Rescue CD's / Systems, ideas?
AnthonySmith
Member, Patron Provider
Hi Folks,
I am just finishing putting together a Xen rescue system for customers, initially put together using rescatux however it does not play well over VNC, so I thought I would ask here, what is your favourite live cd for rescuing things when they go bad?
The idea is fairly simple really, I just put a Xen HVM VPS on Every Xen PV Node and then on request assign your disk image to it so you can access thng's via the live rescue system.
This will allow customers to fix their own problems via VNC and recover any data themselves if they make mistakes, I will also include a few things Xen PV specific like the default /boot from debian templates so people who goose them can copy the default back in to fix things etc.
Just need opinions on the best most well rounded linux specific live rescue distro.
Thanks.
Ant.
Comments
My personal fav is -> sysresccd.org
Hiren
Needs to be legal @peppr
Will have a look @BradND
Hiren's boot CD is not legal?
@rds100 In the recent versions they are trying hard to be almost legal. Have changed many util to opensource programs, Include trial versions ( doesnt matter anyway on a resuce cd), show a warning, doesnt include some programs forbidden to be distributed. still it would be so so..
Nope, it contains licensed software that I don't and 99% of the people that use Hiren's don't own the license for.
@AnthonySmith didn't know that.
Which software for instance?
Not used it for years but it used to have a lot of AV stuff and partition magic etc that was not legal.
sysrescuecd is my usual choice when things go bad
They have removed many proprietary programs as of now. Now they use Parted Magic which is free. Also Norton Ghost is not included anymore. However for a virtual server, hiren is a overkill.
Used sysrescuecd in the end, works great, smashed up a Xen PV OS and recovered it by mounting the disk image in the Xen HVM rescue system and as an unexpected added advantage I was able to use the boot repair and then boot the Xen PV VPS as HVM, loads of options available. thanks for the tip.
Was much more simple than expected.
RipLinux, Parted Magic, grml, and finnix are all good. We have a pxe server on a tagged/bridged vlan that has various rescue options, you might consider something like that where the customer gets a pxe boot screen where they have a choice of what recovery system they want to boot to...
System Resque CD, grml, Trinity Resque Kit and Parted Magic. All my servers have a direct mobo USB which has a stick loaded with the above ones, and also Hirens. But the latter is indeed not really legal. Saves you a lot when you need DRAC/ILO...
I would go for those, also finnix and maybe you could add Tiny Core or one of those netboot distros (http://www.netboot.me/).
linode uses finnix, it's good.