What Live CDs Do You Carry Around?

TPC asks: "I recently acquired a small CD case that fits 12 CDs. I figured that it would be useful to always carry around a few CDs to use when helping others with computer issues, or in case something goes wrong with my own computer. However, I'm having a hard time deciding what CDs to pick, and there are probably many hidden gems out there. I'm sure I'm not the first person with this idea, so I ask you: What 12 live (and otherwise) CDs would you carry around?"

Comments

Knoppix

[richardoz]

For me my number 1 disc is Knoppix or Wikipedia Article

After that's its a disc with common hardware drivers, Java 1.5, Eclipse, Apache, MySql and PHP

Re:Knoppix

[gerbalblaste]

i also have knoppix as my main, and for the most part my only livecd.

I find that its easier to put common apps and drivers onto a usb stick and use that on windows boxes or in conjunction with the knoppix livecd.

Re:Knoppix

[networkBoy]

Another nod to knoppix here, followed by the Auditor variant (most excellent to turn the work issued notebook into a, well, auditor :-)
-nB

Re:Knoppix

[Daxster]

..and not just a liveCD, but I'd have a DVD version kicking around too..seeing as it has nearly every program you could ever want as a temporary solution to something.

Re:Knoppix

[BrokenHalo]

I used to carry a knoppix CD, but after I mislaid my last one I never got around to burning a new one. I just carry around disc#1 of the current Slackware set, which I use to boot from. I can then mount any partitions necessary, then chroot as required. Sure, knoppix might be a friendlier way of getting around, but it's not necessary if you know what you are doing...

Re:Knoppix

[X0563511]

Knoppix is nice, but it's a bit big for me. Personally, I prefer the System Rescue CD

It's got the important bits without the extra. Also can load to RAM, which is very nice for working with backups on systems that only have one optical drive. I'm not sure, but I believe it only requires 128mb or RAM or so.

Re:Knoppix

[X0563511]

Whoops, forgot to give you even a cursory description. From the main page:

Description: SystemRescueCd is a linux system on a bootable cdrom for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It contains a lot of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic ones (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use: just boot from the cdrom, and you can do everything. The kernel of the system supports most important file systems (ext2/ext3, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), and network ones (samba and nfs).

Note to moderators: please do not moderate this post up, unless it falls beneath the default threshhold - unless the parent post falls below as well. I want this information visible and I simply forgot to add it to the parent post, and do not wish moderation points to be wasted. Thanks.

Re:Knoppix

[rootlinuxusr]

I agree Knoppix is a must have. Bart PE is another. I like to have Ubuntu, Mepis, an NT Passwd changer, a windows installation, and norton ghost.

Re:Knoppix

[Mooga]

DSL (Damn Small Linux) is also a good thing to have if you ever have to mess with a very old computer.
It's not as "newbie friendly" as Knoppix (which is great, of course), bet it can also get the job done and you can probably get it running on any computer made within at least the last 10 years if not 15 or more...

Re:Knoppix

[SausageOfDoom]

I too carry a Knoppix cd. I also carry net installs of Debian and Ubuntu.

One other thing I have found useful is a copy of hard drive manufacturers' hd test utils - not only do they load up quick and show me what the problem is, but when I get called out to a friend-of-a-friend, it also helps me prove to them that they need to fork out some cash ;)

For reference, the hd tools I carry are Seatools (Seagate), PowerMax (Maxtor), Drive Fitness Test (IBM/Hitachi). I also carry Memtest86+.

One thing I would also recommend is writing the software version and date of burn onto the face of your CDs - helps avoid confusion in the future, and also lets you know when it's time to make a new version.

Re:Knoppix

[kv9]

I just carry around disc#1 of the current Slackware set, which I use to boot from.

SLAX

Re:Knoppix

[X0563511]

I also carry around DSL, but I use SRC more often. SRC is a little over twice the size of DSL, yet it doesn't have a window manager, web browsers, etc. It DOES have X, but a very minimal one designed for one-off uses of tools like qtparted.

Re:Knoppix

[xoff00]

Check out the Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) -- its got all your HD tools, memtest, and tons of other useful software.

On a side note, I used it to make PXE boot versions of the HD tools and memtest. I can't tell you how easy and cool it is to netboot a machine in my office to diagnose a drive or run memtest.

Re:Knoppix

[BrokenHalo]

I just carry around disc#1 of the current Slackware set, which I use to boot from.

SLAX

Yes, yes I know, but my point was that it is yet another CD, and presumably another unnecessary contribution to landfill eventually, whereas I have the Slackware install disk anyway (I don't bother with the others in the set). And as I say, with chroot and a bit of know-how, you don't really need the liveCD.

Re:Knoppix

[kv9]

but my point was that it is yet another CD, and presumably another unnecessary contribution to landfill eventually

i appreciate the care you have for our wounded environment *coughyougreeniebastardcough*, but you can run it off USB. stick. also, my 9cm/240M tiny cdrw from 2003 that has slackware-live on it (that's what it was called back then) still works and i can fry something else on it anytime.

my list

[Anonymous Coward]

minipe is a must for windows installs
knoppix is a must for linux
keep a fedora boot cd (or other common platforms in your line of work)
windows XP install cd (for recovery- or substitute with appropriate windows server version)

You can probably get away with those and the boot cds for any OS you are likely to work on (Solaris install cd, IRIX insttools, whatever)

Re:my list

[UncleTogie]

At our shop, we use:

Knoppix CD & DVD

the Insert distro

BartPE {tweaked to include Symantec Ghost and XP keygrabbers}

MemTest x86

the Win95C, 98, 98SE, 2000, XP Home/Pro/OEM/SP2 Cds, with DOS on floppy...

{yes, we STILL get the occasional 286....}

Live?

[east coast]

"Different Stages" by Rush... but that's obviously not what you mean.

Re:Live?

[HBI]

I prefer "The Song Remains the Same". I throw a Gentoo LiveCD into the same case.

Re:Live?

[Kris_J]

Evanescence's Anywhere But Home isn't bad either.

Re:Live?

[Anonymous Coward]

stages? man... that's poor use of space. that's a fourth of his case already gone!

I would say Exit... Stage Left would be better.

Re:Live?

[Overzeetop]

James Taylor for me, thank you. One you listen to the Live CD(s), you can't go back to the doctored and primped studio stuff. No that there's anything wrong with Rush...Hold Your Fire is my favorite (non-live), but that was from my "era", so it may be a particularly biased choice.

Re:Live?

[east coast]

Only the first two discs are really important. Not to say the third disk should be overlooked but... 2112 in it's entirety and the boys had a chance to mature their live set a bit more? Fantastic. ESL is good too though.

Re:Live?

[The One and Only]

Ah yes, "Hold Your Fire", the local minimum between the local maxima of "Grace Under Pressure" and "Presto". "Power Windows" is an inflection point.

"Hold Your Fire" is also the limit of Rush as Alex Lifeson approaches underutilized.

Re:Live?

[davecarlotub]

I prefer "The Song Remains the Same". I throw a Gentoo LiveCD into the same case.

I work in a Windows shop and I use the Gentoo install-x86-minimal-2006.1 CD regularly to pull files from old crashed Win2k hard drives. It's nice, for me.

Re:Live?

[ArcherB]

Exit Stage Left myself.

With the extra space I carry:

The latest Sabayon DVD (because it looks cool and I can show off XGL/AIGLX to all the people that think Vista is cool and/or unique)

A Gentoo CD because I never took it out when I moved to Sabayon.

WHAX for when I'm going to be close to some kind of restricted hot-spot.

A bootable CD with Ghost on it.

And of course a Knoppix/Ubuntu/Mepis or whatever the cool live CD is for the week.

(not to mention a bootable USB thumb drive. It goes a bit faster and allows me to save the data back to it)

Re:Live?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd carry the 2 CD version of AC/DC Live.

Re:Live?

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know what kind of miserable human would mod your comment off-topic, HBI. I thought it was funny and the Gentoo comment on-topic.

When I read the headline I was thinking Humble Pie, Rockin' the Fillmore.

And I carry a bootable Ghost CD that's saved my butt a few times, too. And Gentoo.

Re:Live?

[east coast]

It may bring up the "ugh!" factor but normally W2K's repair console seems to work for most of the drive problems I have. What does the Gentoo offer that would be worthwhile?

Re:Live?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only carry vinyls with me

Re:Live?

[jZnat]

Bash? And all the other tools that are present in a normal Unix installation.

Re:Live?

[zaxus]

Personall, I dig Seconds Out by Genesis...

I've also been known to use System Rescue CD, Damn Small Linux, and Knoppix.

Re:Live?

[segin]

It may bring up the "ugh!" factor but normally W2K's repair console seems to work for most of the drive problems I have. What does the Gentoo offer that would be worthwhile?
Aside from the fact that the Gentoo LiveCD is an actual OS and the Win2K recovery "console" isn't, absolutely nothing :)

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[From A Far Away Land]

My favourites are Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux.org, and the Ultimate Boot CD [which my Dad loves for the hard disk utilities].

I plan on ordering Ubuntu discs from ShipIt, and handing them out at the Vista launch event on January 9th.

Re:Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[brouski]

You rebel, you!

/swoon

Re:Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[Anonymous Coward]

awesome!!! all the best! i like ubuntu a lot!

Re:Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[J0nne]

If you still have to order them, you'll never get them in time. Ship-it is way too slow.

I guess you'll have to burn them yourself. You probably won't need a lot anyway, you'll be kicked out soon enough ;).

Re:Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan on ordering Ubuntu discs from ShipIt, and handing them out at the Vista launch event on January 9th.

So that everyone can see how linux doesn't work for them?

Re:Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Damnsmalllinux, UBCD

[From A Far Away Land]

AC, if that were true, wouldn't Microsoft then be the one handing out free Ubuntu CDs?

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

[QuantumG]

mandatory tool to have in your toolkit if you deal with Windows machines.

Re:Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

[Who235]

I'll second that one. Every once in awhile when the CEO loses his post-it note with his new password on it, it pays to be able to reset it quickly and painlessly. I have been using that disc for a couple of years and I love it.

I usually keep a copy of the UBCD around to test out SMART failures, flaky memory, etc. and fix boot problems and other miscellaneous junk.

Apart from those, I also have to give the nod to Knoppix or the STD Knoppix for other types of recovery.

Re:Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

[Who235]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe the hell out of hard drives.

Security..

[Swordless Samurai]

I'm not going to lie... I have a CD Case Like yours, small that I use for LiveCD's. Most of My CD's are Security Distro's Suck as Whax or knoppix-STD. The reason I have so many is because in my travels I come across many types of laptops and computer and some of the base distro's work better with certain hardware.

Re:Security..

[hauntingthunder]

The auditor security CD and a shed load of wificards/ariels

BART PE, others

[davidwr]

For Windows emergency repairs: A CD made with Bart's Prebuild Environment

For Mac OS X emergency repairs, a Mac OS X bootable disk

For everything else, a bootable Linux disk with the tools I think I need that day.

For general use, TheOpenCD. This also has a Windows partition so I can show my XP-loving friends the joys of Free-as-in-beer-and-liberty software.

Re:BART PE, others

[Anonymous Coward]

For Windows emergency repairs: A CD made with Bart's Prebuild Environment

It's always bothered me that it's not open or documented how they built that. I'm too paranoid that it's got a root-kit in it to use it.

Re:BART PE, others

[mathew7]

1st of all, PEBuilder is just a builder. It has some provided apps for the minimal interface, but the rest is from your Windows CD. If those provided apps would be rootkits, there would be lots of negative feedback, because many of those who use it in rescue ops are experts in Windows.

Re:BART PE, others

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize most of it is from the windows CD. It's their own apps that I'm suspicious of. If they would open source those I'd be more confident.

I've known lots of 'experts' in windows who wouldn't know if they were rootkitted.

Re:BART PE, others

[grolschie]

Then you wouldn't run anything closed source at all? Opening one's source code is nice, but not obligatory.

Kill disk

[ipooptoomuch]

Kill disk which simply has very advanced (read:paranoid) data destruction techniques (read:write lots of 0's over and over then replace with 1's) for when you need your entire hard drive wiped in about 10 minutes for when the riaa knocks down your door because you have a 1 TB array of hard drives serving free mp3s to small children.

Re:Kill disk

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to scrub disks at work, we have to use methods that meet DoD level standards.

Somehow I doubt it's possible to do 7 passes on 1TB worth of disk in 10 minutes.

Our arrays take much longer.

Re:Kill disk

[jimicus]

If you're living in a country where copyright infringement is a criminal offence, 10 minutes is too slow. 10 seconds is probably too slow.

Thermite is probably the best solution.

Re:Kill disk

[bcmm]

Thing about that is that it's pretty obvious that the drive has been wiped. I wonder if anyone has made a DVD which could securely erase a drive and then install an image of a small (by modern standards) OS like Windows 98? You could create an image which looks used, with a few documents, browser history, etc. Maybe even some deleted files for any analysis to turn up. In a short amount of time, you could probably really make it look like the machine had been used as a 98 box for a while. (Plenty of idiots buy much nicer hardware than they need).

Re:Kill disk

[Total_Wimp]

Of course the whole point is moot when they ignore your hard drive completely and just use ISP records, like the RIAA does. As long as people use the internet to access, say, kiddie porn, there's a very good chance that scrubbing their HD will not prevent their prosecution.

Best protections:

If it's of questionable morality, but legal, fly under the radar. No one really cares if you download the latest album from Britney Spears, but the RIAA has a track record of sueing people who share out thousands of albums.

If it's moraly repugnant and illegal, just don't do it. Dude, people care about 8-year-old Timmy. A lot. After they raid your favorite porn carrier and view your online sessions and/or account info, getting your hard drive will just be a bonus. They'll nail your ass with or without it. Once you arrive in prison, you will find out that the regular prison population feels about Timmy very much like the rest of us do. But they have shivs. And they too will 'nail your ass' before they use the shiv. Much better to leave Timmy's pictures alone.

I know a lot of prosecution is done with HDs, but the ability to destroy your HD will only protect you so much. Besides records from the places you go on the internet, there is the human factor. Will you be willing to destroy all of your hard work at the drop of a hat? Really? Most people aren't.

TW

Re:Kill disk

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I thought Ramzi was too busy warezing software to have a slashdot account!

Re:Kill disk

[gartogg]

You could install a copy of windows 98 with a couple worms and viruses, that looks somewhat used - then you could also claim that the internet access wasn't your fault either!

And of course, if you're not backing up your files (the ones you work on) on something if you are planning to use a mechanism to wipe your disk, you deserve to lose the work. And if you're trading kiddie porn, prison is too good for you.

Re:Kill disk

[Total_Wimp]

So, tell me, if you destroy your hard drive, but you have a good backup copy, why wouldn't the feds just prosecute you based on the backup copy?

I'm sure it's offsite and everything, but if its a regularly accessed drop site (it pretty much has to be if you're making regular backups) then I'd think the feds would be able to find it without much extra effort.

You gotta destroy everything if you don't want it to be used in court.

TW

Re:Kill disk

[From A Far Away Land]

If it's supposed to look like it's been used for a while, it ought to have a worm or two on it as well.

Re:Kill disk

[fred fleenblat]

No matter what you do, the lack of porn on the disk is a dead giveaway that it's been wiped :-)

Re:Kill disk

[bcmm]

Last time this discussion came up on /., someone suggested secure erase, fill with porn, insecure erase. They stop looking after they find what you were trying to hide.

Re:Kill disk

[quark101]

I've done a bunch of medium scale imaging, and based on the lessons that I learned from that, something like what you suggested is easily doable, or at least I think it would be. I'm not sure about what kind of unattended and imaging utitilites are available for 98, but XP can be installed completely unatteded. The way I would do it is to wipe, then boot into Ghost or a similiar program, and then push the image onto the freshly wiped harddrve. From what I understand, Vista would be perfect for this type of thing.

However, I have never done any kind of foresnsic analysis of harddrives, nor do I know anything about it, so I'm not sure if this would look believable. Touches you suggested like having deleted files will (I believe) carry over to the new disk, and the internet history certainly does, but the dates on all those files will still be from when you make the disk, which may look suspicious under the close scrutiny of a forensic analysis.

Interesting idea, now I want to see if I can get it to work, because you never know when something like this is going to be useful.

Re:Kill disk

[bcmm]

I'm not sure about what kind of unattended and imaging utilities are available for 98

I wasn't suggesting doing an actual install of 98. I was suggesting taking an actual disk image (i.e. bit for bit copying the disk to a file on another disk, ignoring the filesystem) with something like dd. The dates wouldn't be reset, because they are stored in the FAT, which we would have copied along with everything else when making the image. The image could be significantly compressed, because nearly all of it would be empty space as the disk would only have 98 and a few usage tracks on it, and so would probably fit on a DVD easily, along with a small Linux distro (all the tools needed exist for Linux and could be scripted). The CD could boot, securely erase the drive, then write the image. It could be totally automated. The only problem would be that it would lack signs of recent usage, but you could probably solve that by setting the clock back and acting like you don't know how to change it. Remember, you're a 98 user :-)

Also, I don't understand what you mean about internet history. That might apply when reinstalling windows, but we are talking about doing low-level things including destroying the file system completely. theory, the disk would end up looking bit-for-bit pretty much like it did when the image was taken. There are techniques that can sometimes discover what data was on a physical section of a disk before the current data, but they require disassembly of the drive and expensive kit, and can be avoided to some extent by overwriting multiple times (shred, one of the utilities used in boot and nuke type disks, does this on Linux. It can write special patterns designed to destroy traces, repeat several times, write random data, then write zeros. The disk ends up looking like a new blank disk.

I'm not a terrorist or anything, I'm just very careful with any disk I think might have my credit card details on it.

Re:Kill disk

[gartogg]

Actually, ussually they need a warrant. They may have a warrant to seize your computer. It happens. They may have one to seize records on site. But unless you're actually making the child porn, they won't have such a huge amount of time to waste on the insignificant portion of the case that you make up. And if it's the RIAA, they definitely don't have the resources to be doing the type of shadowing you're worried about for a music infringement case.

The only live album you need:

[Anonymous Coward]

Live At Leeds.

Seriously, it's the only one you need.

My CDs

[Matt Perry]

Ultimate Boot CD
Knoppix
Damn Small Linux

Who carries around CDs anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have ISO images of stuff I might want to use that I can stick on a USB drive, or in a pinch burn onto a CD. But carry around physical CDs? I'm trying to reduce the weight in my laptop bag, not increase it with stuff I'll use once a year, if ever!

Dear god

[Anonymous Coward]

What Live CDs Do You Carry Around?

I may be here for News for Nerds, but carrying live cds? Jesus Christ, how big of a dork do you think I am?

The very notion makes me shudder.

UBCD

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ultimate Boot CD [www.ultimatebootcd.com] has lots of handy tools for recovery from all sorts of disasters.

List

[ObiWanStevobi]

1. Knoppix

   Never know when you need to pull files from a disk with a FUBAR boot sector

2. AV Disc

   Need your disk with AVAST, Ad-Aware, and other virus removal tools

3. Windows XP

   Sometimes a re-install is just easier

4. Fedora

   Just in case you have an open-minded subject prone to viruses, you can get them using Linux. (Of course, this takes multiple disc spaces.)

5. MS Office

   To fix those pesky Office corruptions

6. Open Office

   Once again, for those open-minded folks who wouldn't really know the difference anyway.

7. Misc software

   Adobe, Quicktime, Firefox, Opera, J2RE, etc. Those pretty much handle any random computer problems most people have.

Re:List

[thepotoo]

Knoppix

Agreed.

AV Disc

Pick your favorite antivirus (I use antivir because it's idiot proof) and put it on a thumb drive. Make sure to have the Win 98 drivers for said drive (they can be on the drive itself, and you can install them using Knoppix)

Windows XP

Agreed, reluctantly. If you're gonna go this way, though, you'll also need to carry an external hard drive for back-up purposes, and an XP disk is pretty much useless without this. Plus, computers ship with one, so chances are someone else has one.

Fedora

This wouldn't be slashdot if we didn't fight about what distro to carry. I would say the best newbie distro might be Ubuntu, but we could argue about this all day.

MS Office

Why bother? You can fit the installer on a 1 gig thumb drive, but OOO suits everyones needs (I have yet to run across a home user who actually needed Word), without requiring a keygen.

Open Office

Thumb drive.

Misc software: Adobe, Quicktime, Firefox, Opera, J2RE, etc.

Yes. But add in Foxit (loads faster), Flash, XP SP2 standalone installer, the dot net framework 2.0, an XP password recovery tool, 7-zip, winrar, the Community Compiled Codec Pack and VLC.

I've been using this basic set-up for years, and it works amazingly well.

Re:List

[Tweekster]

When trying to reinstall XP the owner rarely seems to know where the disk is. I carry around the 9 in 1 XP cd I downloaded. (dont care that it is a copyright violation, the computers that i install it on are licensed properly)

live cd musts

[fleaboy]

Anonymous OS, Simply Mepis 6.0, Freespire, Linspire, Damn Small Linux, ""on a usb for doze, Vector live, PCLinux OS

6 blank CD-Rs and 6 blank DVD-Rs

[SurturZ]

It is certainly different for me nowadays. I used to always carry around boot discs and driver discs of various descriptions. Installation of software is a much less risky process since the advent of Win2K/XP, and with safe mode, the likelihood of not being able to boot a computer is much reduced.

Also, with near-ubiquitous internet access these days, the chances of not having a critical driver is almost zero. And any particularly hard to get drivers I keep on my laptop.

So now I pretty much just keep blank CDs/DVDs with me, and make backups of important data if I'm installing hardware.

Re:6 blank CD-Rs and 6 blank DVD-Rs

[kakalaky]

You'll be just fine as long as you never have a hd fail or a nic with no driver, but we all know that never happens.

Re:6 blank CD-Rs and 6 blank DVD-Rs

[TheLink]

Why not just put knoppix etc on a CD-RW. Then you can make it a blank if you really need a blank ;).

Anyway, I have Knoppix and the "reset windows password" boot cd in my bag.

Used to also carry around ClusterKnoppix and Knoppix STD.

Mix of Linux and Windows tools

[greg1104]

Here's what I have in my CD case, in approximate order of how regularly use them...

Memtest86--because the RAM in the cheap PCs I come across sucks. Some of the other tool CDs have this one as well, I like to get the latest one regularly here. Good for stress testing, and even handy for figuring out things like whether the RAM is running correctly in dual-channel mode.

SystemRescueCD--I particularly like the partition editor and imaging utilities. Been weaning myself off Partition Magic/Drive Image even for Windows work with these two.

Ubuntu live CD and DVD. The CD works in more systems, the DVD version is a completely usable system with a lot of stuff in it. What most impresses me about the Ubuntu live disc is that I can download packages over the network and install them, even thing that run as services, from the live environment. I actually got PostgreSQL installed and some database tests completed, all without a single Postgres file on the media.

Knoppix--Some days, your first choice in Linux live CDs just doesn't work on a random machine; that's why I still carry around this one as a backup.

Bart PE--A bit of a pain to build the first time, but very handy for fixing Windows machines.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor--this one has been less useful lately, as I've been running into NTFS partitions it really doesn't want to write to. My fallback position is to use this to generate a new SAM file, then copy it over with a BartPE disc.

RedHat Enterprise 3 and 4 CDs. While not technically live CDs, you can do a lot with booting into this environment, and I deal with enough people running RedHat versions that they're worth carrying around. I still keep one of the older versions around so I have something running the 2.4 kernel to tests against; occasionally I'll run into some old hardware that 2.6 pukes on, while 2.4 still works great.

Re:Mix of Linux and Windows tools

[Barny]

You do know that memtest86 is on knoppix cds? just type memtest at the boot prompt ^_^

But nice selection, I have a custom built windows XP home edition OEM slipstream too, it loads most major MOBO drivers, has ability to load nvidia and ati offerings too, as well as firefox, spybot, adaware (used with permission), java vm, dotnetfx, about 80 windows updates since sp2 and videolan player. It also has a few 3dmarks, some game demos and sp2 saved in a (not copied at install time) directory. Fits on a 4.2G dvd fine :)

"ultimate boot cd" (has bartPE, offline pw editor and memtest on one disk) and knoppix v4 (some low end vid cards from nvidia and ati have refresh rate problems with 5) and v5 round out the basic stuff, have seagate tools and disc wizard handy too in case I need to get physical with a HDD.

Re:Mix of Linux and Windows tools

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You do know that memtest86 is on knoppix cds? just type memtest at the boot prompt

It is also on ubuntu live cds, right there on the boot menu.

Re:Mix of Linux and Windows tools

[mokeyboy]

SystemRescueCD--I particularly like the partition editor and imaging utilities. Been weaning myself off Partition Magic/Drive Image even for Windows work with these two.
This is an invaluable resource. Resize partitions to allow dual boot, reset Windows admin passwords, surface verification scans of failing HDD's, backup HDD to USB disks, scrub HDD's on warranty swap etc, etc. The more use, the more uses I discover.

Depends on what you fix...

[Fallen Kell]

Knoppix is my personal favorite, but I deal with a lot of linux/unix x86 hardware which can be easily fixed using this software.

However if you deal with Windows systems, look to keep "The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" in you list. http://www.ubcd4win.com/

LinuxDefender Live is also another good one to have.

LiveCd?!?

[nog_lorp]

LiveCD is what... buzzword for bootable?

Re:LiveCd?!?

[Kangburra]

LiveCD is what... buzzword for bootable?

No, it is bootable but the live bit is because you can run a live OS directly from the CD. Not just boot the machine into DOS but have everything from web browsers to office suites.

Re:LiveCd?!?

[The MAZZTer]

Pretty much. It's also sometimes more specifically used to describe Linux distros you can download and burn to a CD and then boot off of... sort of a try before you install to the HD dealie. Not that you HAVE to install to the HD. In this case, LiveCDs can be useful for computer recovery.

I have to use a Knoppix LiveCD every time I have to reinstall Windows, which will erase grub, for instance. From there I can reinstall grub and regain my triple-boot-ability.

Re:LiveCd?!?

[bcmm]

Not exactly. An install CD is also bootable. A LiveCD gives you a full usable environment in RAM.

Slayer DOA

[Associate]

Slayer's Decade of Aggression Live two CD set.

Portable Win32 apps

[wrecked]

I keep a CD of Kanotix around at all times. It's a Knoppix variant, but I find that Kanotix has a cleaner look and feel. It's also better for a HD install, since it uses only Debian-unstable packages instead of the mix of testing and unstable that Knoppix uses.

However, I'm going to my parents' home for the Xmas holidays, so I'll be using their WinXP machine. I happened to have a USB flash drive lying around, so I packed it with portable FOSS Win32 packages from , including FireFox, Thunderbird, GIMP, OpenOffice etc. These packages install everything, including dlls, into an application folder and are executed directly from the USB drive. The added benefit is that you can copy these packages from machine to machine simply by copying the application folders; there is no need to run an installer every time or alter the Registry.

1 disk

[TheBeardIsRed]

For me, there's one disk. It's a beast. It's also of questionable legality. That being said, when shit hits the fan i don't mind if 'legal' and i are on opposite sides of the fence at zero hour. Nobody cares when their servers aren't working. Note, this isn't a link, just a good description (so you can find it yourself... hint: newsgroups)
Hiren's Boot CD

Re:1 disk

[evilviper]

Most of those are free utilities. As for the commercial ones, there are NUMEROUS free alternatives that will work just as well, if you'd just put a little effort into looking for them, rather than thumbing your nose at the law.

Re:1 disk

[vga_init]

I love how it has the Ranish partition manager. I love that app.

Re:1 disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but the point is that this disk has already been created with all the tools on. It would take you many hours to replace all the commercial tools with their free equivalents. Try using it some day and you'll see how much work it would take to setup a live bootable version of every tool.

Sometimes there aren't free equivalents, e.g. if you need to use your hard disk manufacturer's low-level custom format tool for some reason.

Re:1 disk

[evilviper]

Try using it some day and you'll see how much work it would take to setup a live bootable version of every tool.

I've already setup such a LiveCD on my own. It's not nearly as hard as you make it out to be.

Sometimes there aren't free equivalents, e.g. if you need to use your hard disk manufacturer's low-level custom format tool for some reason.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Low level formatting hasn't been needed since the demise of 40MB, MFM hard drives.

Modern ATA/SCSI drives can't use anything even remotely similar to low-level formatting, and I can't even guess what you are talking about, and I've never come across any problems which required the hard drive manufacturer's utilities.

Re:1 disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxtor's utilities still offer what they call "Low Level Formatting". As far as I can tell, all it does is write zeros to the drive, which isn't what we classically called low level formatted where the tracks would be re-aligned, etc. But it is what the manufacturer calls it.

I've personally used utilities like that to nuke a drive before selling it used. They're usually faster than other methods, and although not as secure, they're "good enough" for most people. I'll use it before ghosting a drive as well to ensure it doesn't show up as a drive to ghost FROM when selecting them (Mistakes have been known to be made).

Re:1 disk

[evilviper]

Maxtor's utilities still offer what they call "Low Level Formatting". As far as I can tell, all it does is write zeros to the drive,

Well then, it's trivially easy to accomplish with free software, so there's no reason to use the manufacturer's semi-legal program. That pretty much entirely negates the point of contention.

SLAX

[10scjed]

customized just the way you like, add whatever modules you want and reburn.

Slax based Education Live CD, EDU-Nix

Re:SLAX

[pilsner.urquell]

Slax is my the CD of choice. I use Damn Small Linux, Knoppix and Ubuntu. Knoppix is the most powerful, Ubuntu is the highest polished and is a pleasure to use and Damn Small Linux is just plain 'ol good. However, Slax spends the least amount of time in the Cup Holder than all three of the other Live CDs together but gets more work done. Whether I'm reinitializing a boot partition, changing a script or adding/removing files from a HD Slax's raw power is in most cases what I want. Fits nicely on a flash stick too.

Re:SLAX

[thomasdz]

Yeah, I'm a SLAX fan also mainly because I still am a Slackware distro user. (traditional)
However, I've found that Damn Small Linux seems to boot better & cleaner on more different PCs
(like old, weird stuff)

I don't carry it around on a CD

[Utopia]

I have USB stick loaded with WinPE for cleanup or maintenance tasks.

Redundant! (in a gay voice)

[BKX]

Two of those are quite unnecessary. First, memtest86, because it's included on the Knoppix CD (type memtest at the boot prompt). Second, SystemRescueCD, because Knoppix has a full recovery suite including the most recent partition editors and ntfsprogs, which, combined, can nearly replace PartitionMagic.

The rest of it I can see, except for the NT Password thing. BartPE can, I believe, do all that rescue and more, and it actually works on XP SP2.

Re:Redundant! (in a gay voice)

[greg1104]

I'll reply to you instead of the other posters saying the same thing because that gay voice is just so piercing. I did mention that memtest86 was on the other tool discs as well, and that the NT password was disc was becoming obsolete. I find the individual recovery CDs I recommended useful instead of just using Knoppix for everything because they boot faster and are easier to keep up to to date than Knoppix is. I don't want to have to pull down an entire new Knoppix just because I want support for a new motherboard chipset in memtest86, and they may not have integrated that into a release yet anyway.

Throwing Copper

[_damnit_]

Great album. Won't help much with fixing your Mom's computer though.

Re:Throwing Copper

[Fallingcow]

You are correct. EXCELLENT album.

"Birds of Pray" was a disappointment. "The Distance to Here" is my favorite.

Re:Throwing Copper

[rjforster]

Not to me. I really like Birds Of Pray. V was the disappointment to me.
Saw them this summer on tour. Fantastic.

Re:Throwing Copper

[Fallingcow]

Ah, yes. "V". To answer the original question, "V" is not a Live CD that I carry around.

Current Knoppix DVD...

[gweihir]

in an amored (lightly...) CD case. Also an USB stick with a RIP Linux on it. Nothing else.

these are all great, but...

[Caffeine Molecule]

Hirens Boot CD. 1337. Pirated. Good. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hiren.thanki/bootcd.h tml

What's a CD?

[The MAZZTer]

I carry a bootable 1gb USB drive (which is nearly full... should've gone for at least 2gb, maybe 4gb). I have Damn Small Linux (the embedded version) on it at the moment but I had a working BartPE too at one point.

I don't typically boot off of it though. Usually just launch the many Windows tools I keep on it. Although DSL Embedded comes packaged with qemu for both Windows and Linux along with respective batch files for each OS to launch qemu with the bootable DSL as the guest os... which is really neat. :)

Re:What's a CD?

[Technician]

I carry a bootable 1gb USB drive

I do not carry diagnostics on a USB flash drive. In an instant they can be silently corrupted without you knowing. They don't have a write protect. That alone makes them unusable to carry from client to client. You need idiot proof diagnostic media so an accidental reboot does not permit the worm on a system from hitching a ride with you to your next client. I only permit write protected media for all my diagnostics. A floppy with the write tab punched out or glued open, a single closed session CDR, or DVD is OK, but a writable USB drive is not OK to use by service people at my site.

Re:What's a CD?

[Lord Kano]

In an instant they can be silently corrupted without you knowing. They don't have a write protect.

I guess that you've never seen one of the adapters that allow you to convert SD into USB. If you have a SD card with a write protect tab, you can make a bootable USB drive that can be write protected?

I have also seen USB flash drives with a write protect switch. If you look, you can find one.

LK

Re:What's a CD?

[metamatic]

IBM USB flash drives have a write protect switch.

So do PQI Intelligent Stick flash drives, if you want something smaller.

Oh, and so do imation USB drives.

In fact, I've not seen a flash drive without write protect...

Re:What's a CD?

[Technician]

In fact, I've not seen a flash drive without write protect...

You haven't looked at the local Best Buy, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Radio Shack, Walgreens, Sams Club, Costco, ...

Most USB memory sticks on the shelf at a local retailer do not have a protect switch.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1064)-SanD isk_Cruzer_Mini_USB_Flash_Drive.aspx

This whole page of Sansdisk products contains a bunch of thumbdrives with encryption software, but none has a write protect switch.

Re:What's a CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look closer. The SanDisk Ultra II Plus is an SD card that doubles as a USB flash drive, and it does have a write protect. The whole thing is the size of a postage stamp. I have one right here in my Zaurus. Open your eyes and the truth will set you free. Or so I've heard.

Re:What's a CD?

[Technician]

Look closer.

I did. The page you didn't look at are the mini cruzer thumb drives. None of them have a write protect switch. You are correct that they do make a SD card which also has a USB port. However many retailers do not carry it. Therefore when searching retailers shelfs for a thumb drive with a write protect switch, I came up empty.

You have to look in the CF section for SD drives to find that beast, not the USB thumb drive section. So unless you knew what to look for and that it even exists, you are unlikely to find a USB thumb drive with a write protect switch on most retailers shelves. That has been the case when I last was looking and bought thumb drives. I got some Cruizer Mini drives without a switch. I use them for other transfers, but not bootable diagnostic drives.

Good linux cds

[kmkz]

Knoppix & Ubuntu

Very Useful

[treak007]

A very useful live-cd to carry around is knoppix-std because it contains a good collection of tools you never know when you will need. An even more useful live cd is the Gparted live disk. It contains just the bare minimum (an older version I had contained a shell, a text editor and gparted), but can be perfect for fixing a lot of different problems. Also, it never hurts to keep a dvd of an install disk, especially one like ubuntu 6.06 because the installer actually runs off the live disk, so it gives your full desktop environment.

Live CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

"Throwing Copper" wasn't too bad... it was left in my MP3 directory by an ex-GF, and I'm slowly getting used to it. Not worth carrying around the actual CD, though.

I've been a computer repairer forever....

[ILuvRamen]

I've been a computer repairer for like 4 years and I just carry a 1 GB USB drive with installers for Spybot S&D, Ad-aware SE, Avast, Zone Alarm, and Everest home edition (not available anymore). Anything else I can usually fix manually. I also have some great utilities like winsock fix and the removal tools for common viruses. And of course, an installer for Open Office cuz that takes forever on DSL and everyone whines about not having office. I also have a rarely used free RAM tester. Plus I have internet shortcuts to any websites I always want to go to on-site like driverguide.com in case I forget the address. Also, pre-written instruction files for common tasks so I don't have to re-type them every time someone asks (you'd be surprised how often that comes up). If I knew of an alternate to the windows task manager other than spybot, I'd have that on there too. So there ya go, a bunch of stuff you probably never thought of but will save U tons of time and headaches from a computer repair expert who actually has repaired people's home computers. Look at the absolute crap that has nothing to do repair above this post and mod this one up already!

gentoo

[butane317]

I always have an x86 and an amd64 Gentoo LiveCD laying around, but that's because I run Gentoo on all of my computers. It has memtest86 built in!

Mines

[wolf369T]

Knoppix, Slax, Freesbie, Hiren Boot CD (errr, I know it's not a live distro, or even a legal one, but it's damn useful sometimes)

None

[wheany]

I don't carry around any live CDs.

Mine, of course: Kaella

[ycochard]

I carry the one live-CD I initiated and maintain:
- Kaella
It is derivated from Knoppix, all in French. I also have nearby Kubuntu and Mandriva.

A multitude of discs for a multitude of purposes..

[ThelpDealio]

I currently carry around with me:
Kororaa XGL live CD v0.3 and 0.2
There is nothing better than to show off the power of Linux to your friends and the non believers. 0.3 is only ATI cards at the moment, while 0.2 supports both. People are usually impressed by this.

Backtrack 1.0
The best in security analysis live cd's.

Damn Small Linux
Good for older machines :)

Offline NT Password and Registry Editor
Always good to have when people forget their admin password or something on a windows machine...

Auditor Security collection from the backtrack people. I still have this around because it supports a bit more hardware than backtrack did

Knoppix
Good when you are at public terminals and are kinda paranoid...

I also carry around various install cd's for recent versions of linux.

HURD

[Samrobb]

No, seriously... whenever a system crashes, you can pop it in, and BAM - you get the certain knowledge that, no matter how bad things might be, you're at least one step above absolute rock bottom.

Re:HURD

[Anonymous Coward]

so true

grml

[black_rob]

I have a couple lying around, but the one I always pull out is grml. It's focused on text tools --"linux for sysadmins" I think is the phrase they use. It's booted on everything I ever tried it on and has good support for wireless cards. Plus they can fit a lot more on a cd by skipping KDE, and it boots so much faster than knoppix.

Knoppix, UBCD, Ubuntu

[yppiz]

I carry around Knoppix and the Ultimate Boot CD on USB thumb drives.

I most recently booted a multi-terabyte server off the Knoppix thumb drive to run memtest overnight in an attempt to track down some hardware flakiness.

UBCD is a lifesaver for borked Windows machines.

Ubuntu is the best end-user live CD I've seen. It works well on my laptop, even getting wireless right.

--Pat

Ultimate Boot CD

[whereiseljefe]

Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) and a BartPE disk a friend made for me a while ago that I updated... (it's loaded down with partition magic and some other utilities...)

Finnix

[fo0bar]

I carry Finnix. It's a 100MB livecd with no X, but a command-line interface and a lot of tools for the sysadmin in mind. LVM autodetection, very quick boot (remember, no X), niche network utilities like vconfig/mii-diag/iptraf/etc. Memtest86+ via the boot menu of course. It even has a freedos boot profile for when you need to flash a BIOS.

Oh, and I'm kinda required to carry Finnix, since I'm the author. Oops :)

Re:Finnix

[Anonymous Coward]

Great work!

Finnix is the only live distro I've found so far which will -as downloaded- allow me to boot my Dell PowerEdge2850s with PERC4 RAID controllers and actually see the drives.

Thank you very much!

My List

[jakel2k]

Here is a list of CD I find useful for all occassions, (of course keep them up to date):

0. USB key with DSL and required applications, (putty, antivirus, vim, 7zip, adaware, Openoffice...) not all computers can boot USBs
1. Knoppix (has nearly all tools, but slow on older systems.
2. Slax (Quick and fast but not all utils available).
3. DSL (Quicker and faster but not all utils available).
4. Ubuntu (x86)
5. Kubuntu
6. Ubuntu (AMD)
7. Ubuntu (PPC)
8. Ubuntu 5.10 - Server Installation (Light minimal installation.
9. GeexBox - To play DVDs, VCDs...
10. IP-Cop - For the firewall
11. Blank CD - for backup.
12. CD with putty, antivirus, vim, 7zip, adaware, Openoffice...


Pick and replace to your liking. With other Distros you like. You'll need another folder for Windows and related discs.

DBAN

[PavementPizza]

DBAN is crucial. I carry one everywhere to make sure that retired machines and hard drives don't tell their secrets to the world..

For Windows? Windows PE 2

[OfNoAccount]

Similar in concept to the BartPE disc, you can create an official Vista based WindowsPE 2.0 disc using:
BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) 2007

Here's a link to WinPE2 itself: Windows PE 2.0 Overview

I don't

[Sycraft-fu]

Rather than try to build a be-all, end all pack I take what's needed for the job. We have a big rack of CDs at work with all our various recovery and maintenance tools, there's at least 30 CDs in that category. However for a given problem it's unlikely to need more than a couple. So I bring what I'll probably need. Just ask the person first. Same deal when I consult. For example last night I got a call for a system that couldn't run Office and AOL at the same time and was performing poorly. That tells me I need anti-spyware tools, Windows system examination tools (like the Sysinternals utilities) and Office service packs. I'm not going to need any live CDs, clearly the system is operational. In the end, Process Explorer was the only tool needed (a program was leaking memory and the system has little of it).

Do your homework first, and you don't need to bring so much with you.

For problems serious enough that I'd want to boot form a live CD, I generally don't do service on site. I take the computer with me where I can hook it up and have access to any and all tools I might need, including a working computer with Internet access. Major reason is that quite often the problem is disk failure. Well in that case I need the data backed up and fast. You do not want ot be trying that off a live CD on a potentially faulty machine. You want that disk in a computer you know is good, with good cooling on it, so you can quickly do a local copy of the important stuff (and the whole disk, if that works).

Unless you are doing work on computers at really remote locations, that's how I'd do it.

If you are just asking what kinds of CDs to have. Well, I dunno, depends on what you have access to, and how much time you are willing to spend. Off the top of my head the recovery CDs that get the most use at work are Windows PE, the Windows XP and 2000 install CDs, Knoppix, Memtest86+, Ghost (few different ones configured for different NICs), Spinrite, the Sysinternals tools, XP SP2/2K SP4/etc, the AV/anti-spyware USB stick (so it can be updated), drivers CDs for various hardware configurations, disk diags for various vendors, and Partition Magic. There's more, I just can't think of them now and those are the ones I probably use the most.

Huh?

[joto]

You want to always carry around a bunch of live CDs? Let me set you straight: Don't!

If your friends ask you for help so often that this is even an option you consider, either learn to say no, or get new friends. This is plain madness!

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

well maybe not as a system repairman, but i bring eliveCD to show them the alternative OS is capable of running on their lappy, gorgeous too.

Does it fit on a 80mm mini-CD? (~185MB)

[billstewart]

If it doesn't fit on the small-format mini-CD, I don't see any reason to carry around a full-sized 120mm CDROM that isn't crammed to the gills. Maybe you need all the tools, maybe not, but they're not in your way, and the only reason to even use CD instead of DVD is that not all machines have DVD drives yet. The mini-CD and the business-card-sized formats may be a bit more practical to carry around.

Alternatively, USB sticks are great, but not everything knows how to boot from USB. Small distros are kind of nice, since 128MB USB sticks come as toys in breakfast cereal boxes these days, but if you're going to pay money for them a gigabyte is probably the smallest worth buying.

Re:Does it fit on a 80mm mini-CD? (~185MB)

[Sancho]

The load and access times may differ, and as the grandparent said, smaller livecds can fit completely into RAM so that you can actually pop in another disc. The larger the CD, the less likely that is to be the case--you can't count on everyone you help having 1G of RAM.

Re:Does it fit on a 80mm mini-CD? (~185MB)

[X0563511]

If the number from your Subject is true, then yes. System Rescue CD will fit on an 80mm CD.

Virus-cleaners need to be on Read-Only

[billstewart]

I agree with you about not using writeable media on dangerously untrustable systems, so your virus-cleaners and similar tools need to be read-only. There *are* some write-protectable flash drives these days - I think I've mainly seen them as Compact Flash, so you'd need a USB CF-card reader, but those are trivially cheap. However, CDROM media is basically free, and the person whose machine needed cleaning probably needs to have you leave them a copy :-)

Re:Virus-cleaners need to be on Read-Only

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a usb stick with write-protect switch

Re:Virus-cleaners need to be on Read-Only

[Technician]

I think I've mainly seen them as Compact Flash, so you'd need a USB CF-card reader, but those are trivially cheap

i have a usb stick with write-protect switch

And how is the switch guarded so it doesn't accidently get flipped? If you glued the switch so it's in the read only mode, I may consider it OK. Otherwise it's suspect. The switch on the SD cards are generaly OK as they are recessed and require a fair amount of force to switch. I would not trust an unguarded switch that is easy to move.

Re:Virus-cleaners need to be on Read-Only

[Clueless Moron]

Here ya go. A SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus card.

I have one. An SD card that is also a USB drive.

Slax

[eklitzke]

Of course Knoppix is far and away the best Live CD in this area. But it's not great if you want something that can boot from a (reasonably sized) USB drive. Let me explain. I am a "Residential Computing Consultant" at the school I go to, which means that I troubleshoot student's computers, clean up after spyware and viruses, etc. At my job we are issued a 512 MB flash drive. The programs that we are _required_ to have on there (i.e. all the anti spyware, networking diagnostic, and especially Windows patches and hot fixes) take up at least 300 MB. With the remaining space I was able to install Slax and still have ~50 MB left to spare.

I went with Slax rather than something like DSL for a number of reasons. But the main one is that of all the really small live distros, it was the only one I could find with a 2.6 kernel, which translates to better hardware support for all of the weird computers I have to work on (they are mostly one or at most two years old).

We are encouraged to carry Knoppix CDs as well, and they are available in the office, but it's really, really nice to be able to have a live USB drive. Plus only a relatively small amount of the total software on a Knoppix CD is for data recovery and so forth, and all of the essential tools in this area are present in most of the small distros like Slax or DSL.

What Live CDs Do You Carry Around?

[clickety6]

"Peter Frampton Live" - doesn't everybody?

Kubuntu Live CD (Customized)

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article about Flash 9 beta that contained (K)ubuntu live CDs customization and after that I have my own customized Kubuntu Live CD just the way I want it :) One nice thing is that if I install with this CD, the installed Kubuntu has the same settings.

CDs

[sm62704]

You can switch them out, you know. I have two CD cases in my car's glove box, but both are filled with music. If someone calls and asks for computer help, I just trade music CDs with whatever utilities (or in come cases an OS, Mandriva) I need.

A screwdriver, nutdriver, tweezers and pliars are handy, too.

I was going to add a spare hard drive to a friend's Dell, install Linux on it, make it dual boot, and disable networking in its Windows side. But the damned case is riveted! WTF kind of cheap piece of shit is that???

Good List.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Spinrite Disk Recovery http://grc.com/ (hard drive recovery - used more often than all the others combined)
2) Rescue-CD (sometimes LVM2 has problems)
3) NT Password Overwrite, DOD-level Disk Wiper, other boot options (about 7 different useful tools)
4) USB flash drive with all the other utilities but mostly setup as a TruCrypt file
5) Perhaps a TruCrypt encrypted DVD with all my personal data (web passwords, scanned docs: Last Will, Birth Certificates, Marriage license, etc...)

Most days, just the flash drive comes with my current project backups. Visio, Word, Excel, boring. Not a Live CD tho.

I haven't been a sysadmin in over 10 years, but when I go to Mom's house, I revert for some reason. I don't "do" PC support for family other than Mom.

Must have for XP

[jarod670]

Winternals ERD Commander

gparted and damn small linux

[thomasdz]

My first live cd, GPARTED is really nice for repartitioning various Windows hard drives to make roon so that I can temporarily install my second livecd, Damn Small Linux.

Why oh why does every vendor pre-install Windows with only one partition? I want the OS on one and my DATA on the other so I can re-install the OS anytime without disturbing the DATA.
grrrr

by the way, a new version of Damn Small Linux (v3.1) just came out yesterday

Re:gparted and damn small linux

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

please don't complain. . . I recently bought an ACER notebook with a 120gb drive and they partitioned it with two 50gb FAT32 partitions, one with OS and DATA, the other just for DATA. There's a third partition, hidden from windows that's got some system recovery junk or something on it. On turning it on the first time it asked me to burn 2 DVD-Rs worth of recovery junk, because they didn't give me a recovery disc or windows install. . . absolute bull, I'd rather one partition.

Re:gparted and damn small linux

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why oh why does every vendor pre-install Windows with only one partition? I want the OS on one and my DATA on the other so I can re-install the OS anytime without disturbing the DATA."

Funny you should say this. I thought hard about system configuration and decided the best thing was to have the OS on one HDD and everything else on another. On a laptop with one drive separate partitions would have to do. In most cases, the critical data you can't replace is in one directory. Back this up and you can usually get everything else back by a reformat and reinstall-nuke away the problems.

Of course if you're dealing with your everyday virus and spyware infested home computer, you have no choice...

just the usual?

[ajs318]

I like SLAX as my general purpose boot-and-go CD, but I'm also getting to like DSL. That will boot fine on older, slower hardware. I find Knoppix is just too big and clumsy anymore {though we should not forget that DSL is based on a trimmed-down Knoppix}.

Some versions of TheOpenCD used to include a bootable, cut-down Ubuntu; but it seems as though they're now concentrating on providing Free software to run on Windows. Which I suppose is better than trying to spread themselves too thin.

Live cds?

[ProppaT]

Sorry man, but that band sucks...

Hiren's Boot CD

[Anonymous Coward]

It not legal, but "Hiren's Boot CD 8.6" has all the tools you need to troubleshoot and fix a non-booting pc.
Google around and you will find it

Live CDs?

[leon.gandalf]

Better yet! Live Thumb drives....

Live CDs

[Dralithi]

#1. Peter Frampton #2. Kiss Alive #3. Pantera 101 Proof #4. Buckethead #5. Death to The Pixies

Live CD's??

[Time Ed]

Galactic 4.12.05 and 11.2.05 --the last Mississippi Nights shows. Both absolutely will FUNK your ass off!

Widespread Panic 7.31.06 (Fox Theater St. Louis!!) and 4.28.02 (the last great Oak Mountain show)

moe. 3.5.05 --Crab Eyes. Ooooo...

Aquarium Rescue Unit 9.17.02 --Jimmy Herring and Count Mbutu!!

KVHW 6.19.99 (Cazadero firemans benefit with Maceo Parker) --you haven't heard the guitar played until you hear Steve Kimmock

Gov't Mule 10.21.04--post-Allman Bros. Warren Haynes at his best. There are DVD-A copies of this show floating around. Find one!

Les Claypool's set from Bonnaroo 2002 --Buckethead! Oh my...

Don't forget FreeSBIE

[Fweeky]

FreeSBIE 2.0 based on FreeBSD 6.2 just went RC1, and you can make your own using the sysutils/freesbie port. Maybe not your first choice, but a good range of systems is handy for fussy machines.

For Windows, spend some money

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I used to carry BartPE and I still recommend it to budget-constrained folks. However, spending some money for Winternals was one of the best things my employer ever did. It boots faster, comes with more and better tools by default, and gives me the easy network awareness that makes it possible for me to do my job better.

On the free side, when trying to revive the virus-infested home computers of friends, I find Chronomium to be wonderful. You plug in a USB key with a current Clam AV signature file and boot from the disk. It then runs through the drive and deletes all virus-infected files. For a very quick "either fix it or pronounce it fully broken so we can start over" situation, it's without peer.

For Old PCs - DSL

[Pigeon451]

Knoppix and similar live CDs take forever to load and run on old PCs. Damnsmallinux livecds boot in a flash. Not many data recovery utils but useful for examining the hard drive and pulling stuff off it if needed. Plugins are available for extra functionality.

There are only four discs needed

[everphilski]

1) Knoppix Live CD
2) BartPE (live windows CD)
3) All the free windows utilities you need to overcome miscellaneous problems
4) Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon

Re:There are only four discs needed

[ObiWanStevobi]

I'll buy that, but then your CD case is going to be mostly empty. No one respects you if you only have 4 CDs. Best to spread it out. Although I do appreciate Pink Floyd, I wouldn't be caught dead without Tool's 10,000 days in some form on my person. Dare I say they are the modern Pink Floyd. Or...they are the future Pink Floyd to the modern Pink Floyd that were ahead of their time in the past.

Live After Death

[Ivanica Hrabri]

By Iron Maiden and Knoppix

An over-looked but valuable tool - Trinity Rescue

[Slacker]

Yes, Knoppix is a great swiss army knife Live CD, and Damn Small Linux and MEMtest86+ are probably must-haves, but I'd like to suggest one that I haven't seen here yet.

The Trinity Rescue CD. It's a nice (free as in beer) linux rescue CD that includes some interesting extras, like the ability to download fresh signature updates and run 4 different AV packages (it includes ClamAv, F-Prot, Grisoft AVG and BitDefender). It's got all the other standard rescue stuff for windows and linux, glued nicely together in both a (mostly) menu driven environment, or CLI.
Get your fresh hot copy at http://trinityhome.org/

(I'm not affiliated with the project, just very pleased with what this group has been able to put together.)

8cm all in my wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

i've got this four 8cm cd's all in my wallet:

Hiren's Boot CD: coz' windows is still around and users still loses their passwords
SLAX: coz' the first 8cm cd's that i heard of, with nice modules loading + scripts
Gentoo minimal: coz' you never now when you will get your hand on a mainframe to compile your distribution under a year...
Trinity Rescue Kit: coz' the name sounds cool (never used it)

VMware images

[Natales]

Other than a Knoppix CD, I carry around 9 DVDs with compressed VMware disk images, with about 36 or 37 different OSs and applications fully configured and ready to run. I also carry a disk with the free VMware Player and VMware Server for both Linux and Windows.

I can literally set up a demo environment for almost anything in 30-60 minutes.

only Knoppix

[thinsoldier]

Since Knoppix is the ONE AND ONLY LIVE CD TO EVER BOOT ON MY HOME SYSTEM, it's the only one I'm familiar with and the only one I carry with me.

Ubuntu be damned.

answer..

[Jaysyn]

Kubuntu & WinPE

2 disks

[Mitchell Mebane]

I'll see your Hiren's and raise you miniPE XT. It's basically a tricked-out BartPE disc, which is at least as useful as Hiren's BootCD. And, of course, I carry around a Knoppix disc, as well.

Re:2 disks

[TheBeardIsRed]

True, true. What's even better is the use of syslinux with a kickstart server to PXE boot all of these things we've mentioned (which, in a datacenter situation is pretty boss. you don't even need to carry the CDs).

Puppy, Cygwin XLiveCD, DSL, Ultimate Boot CD

[Richard Steiner]

I also have a custom DOS boot CD with a NeoBook menu that contains around 300MB of various DOS tools (Partition Magic, DriveImage, Ghost, Paragon's MountEverything, etc).

Dude!

[Beek Dog]

The Vandals - Sweating to the Oldies - Every song better than the recorded version
Pantera - 101 Proof Live - It's hard to believe what Dimebag could do.
Beatles Anthology - Some of these cuts are much more intimate than the recordings
Led Zeppelin - How the West Was Won - 'nuff said

Oh wait... We're talking linux again, huh?

Secure DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

Secure DVD will help save some space in that disc holder.. yeah the downside is that not every machine has a DVD drive but they are becoming more prevalent.
http://www.securedvd.org/index.html

SecureDVD is a live DVD collection*) featuring the 10 Best Security Live CD Distros (Pen-Test, Forensics & Recovery) as per Darknet (see article here) on one single DVD. The live DVD collection features the following security based live distributions (click names for further information):

      1. BackTrack
      2. Operator
      3. PHLAK
      4. Auditor
      5. L.A.S. Linux - Local Area Security
      6. Knoppix-STD
      7. Helix
      8. F.I.R.E.
      9. nUbuntu
    10. INSERT Rescue Security Toolkit

Full XP ghost partition

[Sparagmei]

Like most, I carry Knoppix, and I've had good luck with the System Rescue CD.

There's another few discs I like to keep with me, not so much against system failure but against "OS rot": a copy of Norton Ghost, and a ghost image of my XP partition, made just after install of the system and my favorite apps. A split copy of the image will fit on 2 4.5GB DVDs. Sometimes I don't bother and just put the image on a 2.5" USB-HD enclosure I carry.

If you adopt a good filesystem architecture, keeping your personal files on a separate partition, you can blast the ghost back into the boot partition whenever Windows starts puking on device drivers or doing whatever crufty XP behavior drives you nuts.

Ghost isn't free, and this takes DVDs to work, but it allows me to bounce my XP every month or so, making it work pretty smoothly. Also, I'm guessing M$ doesn't really condone this sort of Windows usage - software activation makes the technique a little hinky.

Anyone know of a cheap-as-free alternative to Ghost for this solution? The key functionality would be image splitting to disc sizes, bootability of the app itself, and boot drivers for CD/DVD drives and HD enclosures.

Stuffity-Stuff

[chigun]

Auditor FTW I also carry around a thumbdrive packed to the gills with various OSS and freeware when friends/family are having trouble with their PCs.

Along with napkins and ketchup

[Druox]

I keep two disks with me in the glove box at all time - Knoppix, and Ultimate Boot CD. Knoppix comes in handy when staying with relatives over the holidays - running Knoppix live tends to be faster & easier than trying to use their bloated, slow, comet cursor-laden WinXP box. Ultimate Boot CD - its great for the hard disk utilities alone.

Just three

[Lord Kestrel]

I keep a copy of Helix (decent forensic tools), pnordahl's NT password changer cd, and a current Gentoo live cd. The Gentoo cd gives me a full toolchain and package management if I need to install something else.

Since I got a life?

[ubrgeek]

Not a single one ... ;)

GRML!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

GRML IS THE BEST! GRML.ORG

Hm, let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently carry Knoppix, Berry and Minimax. Berry for fun, Knoppix for work and Minimax for emergency situations.

BTW, Minimax is pretty interesting. It's a 32 megabyte live-cd/initrd image, and it has a whole lot of console tools. The best part of it is you can fit your favorite mp3s on the same disc, which means you can play music while you do data forensics. Too bad it's been discontinued.

12 Blank CDs/DVDs...

[Half a dent]

...You never know what you can find to copy!

Damn Small Linux...

[donak]

on a 8cm CD-R, so I can fit it in my pocket. I also built my own CD-R (again a 8cm disc) with AVG antivirus, Mozilla Firefox, Open Office 2, Acrobat reader etc install files. It's jam-packed, but I simply copy files off the CD when people say "my [name of software] doesn't work any more".

Different sound, I guess

[Progman3K]

Personally, I prefer Exit Stage Left or even All The World's A Stage. Different Stages just seems like more of Show of Hands... I think the two earlier live albums have more fire even if they aren't as smooth musically as the newer ones.

My LiveCD wallet ;)

[groovebot]

I've got KateOS Live, Kanotix, Puppy, the Ubuntu LTS alternate installer CD, and the gParted bootable CD. Take them with me everywhere.