System recovery with Knoppix
This article shows how to access a non-booting Linux system with a Knoppix CD, get read-write permissions on configuration files, create and manage partitions and filesystems, and copy files to various storage media and over the network. You can use Knoppix for hardware and system configuration detection and for creating and managing partitions and filesystems. You can do it all from Knoppix's excellent graphical utilities, or from the command line.
Knoppix, which is a complete bootable Linux on a CD, has become my rescue disk of choice. An excellent introduction to Knoppix appeared in developerWorks a few months ago ("Knoppix gives bootable, one-disk Linux" by Cameron Laird).
My old mainstays were Tom's Root Boot, "The most GNU/Linux on one floppy disk," and Peter Anvin's SuperRescue CD, "An overfeatured rescue CD." Both are first-rate Linux rescue disks. One of my favorite show-off tricks is to do a complete bare-metal system rebuild, using only a Tom's Root Boot disk and an Internet connection.
As CD-ROMs became standard on PCs, I wore out several SuperRescue CDs. However, it is based on Red Hat 7.2, which is a great Red Hat but is also an old Red Hat. So, 7.2 does not have the hardware support, such as USB or wireless, found in later distributions.
