I continue to be impressed with the Windows tools in Helix, but have decided that it is really geared more toward criminal forensics than data recovery (it’s even got a chain of custody PDF).
I went back to DistroWatch.com and discovered a different category in the distribution search that appears more appropriate: Rescue. See my wiki for more details.
Well, I’m not sure where I got the previous information, but Helix is based on Knoppix. What really surprised me, however, is its windows support. After burning the CD, I stuck it back into my computer running Win XP, and it launched an application that could be used to research (and hopefully fix) a problem. I did have a problem shutting down the application — it repeatedly asked me whether I wanted to write a log file, but it finally quit after I said no 5-10 times.
I also booted from the CD, but didn’t do much there. I browsed around and saw that the forensics tools were very prominent; I launched Autopsy, but quickly discovered that I needed to RTFM before I went much further.
I stumbled on Knoppix STD, and since I had used Knoppix (Linux that will run from CD), I was curious what the STD stood for. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. It is a variation of Knoppix designed for security & forensics. I searched DistroWatch and discovered a few more distributions designed for forensics:
All but Helix are derived from Knoppix, but they’re all live CDs, so they can be used without installing anything on the computer, and they include tools to analyze (and hopefully fix) an ailing system.
I remember the days when everything seemed to have a three letter acronym. In fact, someone came up with an acronym to describe them: TLA. Well, I thought of a new acronym to characterize the increasing number of excessively long, contrived acronyms that I’ve seen lately.
BLATHER:
Long Acronym That Has Everyone Retching |
Macromedia has a Flash tool designed to work with web services and other Java technologies, called Flex. As it turns out, it’s been out a while, but I just became aware of it with the public alpha of Flex 2. Here are a few (probably old) reviews:
And if I’m reading the FAQ correctly, they have a non-commercial license with a free copy of the IDE. This warrants further investigation…
I discovered Sleuth Kit when I was installing packages on my home Debian system last night. I need to find out if this will help me recover data from the hard drive that died this summer.
I never realized how many Linux distributions there were until I saw DistroWatch.com. Recently I found a Distribution Chooser — it only includes 14 distributions right now, but most of the top 10 are in there.
Ok, so I’ve had it installed for less than a day, and I’ve got very little actually installed on it, but I’ve noticed a few things:
Grub is very cool. Not something the average consumer would want to mess with, but a great geek tool for controlling startup. I may not have noticed this if not for Grub, but the brand new stable release of Debian, named sarge, uses a Linux kernel that’s a year old instead of a newer stable kernel. I’m sure they’ve got their reasons; I know that just because the 2.6 kernel is considered stable doesn’t mean it won’t cause problems in the Debian distribution. Or it could be just fine; true stability takes time to discover. I was just surprised… Knoppix seemed much better at identifying hardware and installing appropriate drivers. I never had to tell it what type of video card I had or when I was attaching my external firewire drive. When I booted, it just recognized them and got them running. (I haven’t tried the firewire drive yet, but on my first installation I was asked what video chipset I had. I took a guess but based on the fact that XWindow support couldn’t start, I guess I got it wrong).Well, Debian 3.1 (sarge) is up and running, with a dual boot to Windows XP Professional. This post is pretty long and detailed, so read more only if you want that kind of detail.
Continue reading Installing Debian
The hard drive on my Dell died (which is a whole separate story that I had hoped to tell, but may never get around to it). For the past few weeks, I’ve been running Knoppix on that computer. I started using Knoppix in an attempt to recover some of the data from the hard drive, but last week I even disconnected the drive and have been using the computer without a hard drive (the last time I did that was before Windows 3.1, I think).
Today I bought a new drive (an 80 GB Seagate for $36 after rebates) and just finished installing it. It went rather well, considering it was only the second time I’ve attempted such a feat. The first time (many years ago) ended with calling in a professional to do the job, but this time seemed much easier; technology must have improved dramatically since that failed attempt.
One thing I hope to do this time around is set up a Linux server. I chose Debian, partly because that’s what I have at Dreamhost, partly because it’s free and has tons of packages available. I’m going to start with a dual boot configuration, because I have some tools that I need to run on Windows (until I find a Linux equivalent). Once I get things set up, I hope to run Linux almost exclusively. I’m also planning to implement Xen virtualization. I’m mostly doing it just to learn it, but I hope to have one virtual “production” server visible on the internet and another as a playground. More details will follow…