Slashdot Mirror
IBM Using iPod to boot Linux on PCs
Applejack writes "Looks like iPod fever has caught on to Big Blue. IBM has a yet unreleased iPod-based software for rescue, restore, and recovery of failed Windows PCs. I read this description of the software on Amit Singh's blog, whose group at IBM apparently created this stuff. If I understand this correctly (and I think I do), the iPod contains IBM's rescue software along with Linux. A crashed PC boots into Linux from the iPod, after which you get all kinds of rescue & restore functionality ... web browsing and all, even if the PC's drive is totally hosed. All this while the iPod keeps working normally as a music player as it would. The blog has pointers to further information, including a Windows Media demo of the thing. " Should be noted this is not iPod specific; USB devices will do.
Recovery tools? On an external hardrive of some sort? What will they think of next?!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
...and then I deleted all that other stuff to make more room for my iTunes purchases, and now my system won't recover.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm using my $699 iPod as a substitue for a $0.10 Knoppix liveCD!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Is there anything the iPod can't do? ;)
Aren't there several free live linux distros already easily available with the same capability?
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
when compared to say, a CD containing said rescue sw? Sounds to me a lot more like justifying the iPod purchase.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Is it just me or is the iPod becoming more and more like a Tricorder every day. (The small do-everything-device used in Star Trek)
"Should be noted this is not iPod specific; USB devices will do."
Thanks for this little sentence hidden at the end of the article. And somehow the headline looks rather sensationalist, doesn't it? They are using a USB mass storage device with Linux to rescue broken CDs. Wow. Why did nobody else have this idea before...
1. Take any generic news item
2. Try to work the iPod into the story, no matter how forced
3. Front page!
He is "group at IBM apparently created this stuff"???
That's a very long adjective!
In this CRN news article, Steven Welch, an "IBM distinguished Engineer", is quoted as saying, "One-touch IBM Rescue & Recovery On Linux all wrapped up in a portable media device under $300. Priceless. That is music to my ears."
I wonder how his ears would respond to a free Knoppix CD?
Because it costs $150 for a single-seat, limited-use license?
.... ...
All this while the iPod keeps working normally as a music player as it would.
Awesome!
Now sysadmins can listen to chill-out music while repairing mission-critical workstations!
I agree this doesn't make a whole lot of sense for system admins who should be carrying around (or have handy) a whole toolkit though. When the iPod first came out, I thought that the coolest thing was that I could have my entire system on it and any Mac I encountered could boot my system (rather like the original NeXT idea).
...any USB (or Firewire, depending on the system)device will serve this purpose. Oh, Slashdot, what happened to you over the years?
There are already comments about how an external usb drive w/ knoppix can be used for this purpose. I think they are missing that the cool part is that it doesn't interfere with the iPod's ability to act as, well, an iPod.
Seems to me that the developers are on the ball with this one. They get to requisition expensive iPods for, ahem, work. They also get media attention from slashdot. This is much sexier than burning knoppix.
Thank you steve jobs for your magical machine of reconciliation. Do you think we could use IPODs to achieve peace in the mideast?
Cool. Now I can write off my iPod as a "tool of trade" on my taxes!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Isnt there something very similiar to this thats F/OSS?
As many of you have pointed out, this has little to do with the iPod.
(But the iPod solution should be compared to a LiveCD - more like a LiveUSB key.)
On the other hand, if IBM has created a Linux distro for managing and repairing Windows PC's then maybe it has some features that the other Linux distros (like Knoppix) don't have. For example, does it support captive for NTFS defragging and writing?
Yes, I've tried BartPE. I find it's functionality to be quite limited.
The only thing IBM would be relying on in this case would be Apple MARKETSHARE. "Apple Technology" has squat to do with it.
RTFA
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
to browse the web with that rotary dial on the iPod.
If you're looking for a cheaper solution, check out the Ultimate Boot CD. It has tools to test memory, CPUs, hard disks, and so much more.
It's definitely something to keep handy and is much cheaper than an iPod.
google says
RIP, revovery is possible
This script allows you to install and boot the RIP system,
from a USB flash/pen drive, and possibly similar devices
(compact flash, memory stick, etc.). For it to work, the
USB drive probably can't be more than 1GB. Read the USB
flash drive section of the RIP README.
who am I to differ.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Another day, another bunch "Knoppix is cheaper" posts without any thought.
Hey, here's a question for you who aren't getting it: If you boot up from your Knoppix CD where do you plan on saving your data when you recover?
In case you haven't figured it out, booting from a harddrive/iPod with rescue/live-OS gives you a place to restore your data.
Anybody know how this works? I've got a gen 4 iPod and it doesn't act like a normal USB storage device. On Windows PCs, the iPod doesn't show up as a drive unless iTunes has been installed. A little investigation shows iTunes is bundled with a driver for the iPod and installs an iPod service. I admit that I haven't actually tried to boot from the iPod, but I can't see how it would work. Does anyone know if the iPod mini is different in this respect and functions as a standard USB storage device?
When the iPod first came out, I thought that the coolest thing was that I could have my entire system on it and any Mac I encountered could boot my system
Cool, yes. Practical?
The tiny Toshiba drives in the iPods aren't designed for sustained use as a computer's system volume.
You could easily thrash the poor little thing to death doing anything more demanding than playing back MP3's in shuffle mode, and then good luck finding a replacement. There are virtually no 1.8" hard drives available in the end-user market right now, as the demand for new iPods means Toshiba is selling pretty much their entire production runs directly to Apple.
PCs that can boot from USB/1394 drives are still pretty rare.
Once they become more common, this does have the advantages over a LiveCD such as Knoppix in the fact that it's somewhat more convenient to carry around with you at all times (many people already do so.) Note the comments that it doesn't interfere with the device's music capabilities at all.
It's an obscene waste of money for someone who doesn't already have an iPod to buy it for these purposes, instead of just using a LiveCD. But if you already have an iPod for your music, this would be a nice thing to have around.
(Note: I don't have an iPod for my music, but most likely I could do a similar thing with Softick CardExport II on my Treo 600.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
it can run linux???
seriously, why are we throwing such a fit about using the ipod as a cd replacement when if you read the summary, we can use the pinnacle of alphageekdom (sorry, couldnt help the made up word)(who has the largest thumbdrive if you couldnt guess). Most of us have thumbdrives to run this stuff from, quit complaining just becuase someone found that this works on the ipod, and realize that this could be more/less helpful than a slax or knoppix cd (pick spinoff as appropriate). Most of my live cd's cant boot off a usb device, so this can and will have a niche market of tech support lackies that dont want to carry around a cd wallet, but a thumbdrive instead.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
How are they getting the machine to boot at the BIOS level? They usually do not recognize FireWire devices for purposes of rebooting, though I wish they would finally add that functionality!
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Purchase Request
Item Name: Apple iPod
Description: To be used as an external bootable storage device for diagnosing and recovering PC's with failed hard-disks.
Hmmm, wonder if the boss would go for it...
ok this is somewhat on topic, and don't hate me if it's not. but i spent 3 separate nights trying to figure out how to get my bios to boot from USB (its phoenixBIOS 4.0 rev 6.0).
from what i gathered, the USB functionality for the phoenixBIOS (this is on an eMachines motherboard, so i'm pretty sure its an Imperial GLVE, which has the shittiest documentation and the web has some pretty sour information about it) didn't get implemented until rev 6.1, so i'm pretty sure i'm SOL.
what i would like to see is a CLEARCUT explanation of what i would have to do to get my computer to boot from USB. because I bought one of those IDE->USB converters and i have all these hard drives that i can just plug right in, and id really like to take a smattering of OSes and plug them in at will.
any help?
"when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold"
on a first generation iPod. Ok, not this, we booted OS X ( 10.1, I think ) off of it. Still, it's funny that this is 'news', even though it's cool that IBM is giving IT admins a way to expense their iPods...
This is not limited to IPODS,any bootable USB storage device will do.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft is reportedly working on a way to crash and iPod when Windows crashes.
I did this with my 6GB Archos Recorder, like, two years ago. More capacity, cheaper, and it recorded.
Ha! Ha! Oh, Apple, you know I kid because I love you.
But seriously, I did. One ancient laptop, a floppy, a busted CD-ROM drive, and an image of a Gentoo liveCD loaded onto my Archos. I used a Red Hat recovery floppy for the USB drivers, then mounted the image as a loopback device from the MP3 player and chrooted to it. I felt like a badass pulling that one off.
I think what everyone fails to realize is this...
You can't WRITE to a LiveCD. I imagine you can write to the iPod while booting off it.
It can be used for other things than rescuing a system due to the fact that you can write back to what you're booting off of.
well any usb mass storage device will do. What is cool about it though, is its rewritable media - if the computer your fixing doesn't have a cdr drive and floppies aren't feasable.
funny, i have never lost ALL of my data due to a BSOD.
Nor has anyone I know.
Have they lost some of the data, ie the document they are currently working on? Sure. But ALL of their data - nope.
Funny, when Linux dies - and it does die - your current changes since last save on a document will probably be lost too. amazing.
If you boot up from your Knoppix CD where do you plan on saving your data when you recover?
1. Any USB/Firewire device
2. Another internal hard drive
3. Any other PC connected through virtually any connection (serial, parallel, cross-over cable, SSH, FTP, etc)
4. Floppy!
You've managed to achieve an unprecedented level on confusion induction in a headline.
I salute you.
You can't take the sky from me...
Most of new motherboards support booting from USB device. So why you need an ipod for this? Any decent player (acts as a USB mass storage device) will do.
You obviously mixed things up here, Linux isn't dying - *BSD is.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
The one advantage of the iPod solution is there are probably times when you have your ipod with you, and a friend's pooter decides to toasty. You won't have a knoppix CD with you - and you probably won't have a flash drive, though some people do go pretty much everywhere with them. But your iPod? When I get one, I plan on having it surgically implanted. Thing's going everywhere.
If your rescue tools are good enough for it, why not use it for daily work too? Just install a base system on it, copy some config that you already have collected at boot and apt-get or yum the whole shebang over the network.
yoou need some magic to make sure the users files are not hosed in the process.
Does anybody know Free Software for the next step after restoring: educating the user? Just something that grabs the cursor and keyboard events and won't let go until they have given the correct answers in some basic security training?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
"IBM has a yet unreleased iPod-based software for rescue, restore, and recovery of failed Windows PCs."
So IBM has not unreleased this software. I know that delays are inevitable in development, but actually moving backwards through time. This puts Duke Nukem Forever to shame.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
This will have IBM specific tools, and recovery software that spans several CD's. Will also let you save users data...
Having been on the road doing service work this is a great thing. Lugging around a laptop and a box of cds is cumbersome.
Though back when i did it, you carried a box of floppies and your portable might have a 10MB drive, if you were lucky....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bootable Live CDs with recovery tools - old news
Pockets big enough to carry CDs - so seventies
Titanium jewel case to protect the CD in your pocket - expensive, lumpy and painful
Using your iPod to rescue a PC while still listing to your music in front of a drop jawed user. Now that's cool.
Well... this isn't all too surprizing, because lately that I've been experiencing Windows-Is-Down Syndrome, I've been thinking of installing a copy of Windows on my thumbdrive (256). Or maybe the compactflash card for my camera (512). Both of these are available for use when installing Windows, and it doesn't sound like that bad of an idea now that I sit and read this article about someone using an infernal iPod as a bootdisc.
Ahh...oh, I see....
iPOD... Charger... USB chord
..and almost all computers can boot from a CD ...
Exactly.
Does that mean it's...better? Is it any better?
Well, it's one boot device better, isn't it? It's not a CD. You see, most...most blokes, you know, will be playing at booting from a CD. You're booting Knoppix...all the way up...all the way up...
Yeah...
I don't know....
Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra..push over the cliff...you know what we do?
Boot from the iPOD.
The iPOD. Exactly. One better.
If you can't use a CD, why don't you just use a laptop drive in a USB enclosure, hook that up instead of the iPOD and use your iPOD for music and your external drives for storage?
This boots from an iPOD
... to spend company money on an Ipod. IBM! Do you have any openings? 2 oere opinion
No, no, he's got a point. There's always a chance, nomatter how remote, that the IRS just might ask me how an iPod qualifies as an "office expense". This make perfectly good sense. This one will keep my accountant laughing all afternoon.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I just can't listen to that CD anymore. The drumming is awful, the bass player is stoned and the rhythm guitar is seriously out of tune.
That and it's the same song, over and over.
An iPod is an expensive external hard drive. Why not just use any of the numerous and cheaper models that are available. Some of them don't even need a PSU.
DUH!
Seems like five times a week we see some new story involving "ipods", that really isn't ipod-specfic at all. Does slashdot make a comission off every ipod sold or something?
Otherwise, why be such blatant whores for apple?
Here are some exampmles:
If you have news about the ipod that's actually ipod-specfic, then fine, otherwise PLEASE STOP WHORING A SPECFIC BRAND NAME. THIS IS SLASHDOT, WE ARE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT A "MASS STORAGE DEVICE" IS.
Life is too short to proofread.
Can you say ibmPod?
The article just points to the home page. The Perm link to the Blog entry or http://www.kernelthread.com/blog/archives/000023.h tml
Wow, I've never seen such a case of Mac envy!
Nothing like a 11 year old with a computer, I guess. Don't forget to wipe yerself little one...
It was a windy day and I had a stack of papers that I wanted to sit down on the bench next to me....There were no rocks in site.
I made an awesome discovery. It just hit me. I could use my iPod layed at just the right angle on top of those papers to keep them from blowing away.
I had done it -- I had invented the first paper weight that could also play music. How did we all survive before iPods. This damn swiss army knife in my back pocket seems so useless now.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
The most important is that you can always have a rescue disk with you. Many people has always its iPod (or mp3 player) with them. You don't need to look for that rescue CD, just connect the iPod you have in your pocket :)
Of course, the probability of needing a rescue disk is low (specially if your OS is not Windoze).
Add to that the zesty irony of using Linux to rescue Windoze, and the result is nothing less than harmonic convergence.
My iPod, however, goes everywhere. This could prove to be a useful secondary function.
Only catch is that, since the iPod lacks a "regular" USB out port, I'd need to have the iPod USB cable with me. That's still easier to carry around than a CD though. While CDs are nice and thin, they've got an awful lot of surface area and don't fit nicely into your pocket.
"Why not use a regular USB drive? It's still much less expensive than an iPod."
'cause it wouldn't get written up on Slashdot. Duh!
Oh, so true.
"Another thing that the all-powerful iPod can do? Post post post!"
"But wait, what's so special about that? There are dozens of other--"
"No! iPod! iPod! You will bow down before it!"
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Is an Iomega mini flash USB unit. It's about an inch long, holds 512 MB and is on my keychain. I have QEMU loaded on it so I can run any OS I want as an ISO. For example I have a DamnSmallLinux ISO that I can use to pop right into a Windows box and start up a Linux session without having to reboot the PC. All of this costs about $50.
I become more and more convinced each day that apple is paying the /. editors to covertly advertize ipods. The word "iPod" is used 6 times in that write-up, and the story actually has nothing to do with iPods. That sickens me.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Hmmm... lemme think.. oh yeah ipod linux dd if=ibm.img of=/output device not to hard from ipod linux I am sure!
You can get it here!
Why would Apple want to help fix windows machine?
The geekier in the family or circle of friends is always called to fix computers. Those people will see you repair their broken machine will an Apple product.
"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty, for security, will get, and deserve nether." - Benjamin Franklin
How the hell am I gonna use this to justify a purchase order for a new iPod?
Yeah, well most computers in need of such emergency boot technology have a BIOS that doesn't support USB booting. You might look cool while plugging the iPod in to the PC, but when no one is looking, you'd better slip in a KNOPPIX cd prior to booting up!
I have a theory that you can't possibly be personally scanning every /. tread for the "you must be new here" meme. My theory is that you're a script sitting on some college kid's riced-out box that sits in the corner of his dorm room compiling ebuilds all day and secondarily playing the part of New Here.
So here's my test: You must be new here!
put the what in the where?
Same result, except that instead of using a $0.17 CDR you use a $299 iPod.
I don't get it.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
No, no, no, you phrased it wrong! Try:
"Purchase Request
Item Name: 60 GB External Firewire HD
Description: To be used as an external bootable storage device for diagnosing and recovering PC's with failed hard-disks."
See how much easier that description goes down with your IT department?
Crow T. Trollbot
Slashdot reported Terrasoft did this earlier this week. But with a full install of Yellow Dog Linux.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
Oh lord, why us?
Over firewire, there is not difference in performance at all, and you have a fully functional system that doesn't go away after every reboot. I love cloning machines like this, while my poor novell counterparts are typing in pathnames in zenworks I'm draging and dropping images. And yes, I have an employee paid-for iPod - or better worded, a bus-powered external hard drive. P
-- My dog can beat up your dog.
Please stand by while the recovery files are loaded into memeory..
(Sound Cutting Out From Head phones) " Awwwww!!! It ai.. my.. lt, DID I DO THAT?, It aint my fault... It ai.. my.
(Sound of static on headset)
(Smoke pouring out of Ipod) File load error, please check hard drive for disk errors, or better yet, buy a fast enough drive to handle this, good bye.
Sorry I didn't mean BSOD, my brain was all over the place earlier today. What I meant was a virus or mutation in the registery that would generally cause Windows to barf and refuse to boot anymore. *That* would cause a user to be unable to access their data.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
The idea is basically to use a programmable device, an NIC, an iPod, or any other device that can initiate DMA without relying on the OS. A couple of papers about this are
Hope slashdotters find this interesting....
1. The parent was talking about a universal boot disk, not something to use in place of a standard fixed boot HD.
I will admit, I'm not an expert on Mac hardware nor OS design, but can a Mac really boot from one device and then transfer the system volumne designation to another device once booted?
Modern OSes are too big to be loaded into memory all at once. I would expect that if you booted a Mac from an iPod drive, the system would have to go back to the iPod occasionally to load device drivers, access swap space, etc. And that could easily be more strenuous on the delicate microscopic mechanisms of the iPod drive than playing back audio files would be.
2. iPods have been out long enough for failure rates to be known. There has been lots of discussion about batteries dying early but not much about failed hard drives.
Sure there has, you just haven't been paying attention.
Read the iPodHacks forums, or check eBay for listings of used iPods, or go to the Apple store and find a Genius Bar employee candid enough to tell you why people have been returning iPods for RMA. The MTBF of a hard drive will drop significantly if you use it outside of its design parameters. That's not FUD, it's FACT.
3. If your iPod drive dies, replacements are easy to find.
Oh? You think so?
The 20GB G3/G4 iPod drive is Toshiba model number MK2004GAL (actually, the iPod may use an Apple-specific version of this model with custom firmware, but let's ignore that for now). How many retailers can you find that have this component in stock? It only took me 3 months to find one, maybe you'll beat my time. Good luck.
The 60GB iPod photo drive is model MK6006GAH. Find me a single company that even lists a price for this component. Go on, I dare you.
Does anyone think that someone is typing the following into google looking for stories to submit to slashdot:
apple ipod linux ibm "failed windows"
?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Suddenly the iPod becomes an expensible necessity; Purchasing will be thrilled.
They should better start to give better support for Linux on their PCs. Especially the X series notebooks are VERY problematic when it comes to BIOS/Controller flash upgrades -- because these updates only work under DOS!
Shame on them. I WONT buy a USB floppy disk drive just for that. (would that even work??)
It's already a portable hard drive. Essential if you want to backup a windows box before you wipe it.
(if that isn't justification for a 60 gig, I don't know what would be)
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Sure, you can get a USB drive cheaper, but the shuffle's pretty nice, and it takes up entirely no space in your pocket. You can't keep quite everything on it, but the 1GB version leaves you lots of room for tunes as well as a bootable Linux configuration. (I haven't installed the Linux yet, though :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you don't need to carry it around all the time, definitely, get yourself a 200GB portable - it'll give you a few more choices, because the disk is bigger than your laptop's. But that doesn't mean that you can't spare a couple hundred meg of space on your iPod as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's such an obvious product, given the kinds of people who buy such things, that it has to exist, so it does. Victorinox Swiss Army Knife with USB. Also available from ThinkGeek.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks