexible and innovative "toolboxes" around. The cool thing about Macs for years has been the ease and flexibility with which they boot. One can boot any Mac going back years from the CD. Additionally, as the previous poster illustrated, one can also boot from a variety of devices like the iPod (Verrrry cool), to other computers functioning as boot drives. I used to use my old Powerbook 5300cs as a "rescue toolkit" for other Macs since I could boot from it via a SCSI connection treating it as an external hard drive.

Macs are so flexible that in fact, a couple of years ago I was accross the country at a scientific meeting when one of the other graduate students had a Windows harddrive melt down, corrupting her registry thus preventing her from booting or rescuing her Powerpoint presentation scheduled for early the next morning. (always bring a back-up of your presentation on CD) She was in absolute agony and on the verge of a total emotional breakdown. At any rate, I simply took her hard drive out of the Windows laptop, replaced my internal hard drive on my Powerbook with hers, and booted from a colleagues iBook via Firewire allowing us to rescue the presentation. Day saved and she became another Apple convert.

In my toolbox

[popdookey]

I maintain a large network, or at least 75 machines feels large, of computers spread across 12 locations. It is a point of sale network using a private WAN and an application hosted on linux servers. I must be able to repair a machine in one visit to be worth my money. I keep the following in a box in my trunk, and if I were you I would bubble wrap and ship two of each to your isolated destination.

60 gb hard drive
Cdrom
floppy drive
Socket/Slot 370 Motherboard (tyan board has both interfaces on one board)
Socket 370 cpu fan (coolermaster)
Case fan
DDR and SDRAM chips. I have a few PC100's and a few PC133's. The DDR is pc2100.
Power Supply -sparkle, full size 350w atx and smaller 175w
IDE and Floppy Cable
Power Supply Cable
50 pin scsi cable
68 pin scsi cable
68 pin lvd-se scsi cable
68 pin scsi terminator
Generic ati video card
Tekram scsi card
Several 10/100 nics
5-port switch
USB Switch
USB Cable
Print Server
Power strip
DC Adaptor with lots of tips in an altoids tin
Lots of tie straps (quick release)
Philips Head (not magnetized)
Straight Screwdriver
Small eyeglass screwdriver
Printer Cable
Several Cat-V Cables 6-ft to 50-ft
Several Phone Cables and line splitter
Extra DSL modem (our private wan is dsl-based)
DSL filters
Cdrom sound cable (fixes the "my cdrom only plays music through the headphone jack" problem
Power Cables intentionally redundant
Mouse/Keyboard extension cable
Mouse and Keyboard
AT-ps/2 adaptor for keyboards (I think it is AT)
PS/2 to usb adaptor
In my software pouch I have copies of:
Debian for PowerPC and i386
Redhat 8 (nearly outdated now, :-))
Mandrake 9 for PowerPC and i386
Copies of win98, win2k, winxp, win95 (try to buy one of the recent issues that come with the Service Packs on cd. It is not current, but it is closer.)
Copy of Norton Antivirus (cd only, I need to add floppies)
Partition Magic (cd and floppy)
Partition Commander (I bought it without researching that it couldn't resize xp partitions)
Win98 boot floppy
A road-runner installation cd because I can install microsoft internet apps from it (sorry)
A cdr called stuff with securecrt, secureftp, wsftp, far, tridiavnc, mozilla, and openoffice
The most recent edition of Knoppix.(this is a sysutil dream unless the cdrom is bad or unbootable)

The name of the game is eliminating the variable, and if you have the diagnostic tools, working replacements, and enough time and patience you can track down the problem. It is a big box and I obviously have a business level budget, so to speak. I actually keep a ready to go machine that dual boots win98 and rhat8 in case I just want to swap it out and work on it at the house. All of this really would fit in a foot locker (not the spare machine unless a *small* case) that I am sure you can ship there with you next time. I hope others can suggest a comprehensive but generic enough book, I don't have one.