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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
"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!
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)
;)
Dude, no need to explain what a tricorder is around here ok?
You must be new here
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Not to be outdone, Microsoft is reportedly working on a way to crash and iPod when Windows crashes.
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!
> figure out how to get my bios to boot from USB
You probably can't boot from USB. A few motherboards claim to be able to do it, but very few actually work. I work-on 20 or so computers a week, and I've never seen one that works. Heck, more often than not, CD boot still doesn't even work with the average motherboard. If you buy a nice Asus or Abit, it will work, but the cheap ones I keep running into at work simply won't boot from CD. That means you can't reinstall XP on them. I spend half my time removing harddrives from customer computers so I can reinstall XP from a CD. I still think Microsoft should be shot for disallowing floppy boots to reinstall. With Me and 98, we could boot off of a Microsoft supplied floppy then reinstall from CD. Microsoft no longer allows that.
it depends a lot on what generation ipod you have. with older ipods you have to put the ipod itself into 'disk mode' for windows to see it as a drive. newer ipods (the mini included) this is no longer the case and they work out of the box as a normal usb storage device.
not sure what is going on with your 4th gen (i have a 40g 4th gen and a 4g 1st gen mini), because any computer with firewire and/or usb should be able to read it as a hard drive without installing any software at all.
many (most?) windows machines lack the firmware to be able to boot directly off a usb or firewire drive.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
"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.
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.
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.
So, to reiterate:
You don't know how to install XP from floppy so you assume it can't be done.
You can't get mobos to boot from CD so you assume they don't have the capability.
Ever hear of a little thing called "boot order?" I figure you're probably not aware of this, but most motherboards have what is called the BIOS in which you can change motherboard settings like boot order, drive geometry, IRQ assignments, etc.
Lamer. Go take an A+ course or something.
--If something I said could be taken two ways, and one of those ways made you cry, then I meant the other way.
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
--If something I said could be taken two ways, and one of those ways made you cry, then I meant the other way.
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!
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.