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True Stories of Knoppix Rescues
Omniscientist writes "We've all been there: Our system is on the edge of death and we need to either fix it or retrieve important data that still remains hidden away in its dying clutches. LinuxDevCenter has a funny article on a heroic tale of a sysadmin relying on Knoppix to save the day. I for one, always make a boot disk in case of problems, but Knoppix can turn a bad day into a good one for just about anyone. Perhaps every administrator should have a Knoppix CD on reserve."
works like a charm to save data on corrupted windows boxes..
In case you need a smaller, Knoppix based, distro : Damn Small Linux is much smaller and is very good as a system rescue tool too.
Not only Knoppix, but many of the new "live CDs" work very well for such rescues on hosed (Windows, and others) systems. I, myself, have used Knoppix, Mandrake, PClinuxOS and Mepis as rescue CDs (preferring Mepis, but that's just me), and I've seen Ubuntu, SUSE, and some others used in the same ways.
I've used bootable linux CD-ROM for many system saving tasks. Usually it is to fix windows machines that have been infected with a virus. A friend, neighbor, or coworker will be unable to boot due to some registry corruption or 'missing lsass.exe' virus corruption. Using knoppix I've been able to mount the NTFS file system and repair from a special hidden copy of the system hives.
I've also used Toms root boot disk - which is linux based but much smaller (designed to fit on a floppy).
Recently, I've been using Kanotix distro which was derived/inspired by Knoppix. Its debian sid based and includes many more drivers built in - my laptop wireless works out of the box with Kanotix and the ndiswrapper. It includes 'captive-ntfs' which lets me mount NTFS as writeable (important when modifying those registry hives). Kanotix website is in both German and English. I wont link to it since I haven't asked permission.
I recommend downloading it via bit torrent here.
He didn't make these mistakes on a production server either. The first was on his main workstation (not a server) and the second was on his laptop (also not a server).
Really, if you wanna flame him, you'd be safer pointing out that this is just some guy dicking around on his home machine and managing to not scrag his mp3 collection thanks to the wonder of Knoppix.
[insert witty sig here]
"The first and only time I experimented with out-of-spec IDE cables was on my main workstation."
And he had a reason for out of spec cables: he couldn't reach the connector on the motherboard.
For not reading GRUB parameters, well, there's just no excuse for that.
I disagree. Every sysadmin I have ever known has made mistakes. Knowing how to bail yourself out is what makes you a great sysadmin. The person behind the previous post denies his/her own human qualities.
One other thing.... avoid doing dangerous admin commands when highly stressed or tired. I once deleted an entire directory I didn't intend to because I forgot the directory was hardlinked to another location.
As a result, 10 Virtual Servers, including a domain controller, suddenly blinked off. I had blown every one of them away in one misguided command.
Reality is Relative.
For windows data recovery Bart's PE is a good cd to pull files of the "c:" drive
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Contains 130Mb of tools on a 50 MB ISO. Can run from RAM, so CD can be removed after boot.
as a sysadmin for many years; you learn very quickly NOT to put anything valuable on the same drive that boots/manages the operating system.
/hda for booting/system and /hdb for *data*. if something screws up on any of the /hda partitions - you *reinstall* (or, try to recover it). bottom line is that none of your data gets messed up, because its on a *seperate drive* (note: not just seperate partition).
/etc/ files *sigh, those were the days*
i use
i even take it one level further now by putting anything i need (especially development tools/kits) as vmware disc images. this way, i can easily move stuff between machines - and, i just need to install vmware to get started (beats installing everything again).
operating systems should be something you can swap in/out without putting any of your valuable data at risk. hell, if you wanted to use a bootable linux from CD, and rom everything from a ram drive - why shouldn't you?
i wasn't sure how to interpret this article. first, a guy who screws up his own systems; then tries to get acclaim on the "recovery stories". did anyone miss the guy wrote a book on this as well? seems like a publicity stunt.
what happened to the old linux slackware days where all you needed was a boot and root floppy disc and you were all hunky dorey. nothing like vi'ing
If you're going to suggest a Knoppix-STD alternative, why not name one that's intended for data recovery and system restoration...
The only recovery disks that I've found worth using are a custom gentoo based live-cd and INSERT
Knoppix-STD or some other live disk is good for imaging and file recovery, but lacks real utility... like editing a windows 2000 registry, or doing vfat/ntfs hacking
Go Ahead, try INSERT (and yes, i know it's Knoppix Based)
The Geek in Black
I know my BCD's (when I'm Sober)
Works great to 'clone' a drive to a new bigger one. Just mount both hd's under the /mnt directory, go to /mnt/hda, type:
/mnt/hdb ; tar xf - )
tar cf - . | (cd
Take a lunch break. When you get back, everything's been moved to your squeeky clean new drive. Then just dd the first sector or 2 off the old disk (the bootloader), and dd it onto the new one, & yer done.
If you want your system to start acting up, just boot that 3.8. Considering that 3.7 is the newest released, there is likely to be a big suprise waiting in whatever you downloaded marked Knoppix 3.8.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Oddly enought, I found out the answer to that last night (and I wasn't even asking about that particular problem):
dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1
Got that from this site. So take their word for it, not mine.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
As mentioned in TFA, you'll be copying the partition table too, so if the destination partitions aren't the same you'll end up just like the author did, having a good boot record but erroneous partition table. Read the article for his fix (using "gpart" from his knoppix).
One safety issue with this: if you typo the destination directory, then you will be untaring in the original (source) directory, which will wipe out any file larger than tar's internal buffer size. A slightly safer version of this is:
/mnt/hdb; then tar -xf -; fi
/mnt/hdb doesn't exist the second tar command won't run.
tar -cf - . | if cd
Now, if
I've been using Pebuilder for my recovery needs with great success.
It's easy to customize with plugins that you can create, download, and add. The UBCD for Windows is a must have for pebuilder and makes it a real powerful tool. from browsing to e-mail, web browsing, disk recovery and lots more. I basicially used one of these CD's as my PC's OS while I was waiting for Dell to send me a new hard drive when the one in my machine at work crashed.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
People are using knoppix for this all the time; I can tell by the amount of email I deal with on the subject.
> Why all the hassle... you can just boot to runlevel 1 and it will go straight to prompt. Then use passwd to change the root password.
Depends on the distribution; Debian-based systems want a root password before they'll give you a shell prompt in single-user mode.
Actually you can remove the CD./ hack05.pdf
As an exmaple: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/chapter
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)