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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?"
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
All the worlds indeed a
"Different Stages" by Rush... but that's obviously not what you mean.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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.
Oh You POS
mandatory tool to have in your toolkit if you deal with Windows machines.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Knoppix
Never know when you need to pull files from a disk with a FUBAR boot sector
AV Disc
Need your disk with AVAST, Ad-Aware, and other virus removal tools
Windows XP
Sometimes a re-install is just easier
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.)
MS Office
To fix those pesky Office corruptions
Open Office
Once again, for those open-minded folks who wouldn't really know the difference anyway.
Misc software
Adobe, Quicktime, Firefox, Opera, J2RE, etc. Those pretty much handle any random computer problems most people have.
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.
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.
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
I have USB stick loaded with WinPE for cleanup or maintenance tasks.
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.
The truth shall set you free!
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
DBAN is crucial. I carry one everywhere to make sure that retired machines and hard drives don't tell their secrets to the world..
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
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.
#include ".signature"
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).
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.