[KLUG Members] floppy/emergency distros

[Bruce Smith]

> What floppy or CD based linux "rescue" distros are you using? I've used
> tomsrtbt when in a pinch, but I've read good things about Trinux as
> well. Then there's the BBC (bootable business card?). What do you like
> or dislike any of them? I'd prefer to use a CD to boot from, but
> sometimes the CD drive is broken and the floppy drive is all that's
> left. 

When I boot from CD I like "hpa's SuperRescue CD" because it's based on
Redhat (and I run Redhat).  It has the advantage of being a full CDROM,
not a "mini CD", so it has everything on the CD you may need.

IMO, full CDROM's are so much nicer.  No matter if you use SuperRescue,
DemoLinux, Knoppix, of even SuSE's demo CD.  No screwing around with a
limited command set, or crippled/lite commands.  

Just make sure the rescue system supports the filesystem(s) and hardware
that you use.  That's usually not a big deal for standard installs, but
if you're running something non-standard like IBM's JFS, SGI's XFS, ... 
then be careful.  (applies to floppies as well as CD rescue systems)

I haven't used a rescue floppy in years.  How many PC's these days don't
have a CDROM?  None of mine!  Even it the BIOS can't boot from CD, that
can be overcome by dd'ing the boot image off the CD to floppy, allowing
you to still boot the CD.

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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