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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."
What if the Linux that you can't boot already is Knoppix? Can you swap this recovery CD with your regular Knoppix CD during the boot process?
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.
Knoppix, the hot new kid on the block
New? Wow, I'm glad I don't live in that neighborhood.
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.
This one's been around for a while. It's a useful resource, but some of the more specialised distros are easier to use for rescue disks.
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php has a good list of them.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Well, apart from the "Duh- What else are you gonna use it for?" line, I suppose its nice to RE-distribute the info to those 3 or 4 around here that haven't heard of knoppix...And also nice that IBM is running the piece. That kinda lends some pointy-haired massive corporate legitimacy to the tool...
But maybe I'm mistaken...Okay, then--- Quick Poll- Who HAS NOT heard of and tried a Knoppix disk?
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
OMG! We slashdotted IBM!
[would have been funnier if it were true]
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You can also use the gentoo live CD (you can even get an experimental one for reiser4) at www.gentoo.org.
k s/linux/library/l-knopx.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01-obg-Sys Recover
There are also lots of speecialised ones. generally, the only time a linux box wont boot though is just a lilo or grub problem...
By the way, the coralised link is: http://www-106.ibm.com.nyud.net:8090/developerwor
I think NTFS is probably read-only so you can't fix it directly. But in case you weren't smart enough to keep backups around, you can use Knoppix to backup your files over the network. I did the same thing for a friend who couldn't boot up her XP installation anymore after Norton Antivirus "cleaned" a bit too much (even safe mode didn't work). But I ended up copying the data to an external firewire disk 'cause the network (which Knoppix didn't have any problems to detect) was too slow.
Go Linux/Knoppix!
Ricardo.
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.
Is this news?
The article was written a year ago, and even then it was not news (I have used Knoppix for this purpose longer than that)
"You can't install it to your hard drive."
Yes, you can: knx-hdinstall.
sigs, as if you care.
captive-ntfs 1.14 works just fine for me w/Knoppix 3.4 (though 1.15 w/Knoppix 3.6 failed to mount my NTFS partitions, that is another story altogether) ... so, you can actually read/write to NTFS from Knoppix if you manually configure captive and mount the NTFS partition(s) yourself.
A friend brought me his machine to upgrade.
/home (hdb)....
/home from hda to hdb then reformat hda and partition it up in a useful way.
/home data from hda to hdb.
/home is on hdb1.
/home on the new 120g drive and asked me if I wanted to change the permissions and ownership over. I said yes.
/home directory instead of the 10gigs he had before.
A Frys cheapo Linux special, originally it came with a 30g, 128m ram and Thiz Linux. I Thized the disc straight into the trash and installed Suse 9.0 on it for him when he first got it.
Well, as time went on he realized that his system needed upgrading. So I sent him to the store and he brought back another 128m ram, a 120g drive and Suse 9.1 Pro.
The plan was to have the old doggy 30g as his boot/OS/work drive (hda) and his new 120g as
Well, booting up 9.1 does not come up and say
"Hey, I see you have data on your drive already and a new blank drive. Would you like to move it around in anyway before we procede?"
No, Suse just suggests that you wipe everything out and start over. Even if you tell it you want to do an upgrade, it has NO PROVISION what-so-ever to allow you to format the new drive then move your old
Ok, so in light of this, I took Damn Small Linux 0.8.2
and booted up. Opened a root terminal, fdisked hdb, formated it for ext3 then moved all of his old
It copied EVERYTHING. Hidden files, configurations, email, cookies, bookmarks, music, photos, the whole works.
When it was done I booted into Suse 9.1 pro, did a NEW INSTALLATION and wiped hda clean, installed the OS on it and told it that
I created the same user and password as the old system so Suse looked at the
The install proceded normally to completion.
When it was finished and I rebooted the system, it was identical to the way it was brought to me except that he now has a 120g
Damn Small Linux is the very best tool a tech can carry with him. I keep a copies on biz cards in all of my tool boxes and in each of my vehicles.
I don't leave home without it.
I also carry standard Knoppix in case I run into a case where I need k3b on the ailing machine.
I have several other versions of Knoppix I keep handy for various network jobs, like knoppix-std
and a few other network related Knoppix knock offs..
As a computer networking student I'm absolutely AMAZED this hasn't gotten more attention then it has.
Under your MS stuff (I know, I know, but in industry it really is a necessary evil) you should definitely have a Windows Boot CD. And I don't mean a DOS floppy! Its basically a live, say Windows XP disk with preinstalled software (virus scan, adware removers, registry editors, complete networking setup). It really has all the tools you commonly use when fixing the obligatory windows box and probably a few you've never even known you'd need.
I highly recommend you build one, and if the directions sound a little complicated, just take your time and reread them, there's about 3 step and none of the are actually complicated.
The worst thing you can do is boot a infected PC from an infected hard drive, not to mention the trouble accessing NTFS with FULL read-write.
Quack, quack.
Actually, the gripe is a legitimate one, although very poorly presented. I'm a regular on the Knoppin forums at www.knoppix.net and I constantly see people posting problems with things (mostly simple networking) that worked fine under Knoppix when running from the CD but stopped working as soon as Knoppix was installed to hard disk. Most of the time this seems to be simple permission issues or something that for some reason I don't understand needs to be added to a configuration file. But it's been going on for years and the install scripts never seem to get around to addressing it and making the premissioins right. See for yourself by scanning this forum.
I just write it off to the arogance that almost all Linux geeks seem to have for newcomers who don't know the cryptic commands to change permissions or all the magic places startup configuration stuff is stored. The geeks who master Knoppix must come across the same problems, but just know where to go to twiddle the right bits to make everything right. That they don't "bother" to go back and make the HD install scripts do this seems strange.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think you could have added the new disk to the old running system, fdisk and format it using yast or commandline tools, move your home there, and then re-install the system on the 30GB disk. / /home, format it) /dev/sdb1 is now mounted as /home) /home.orig/* /home /home.orig
/home is /dev/sdb1.
I would have done:
- login as root
- cd
- mv home home.orig
- mkdir home
- yast
(add the disk, say it will be
- df
(make sure the
- mv
- rmdir
home is now on the new disk.
reboot system from CD, install 9.1 on 30GB and during partition selection tell it that
that should do it.
Luckily I haven't had to use Knoppix to recover any crashed systems...
However I did use it to tweak the device settings on my install of FreeBSD. Knoppix has always detected anything I threw at it, while FreeBSD isn't quite up to the same level (but getting better). So, I gave Knoppix a whirl and got enough driver info for the noname videocard that shipped in the used computer I was setting up as a server.
Rock on Knoppix!
Tom's Root Boot" is the only Linux boot CD needed to fix a Linux system. Although I use Knoppix occasionally to test hardware.
First of all, there are a couple of basic steps people can take to ensure their systems are rescuable and secure regardless of any patches they have applied.
Following above steps is usually enough to prevent rescue situations because the root filesystem is vital, so protecting it is the first line of defense, but if the worse comes to worst and you ever get into trouble, you must learn with the problem. If the kernel loads and init doesn't, it may be a libc problem. Try booting with init=/bin/sh, remount your filesystems read-write, examine the problem, umount them (or remount them read-write, when unmount is not possible), sync, reboot and watch the changes. If the kernel does not load, you may need a
captive-ntfs needs a captive user and group to work properly. Manually adding them allows it to work correctly again on 3.6. I even made a personal remaster of Knoppix with fix and the XP drivers captive-install-acquire already done. That last is handy because I have had NICS that XP didn't recognize and it gets the driver install files on the disk.