[TriLUG] LiveCDs as restore disks (Was: custom knoppix)

[Ben Pitzer]

This thread made me wonder about something.  A few weeks ago, I lost
the primary disk on my Linux box, and was forced to rebuild from
scratch, because, like a dummy, I didn't eat my own dog food and make
adequate backups of my system.

This makes me wonder if it's possible to make a live CD of your
currently running system, albeit limited, of course, that keeps track
of the most critical stuff.  For example, here is what I would prefer
to incorporate into any live CD that I would make of my Debian Sarge
system:

1.  User authentication info and homedirs (but not the contents of the
homedirs, outside of shell files, and a few other dot files)
2.  Configuration and packages for Postfix, Courier IMAP, Apache,
procmail, ProFTPd, SpamAssassin, NTP, and Squirrelmail
3.  The full contents of the website
4.  Iptables and its configurations
5.  Interface configurations
6.  KDE

Things I would not want or need to include are regular user files in
homedirs, mail folders, logs, custom desktop configurations, etc., as
those are best backed up in normal fashion.  I would not want to
recreate this live CD any more than once or twice a year at most.  I
just want something that would allow me to set up the most important
services of my machine immediately upon the death of a hard drive, as
soon as I have a replacement.  Just fire up the LiveCD, write it to
the disk, and go about restoring the rest of my files and secondary
services at my leisure.

Does anyone have any idea how to do this?  I've not really played much
with live CDs like Knoppix or ubuntu, but I can appreciate the
technology, and how it allows for very portable computing.  I'd
appreciate your thoughts.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer


On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 20:06:25 -0500, Aaron S. Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws> wrote:
> gregbrown at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> >Has anyone created a custom knoppix ISO?
> >
> Yes, lots of people have!   :)  I happen to be one of them.
> 
> >I read the how-to webpage some time ago, but I am curious what anyone's actual experiences were.
> >
> In brief, it's a long process that takes a good bit of cpu cycles, and a
> fair chunk of disk space.  The HOWTOs are quite straight forward, and
> the process really isn't all that difficult, it's just time / space
> consuming.  Of course, you have to know enough about how a distro is
> built, and read up on using their package management so that you can
> easily add / remove packages from the extracted Knoppix system, in order
> to really effect any major changes.  All the package management details
> are covered in the various Knoppix-remastering HOWTOs.
> 
> >I would like to create a Knoppix that boots and automatically launches Firefox (already configured with as many plug-ins as possible) and that's ALL I want on the ISO.
> >
> >
> Fortunately, what you want isn't terribly hard.  You'll just need to
> know a bit about configuring X start up applications, which is an easy
> google.  Pay attention to the desktop environment, KDE in the case of
> Knoppix.  Also you should make sure you start with a relatively recent
> Knoppix, as that will save you from having to add in the latest Firefox.
> 
> >The idea is I can send a CD to my parents (maybe even a mini-cd?) that they can pop into their home PC, boot up, and proceed to join the world of on-line eCommerce.  They use M$, and steadfastly refuse to move off that platform for their daily use, but I have finally installed enough fear into them that they want an alternative when purchasing items on-line.
> >
> Great work!  Any angle you can use to pry the door open for FOSS is a
> good thing.  Just be careful not to steer too far in the wrong direction
> that you end up in the FUD department.  Honesty in all things.
> 
> >Other then a Linux laptop, which is too expensive, the only other alternative I could come up with was Knoppix, which is too technically complicated for them in it's stock form (if it's not simple and doesn't work easily the first time they won't use it).
> >
> >
> Jon Mitchell's suggestion of Puppy isn't a bad idea.  I'm not personally
> that familiar with it, but it sounds like it might be a much simpler
> approach to get the same end result.  And you can probably do it on a
> wallet-sized CD, such that your parents could then take that image with
> them where ever they go, and always have an increased feeling of
> security by avoiding untrusted software where possible.  Of course,
> don't forget that you're not avoiding untrusted hardware.
> 
> >So, in the end, absolute nirvana would be the following:
> >
> >1. boot knoppix with iptables running and blocking ALL inbound traffic with SYN flag
> >2. knoppix boots and brings up Knoppix -> the home page has a big button that says "REBOOT"
> >3. parents could merrily surf away and, when done, click the "home" icon
> >4. start page comes back up with the "REBOOT" button
> >5. parents click REBOOT button which runs "init 6" in the background
> >6. PC barfs out the Knoppix CD, parents rejoin the M$ world
> >
> >Is the "REBOOT" button possible?  Does something like this already exist?
> >
> >
> Matt Pusateri's suggestion of a desktop icon for your Reboot button is
> probably ideal.  At first I was thinking you could just do something
> like <a href=file:///usr/bin/reboot>, but allowing that type of behavior
> is part of what you're trying to get away from in IE.  :)
> 
> Anyway, I believe Knoppix does have Apache installed out of the box, and
> if it doesn't, you can quite easily add it during a remaster.  That will
> give you the ability (albeit with the small but quite unnecessary
> overhead of having Apache running all the time) to execute CGI scripts,
> so that you can use a setuid script to reboot the machine.  Setuid
> scripts can be, in-and-of themselves, a whole new can of worms to open;
> generally the system will try to prevent you from doing precisely that.
> But it's not too hard to work with in the framework and get the results
> you want.  Me, I'd suggest the desktop icon too.  :)
> 
> Best of luck in your remastering efforts!
> 
> Aaron S. Joyner
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