The System Recovery uses of Knoppix

I'm not an OS fan. What I mean is, there isn't an OS out there which has my
allegiance in any form. After 10 years of system administration, they all start
blending together, and I know they all have problems. All of them. I bring this
up because I don't want you suffering under the delusion that my impression
of Knoppix has anything to do with it being "Linux". Linux just happens
to be the only OS out there which could create a fully functional OS system,
which runs off the CDROM, without installing anything on a hard drive.

All OS's (operating systems) have problems. Every version, every distribution,
every name and box color, has problems. As a systems administrator, your job
is to fix those problems, as quickly as possible. Having a set of tools around
which helps you accomplish that goal is a required part of the job.

I've personally used Linux in a variety of ways over the years to keep windows
environments running and the company uptime in the higher echelons of 90%. For
example, when working in a campus environment back in 99, I created a recovery
disk using Linux, which when booted from, would wipe the drive and place on
it a fully functioning, and wholly installed Win98 system, with MS Office and
other required software packages. It was rather great. If the user messed around
and deleted something, or corrupted something, or installed something they weren't
suppose too, the problem was solved in under 30 minutes, without fail. Granted,
this was rather a brute force use of the technology, but taking in the 3 hour
drive time between offices, and the spread of the campus (from Tacoma to Snohomish
... about 200 miles), and the massive amounts of traffic between them, it saved
a huge amount of down time, and didn't require me to be there. Anyone could
put a CD ROM in a drive and restart the computer.

I would love to say this was an original idea, and it was an original idea,
it just wasn't mine. SysAdmin's talk a great deal on the Internet; exchanging
ideas, sharing knowledge about fixes and warning about problems with Microsoft
Updates. I heard the idea from some place and adapted it, just like I heard
about the constantly growing and vibrant ways to use Perl scripts. So when I
heard about Knoppix a few years later I thought it was a variation on the theme.
Nothing could have been further from the reality of the project.

Knoppix is a fully functional distribution of Linux which runs completely off
the CD and in RAM. It uses a full KDE graphic environment, has Thunderbird for
an email client, Open Office, Firefox browser (with the KDE browser as well),
multi-media programs (for playing MP3's and MPG movies) and much more. Since
it does not install anything on the computer's hard drive when it runs, it can
be used as a very nice system recovery tool, or an active learning environment
without the worry of system damage trying to install a dual boot system.

Since Knoppix's operations are completely inside RAM, you would think that
its hardware requirements were a bit heavy in that area. Again, surprises around
every corner. Knoppix only requires 32 MB of RAM for text mode, at least 96
MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use
the various office products).

To get Knoppix, you go to the website (www.knoppix.org)
and download a ISO file. If you are not familiar with these CD-ROM image files,
then you might want to read a bit on them, but basically an ISO file is a complete
copy of a CD-ROM, called an Image of that CD-ROM, which can be used to create
other copies of the original disk. To burn my Knoppix drives I use Nero Burning
ROM, which is very simple. I right click on the ISO file, and ask it to be opened
in Nero. Nero opens the file, knowing exactly what it is and I click on the
Burn button. It burns the ISO to the disk in my drive and all is well. Really
it is that simple.

Just copying the ISO file over to the disk drive isn't going to help you however,
dong that will just give you a disk, with an ISO file on it, just like the one
on your computer. So you will require a CD-ROM burning software package that
has the functionality of using ISO image files (I would go with Nero).

Once you have your Knoppix disk, you simply place it in the CD-ROM, and reboot
the system. You may need to adjust the system's BIOS to boot to the CD-Drive
first (check your system's information on how to do that). Once booted, Knoppix
starts to check out your system.

Knoppix looks for the mouse, graphics cards, sound cards, and anything else
it can find. Network cards and USB devices are also looked for, which is really
the most useful part for us, because it allows us to use external hard drives,
thumb-drives and network connection.

The only item I have on my computer, which Knoppix didn't even attempt to try
to work out, was my Belkin Wirelesses network card. The card is a PCMCIA card,
so I didn't expect it to be functional, since Linux has been struggling with
PCMICIA cards for some time now. It would have been nice to see the card light
up with Knoppix version 4, but no joy. It is okay, because the internal network
line card works just fine.

Once started you will see your system's hard drives lined up on the left side
of the screen with names like HDA1 and HDA2. Any external drives or thumb-drives
will also be there. You can now access your computer, making copies of files,
replacing files, and in most cases, editing configuration files.

Knoppix is a great tool for the System Administrator, or someone curious about
Linux, but doesn't trust the dual-boot installation with XP (which isn't all
that trustworthy really).