Here’s a snapshot, both literally and figuratively, of me today. I’m trying to work out if/why a certain disk drive that was part of my “PC reborn as a data server”…is playing up. Labelled for your viewing pleasure.
1) DDS – David’s Data Server. An old Athlon 1.4. For once it’s dressed. Recently it’s been nudey-rudey with the sides off so I can get to the drives etc.
2) The even older 166 MHz Dell that is my test-rig box. Got it at a swap meet for next to nix. At the moment it has the suspect Samsung drive in. The drive had no operating system. So I could either install…
3) Full-on Debian Linux from the black and white CDs..or…
7) The new Ubuntu single-CD version of Debian
But both of these versions would write to the hard drive. I really only want to see what’s on it and if it’s worth saving off to another PC. So, I used my …
6) Knoppix live Linux CD. This is the case – the disk in currently in the CD-ROM drive and running the PC. “Live” (rhymes with “dive” not “give”) means it can boot an entire operating system without writing anything to the hard drive. Great for non-destructive rescue missions.
I booted from this CD. Found there was indeed data on the old disk, so am now copying it over the LAN to another PC.
9) (The blue cable of the LAN, just visible. See I think of everything)
4) Is my faithful log book. I write down everything I do. It’s the scientist in me.
5) Are the two Sound Blaster Live! cards I removed from both PCs. Servers and test rigs should be silent.
8) Is the original (I think) hard drive from the Dell test rig box. It can only have one hard drive in at a time.
I am very, very impressed with Knoppix. I was easily able to configure my Ethernet card and use Samba to copy the files over to my Windows PC.
Note: before I get emails: yes, I know that Ubuntu Linux also has a Live CD version. But I didn’t have that…and I wasn’t going to download 600+ MB when I was sure my Knoppix Live CD was fine.
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