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Frenzy - FreeBSD-based LiveCD for sysadmins
techniX writes "Frenzy is a portable system administrator toolkit - FreeBSD-based LiveCD. It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. Size of ISO-image is 200 MBytes (3" CD). Current version is 0.3, it contains almost 400 applications, full software list is on their site.
Main website
as well as some screen shots
Frenzy 0.3 screenshot"
This is *BSD we are talking about. A "LIVE" CD? Isn't that.... oh. never mind.
Cd's like these are very useful, even in our Windows-centric company. One laptop had a fried harddrive, Windows crashed upon starting. First I tried the recovery console which was no help because the disk was beyond repair, then I tried a BartPE XP cd but that wouldn't recognize neither the nic in the docking nor a USB nic (no, I didn't want to have to add all sorts of drivers etc. to it first). Downloaded a FreeSBIE cd and it worked perfectly. The guy was very happy about his saved data, the shmuck.
*goes off to browse the site*
home
This cd cannot be used for serious tasks. It lacks the most essential application. EMACS.
You know your data is almost 4 Years old, right?
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
Forgot to click "Post Anonymously", did you?
Yes, Russian language is default, but you can select English as interface language while booting - see screenshot here: http://frenzy.org.ua/files/screenshots/frenzy03-lo ader.png
Kind of a problem that when something gets sucessful something is lost. Fell like you can't win.
BSD for me is the fallback for if I feel linux is going to far the Windows side.
Do something different, are OS'es really that interesting anymore?
A blog I run for the wealth
I booted the GUI once briefly, but didn't have a mouse hooked up so it was useless. I don't really care about the GUI. The focus of this kit is mostly command line tools (though there are some gui-only tools). The system boots to a prompt; you have to start X from the command line if you want it.
It's pretty annoying the way it defaults to Russian if you don't press e within three seconds during boot up. But hey, it was made by Russians who are probably pretty annoyed by all the English they are forced to endure.
The BSD kernel is very nice for detecting hardware. They're method of automounting drives seems to work pretty well. The little help system they have included which categorises and lists all of the installed utilities to help you find your way around is indeed very helpful (it would be better still if it was searchable).
Anyhow, i love this disk. It's so useful. I tend to us it more than Knoppix now in many situations. All of the more admin-oriented linux boot disks i've tried tend to have gotten stale, not updated, and be hard to find out what tools are on them after booting. Maybe Frenzy will stagnate as well. But for now it is my favourite.
Also having a lot of BSD boxes of course I am biased. Most of the linux boot disks don't give much attention to UFS/FFS file systems.