wish list - LiveCD rescue suite

[nubcnubdo]

Please enter your wishes for applications to be included in a future LiveCD as part of a Rescue-Recovery-Toolkit suite.  For now, let's just gather all the useful utilities, and later decide which to include on Live CD, and which to include on Live DVD.

A good guide is the latest Parted Magic live CD:
http://partedmagic.com/programs.html

Puppy Linux 2.16 also has a nice selection of tools.

SystemRescueCd has a good selection:
http://www.sysresccd.org/System-tools

I'm gonna start it off with the following:

GParted
Partition Image
TestDisk
GTK Hardware Lister*
dd
ddrescue
fdisk
wipe

* I think this is the sys info tool I've been looking for, lagagnon. I see SystemRescueCd has Aida, which is also a system information tool.

[Joe1962]

Personally, I don't think we can compete with System Rescue CD on the generic recovery CD. What we could do is cook up some VL-recovery utilities, that will know how to handle VL idiosyncrasies.

[nubcnubdo]

If GTK Hardware Lister does what I think it does, I would like to put it on all my systems, as standard operating procedure. I found GParted to be very useful when experimenting with Puppy, where GParted is included on its liveCD.

I don't think you can assume that most users know about System Rescue CD, nor that an individual user is inclined to take the trouble to download it, burn it, and know how to make use of it.

The suite doesn't have to be complete, just a nice selection of useful tools, say, 10 utilities/tools, as a convenience to users of the liveCD.

EDIT: I just had a long look at my copy of SystemRescueCd 0.3, and I think it's not so easy to use. You get the command line by default. It's text based. I hunted for 10 minutes trying to find GParted, never found it, although I'm sure it's there.

[rbistolfi]

Is this a general recovery cd? or is a tool to recover a VL install? I think Joe is suggesting the second one, because the first one is already covered by SR cd. I like the idea and I think should be a VL recovery cd plus all the tools can fit in a cd for general rescue tasks, and may be some docs about howto diagnose a problem.
Memtest should be in that list. Badram is a tool to prevent the system to access a bad memory sector, needs a kernel patch I think. I used both of them in the past, really useful tools.

[The Headacher]

I just had a long look at my copy of SystemRescueCd 0.3, and I think it's not so easy to use. You get the command line by default. It's text based. I hunted for 10 minutes trying to find GParted, never found it, although I'm sure it's there.

It's in the gui thing, you can start it with

Code:

startx

[nubcnubdo]

My opinion: We aren't competing with SystemRescueCd, rather, we are trying to make the LiveCD more useful.

[blurymind]

fix lilo bootloader and/or reinstall it when needed.
Partition managers:
 that is no gui (cfdisk?) and gparted,qtparted or anything good out there..
Mount and unmount partitions and media.

No-gui quick boot mode,where the user can use cfdisk,reinstall lilo or do anything else possible...

[nubcnubdo]

I believe it is essential for the Standard LiveCD to have a good system information tool like GTK Hardware Lister (lshw) or Aida (see SystemRescueCd) and a partition editor such as GParted.

[lagagnon]

VL 5.8 Standard Live final does have GParted on it. As far as system information tools, I have tried a couple of GTK apps myself (could not remember their names) but was not very impressed - they were just regurgitating information from /proc.

I work on older, unknown status computers all the time with VL, and I find the following command line tools (once you learn to read them) offer all the info I ever need about the system and the hardware:

dmesg
less /var/log/messages
fdisk -l
df
free
lspci
lsusb
lsmod
pnpdump
memtest

dmesg is particularly useful for checking whether the kernel sees all the hardware (also gives you a hardware make and model) and will also spit out immediate errors for things like defective hard drives, CDROM drives, USB devices. It also tells you whether the parallel, serial, NIC ports, etc are working and is also useful for diagnosing ACPI/APM issues. Takes some effort to learn to read it but is probably the most useful hardware diagnostic tool for me.

For the true geek the /proc filesystem tells you almost everything about your hardware. It is fun to browse with mc.

[Kocil]

Put in the VL GUI installer

[DrCR]

we are trying to make the LiveCD more useful.

Brilliant! I'm totally for it.   I sorely missed the basic tools found in SysResCD and UBCD when I check out the VLLiveCD. Would be stoked to see a VLLive having it all!

Other recommendations to add to the list (if not present):
cpuburn (or equivalent)
mprime (prime95 for linux)
memtest86
Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban), http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Is grubconfig currently in VLLive? I miss it in 5.8SOHO, though that's readily solved with the os residing on the hard drive.

Thanks,
DrCR

[nubcnubdo]

hardinfo on Fedora:
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/07/26/hardinfo-on-fedora/

HardInfo: System Profiler and Benchmark
http://hardinfo.berlios.de/HomePage

HardwareLiSter
http://ezix.org/project/wiki/HardwareLiSter

[nubcnubdo]

dmesg
less /var/log/messages
fdisk -l
df
free
lspci
lsusb
lsmod
pnpdump
memtest

dmesg is particularly useful for checking whether the kernel sees all the hardware (also gives you a hardware make and model) and will also spit out immediate errors for things like defective hard drives, CDROM drives, USB devices. It also tells you whether the parallel, serial, NIC ports, etc are working and is also useful for diagnosing ACPI/APM issues. Takes some effort to learn to read it but is probably the most useful hardware diagnostic tool for me.

The whole point of having a sysinfo tool/application is so one doesnt have to root around with multiple commands to find out what is under the hood. Instead the information is collected and presented in a readable, organized fashion in a single place, in one stroke.

Suppose, for example, that customer is on the phone with tech support, and the techs need to know what's inside the computer, in order to assist with a problem. Customer runs sysinfo tool, relays info to techs.

I urge the curious to try Everest Home Edition, to see what a good sysinfo tool can be. Everest was originally Aida32, which in turn evolved from Aida16, still available on UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). Although Everest has recently gone commercial, you can get a slightly older freeware version here:
http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=everesthome

[nubcnubdo]

I recently checked out all the system information tools in UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). There are 5 or 6 sysinfo utilities available on the second page of the first category. (Press F1 to select Disk Utilities, then press right-pointer navigation key to access page 2 of utilities.) One or two of the sysinfo utilities don't work, but I urge the curious to try the ones that do, especially Aida16.  It's kinda odd that when the utility is called, up comes a Linux initialization, but when the utility is closes, it acts like DOS. Go figure.

[Tigerwolf]

Please enter your wishes for applications to be included in a future LiveCD as part of a Rescue-Recovery-Toolkit suite.

One very essential item is a way to verify packages to spot and optionally replace missing, corrupted/changed files.   Preferably, this would *not* involve a complete package reinstall.

Ideally, this should be part of the package manager, but it's not there (at least yet anyway).

It's the one single thing I've wanted to see since the beginning.