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System Recovery with Knoppix
An anonymous reader writes "This article shows how to access a non-booting Linux system with a Knoppix CD, get read-write permissions on configuration files, create and manage partitions and filesystems, and copy files to various storage media and over the network. You can use Knoppix for hardware and system configuration detection and for creating and managing partitions and filesystems. You can do it all from Knoppix's excellent graphical utilities, or from the command line."
Just two days ago I just had to use Knoppix to recover my system after a failed attempt to upgrade the kernel. Very good to have as a recovery tool.
Is that IBM has done this, right off their own website and helping the system admins, techies and anyone else interested in learning how to fix your defunct or otherwise broken system.
Tbe Knoppix Distro has been helpful at this point - and I'm glad that I kept it around, because I needed to get these people's email transferred without much hassle
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Cig:
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(Mini Usual Stuff)
It's been a long time since I've needed anything else. I used to carry a Trinux CD, but now it's Knoppix.
I use the compact flash card because it fits in both my camera and my PDA.
sigs, as if you care.
No, I'm not a weenie who needs things spoon fed to them, I've been using Linux since long before it was cool or chic, starting with Slack back in '96, then RedHat, then Mandrake. After Win2k came out I moved back to using Windows for most of my day-to-day desktop needs (now mostly Win XP), but recently I've installed MEPIS on my laptop and I find it quite enjoyable to use. The things that stand out to me are 1) fabulous hardware compatibility, including out of the box support for almost every component of my Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop, with NVidia GeForce4 Go graphics and so on (I did have to make a quick manual edit to XF86Config-4 to get widescreen support, and my Microsoft MN-720 802.11b card took about half an hour of screwing around to get running, but ndiswrapper was already there, I just had to find the right driver version and run it.
Okay, that's all the ranting I can do for now. Did I mention that MEPIS makes a great recovery CD? That's how I first discovered it. Give it a try, funny name aside.
In theory, URPMI is fabulous, but in practice, I've had far, far better luck keeping a clean, consistent system without weird, incompatible RPMs and other stuff mucking up my install when using MEPIS, and find I almost never have to go outside of the pre-configured repositories. And Mandrake's lack of working out of the box Nvidia support (at least as of the last version I used, probably a year and a half ago) killed it for me. MEPIS is the first distro I've been able to use extensively without encountering some hitch that required a kernel recompile.
Don't get me wrong, I have been doing Linux kernel compiles since around '96 (when I was a freshman in college, and I thought compiling the kernel was pretty 3733+), but I just don't want to screw around with that stuff for a day-to-day use desktop system. Custom compiled kernels for special purpose server boxes is fine, but it just doesn't fly for a desktop distro for me - I want to get work done, not screw around with kernel settings.
Even better, go get this book:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/
I know the author - he is what IMHO most would call an "uber hacker", when it comes to Linux in general.
Highly reccomended.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Tom's Root Boot" is the only Linux boot CD needed to fix a Linux system. Although I use Knoppix occasionally to test hardware.