[nflug] Live CD help

[Joe]

Sam Stern wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nflug-bounces at nflug.org [mailto:nflug-bounces at nflug.org]
>> On Behalf Of Joe
>> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:05 PM
>> To: NFLUG
>> Subject: [nflug] Live CD help
>>
>> I (still) need to backup my Windoze 98se notebook computer
>> hard disk to
>> a usb hard disk.  The usb disk shows up fine in windoze.I tried to use
>> Ghost, but couldn't get it to work.
>>
>>     
> <snip>
>   
>> I have a Knoppix 3.3 Live CD.  It works about the same as DSL,
>> but gives
>> me root in a the virtual terminal so I can do things.
>> Issues:
>> 1)  Same as 1 for DSL
>>
>>     
>
> Hit F2 and F3 at knoppix boot (btw Knoppix is at version 4.0 right now and
> it has much better support for usb than 3.3 had).
>
>
>   
>> 2) I am currently backing up my C: drive as follows:
>> tar -cvzf /mnt/sda1/cdrive.tgz /mnt/hda1
>> Will this preserve everything I need to do a full restore if necessary?
>>
>>     
>
> No. To preserve the MBR, boot sector, partition table, both drives, etc, you
> need to use dd. Here is the best process I have found to date:
>
>
>
>
> Important Note: Linux support of usb hard drives is very incomplete and
> often slow. Before you start this project using Linux and a usb hard drive
> please be certain via dmesg and lsmod that your usb drive is using the
> "ehci" driver. If it's using the "ohci" driver it's max speed is 12 mega
> bits per second. This is a common problem with Linux and usb storage
> devices.  The core reason this problem exists is that not all makers of usb
> chipsets give Linux project leads the information they need to switch from
> usb 2.0 12mps mode to usb 2.0 480mps high speed mode. To date, none of my 5
> computers mother board chip sets are supported in high speed mode. My work
> recently scrapped a usb drive based Linux solution as we could not find any
> production hp or dell systems that support hi-speed usb under Linux. YMMV.
>
> If you try the below procedure with a drive running at 12mbs rather than the
> 480mps you are used in windows the below procedure could take several DAYS
> to a week or more to complete for a 40gb drive. I recently had to prepare a
> deployment of a 4gb thumb drive at 12mps speed. The image process took
> almost 16 hours!!!.
>
> How to Compress the Image:
>
> 1) Empty the trash, clear your caches, "compact" all mail folders (including
> outlook), Clear out c:\temp (or whatever your temp folder is called), and
> generally clean up all the cruft.
> 2) now defrag the drive. I strongly recommend that you use either diskeeper
> or perfect disk. However, Norton's defrag will get the job done well enough.
> Both of the tools have free trials that are fully functional. It usually
> takes AT LEAST two runs of a defrag program to get the drive as defragged as
> possible. This step will really help you when it's time to mount the image
> or restore the image.
> 3) Now shut down the Windows system.
> 4) Boot into Linux.
> 5) dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -9 > windows_boot_disk.gz  # NB please be prepared
> to wait for several hours for this step to complete.
> 6) You may now mount the image if you like as a fat32 loop back image!
>
> How to restore the image:
>
> 1) Start Linux
> 2) badblocks -wv # this certifies the drive is error free
> 3) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/had # this zeros the drive out and makes for
> easier file recover and undelete later.
> 4) gunzip -c windows_boot_disk.gz | dd of=/dev/hda
>
>
> Other Options:
>
> 1) Acronis true image is a ghost like program that uses a Linux livecd and
> has MUCH better support for hardware than ghost. It's two weakness are: need
> to install to a windows partition to get it's iso to burn a cd and Cannot
> write image files to a Linux partition (but it does save, compress  and
> restore bsd, windows, Solaris and Linux partitions.). Free Trial available
> as is 30 day refund. Also note that you can burn an image of the live system
> while it's running to a usb drive if it's supported by Acronis.
> 2) Partimage -- a Linux ghost like program with network support. Rather
> fussy to setup but seems to work well. USB storage support will be the same
> as your running kernel
>   
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
> Sam Stern
> Grand Island, New York, USA
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nflug mailing list
> nflug at nflug.org
> http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug
>
>   
Thanks.  I'm running the dd now.  I omitted the -9 to give my tired old 
processor a break. The usb drive is way big.

Do you know how to tell the Knoppix Live CD to skip the gui and just 
give me 800x600 (vga) and the command prompt?  Somehow I broke it during 
boot up and got there, but I'd like to do it more easily next time.  
Without mouse support, the gui is almost worthless.

As for your other options, I don't know enough to make my own Live CD, 
so I can't use optional programs.  On my other machine - my dual-boot 
desktop, I use partimage to back up the windoze side and it works great.

_______________________________________________
nflug mailing list
nflug at nflug.org
http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug