Re: How to make a rescue disk ?
On Sunday 23 October 2005 09:13, Alvin Oga wrote:
> hi ya bruno
>
> On Sun, 23 Oct 2005, Bruno Costacurta wrote:
> > I'm looking for procedure / howto about creating rescue CD disk.
>
> proceedure .. "think" :-) ..
> - find out what hardware chipset is in your pc
> - find out what kernel you're using
> - save the kernel and /lib/modules/<kernel>
> - save your partition info
> - save your list of apps installed
> - save your list of config files installed
> - add dressing so that you can do something
> ( bash, libc, networking, fs-check apps, ... )
>
> - how much time will have you "rescue" the dead box ?
>
> 5min .. 5hrs .. 5 days .. would dictate how you implement
> your rescue cd
>
> - depending on what you want to rescue .. existing
> "rescue" cd's will not have your config files and setup
>
> - or do you want rescue to save a corrupt fs vs
> a backup of your /home and config changes which
> is not the same as rescue
>
> - booting the pc is not the same as rescue either
>
> how complicated do you want to get ...
> - why start with the hardest way to rescue a system ?
>
> 0) dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0
> - as long as your kernel is 1.2MB and you have the network
> modules you can always boot can get online
>
> 1) do a fancier boot floppy with ( lilo or grub or syslinux ) menu
> - lots of howto's
>
> 2) stick a 2nd disk into the same system ... and mirror your boot info
> and may as well copy your /home/bruno directories too
>
> 3) use raid ... in case hda dies ... your properly configured raid
> will boot off hdc instead
>
> 4) make a bootable usb-stick ( more space than a floppy )
> this is the simplest "1 minute change" but assumes your
> system supports usb-hdd-boot and your system has the usb
> driver modules
>
> lilo -C /etc/lilo.hda.conf
> --> change to boot=/dev/hda to boot=/dev/sda
>
> more tweeking (2 min) of menu.lst for "grub-install /dev/sda"
>
> 4) setup (pxe) network boot ... so that you always boot off the network
> as long as the pxe server is running
>
> 5) use an existing "standalone" cdrom
> - you're assuming the kernel on the cdrom supports your hw
> or else it's worthless for rescuing your hardware
>
> 6) make your own standalone cdrom
> - little more work ... but more fun
>
> - rescue cd needs initrd.gz and rootfs ....
> and you'd need to make an iso of the whole thing
>
> hacking a existing knoppix is easy but is too big
> of a rescue disk
>
> 7) test and retest from different failures
>
> 8) endless list with more variances and differences of how to boot it
>
> c ya
> alvin
Thanks Alvin for all these details.
I decided to 'keep it simple' and will try a Knoppix.
Bye,
Bruno
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