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Medicine for a Sick Linux Box 140

Posted by michael from the two-helpings-of-prozac-please dept.
Squidgee writes "This is the site for "LIAP: Linux In A Pillbox". It is an interesting recovery distro made in the vein of pharmaceuticals; each floppy based 'minidistro' cures one specific Linux ailment. Or, as Luke Komasta (The creator of LIAP) puts it: "My Linux project contains "pills". Each of them is good for one disease, but it doesn't work good enough for another. When you know what you need a Linux for, you may choose a good pill. And of course, as you know, there is no drug which is good for treating all diseases." It's an extremely interesting approach to Linux recovery, and one that appears to be more effective than the other varieties of floppy/mini-cd based recovery systems. Worth downloading in case you ever need it!"
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Medicine for a Sick Linux Box More

Medicine for a Sick Linux Box

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  • What Pill (Score:3, Funny)

    by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me&brandywinehundred,org> on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:00PM (#4133609) Journal
    What pill does it nead for a good slashdotting?

    • Re:What Pill (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mocktor ( 536122 )
      iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s ! 127.0.0.1 -j DROP

      or possibly

      echo "please upgrade my connection to an OC3 immediately and bill to uberadmin@slashdot.org" | mail -s "SOS!" admin@$isp



    • Here's the beginning of Linux Ailment:

      #1. Where's the MS Windoze ?

      #2. Where's the BSOD ?

      And you can continue from here. :)

  • Diagnostic disk? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:03PM (#4133623)
    Well, for those who don't have enough experience to correctly diagnose what ails their box, it seems logical to make a diagnosis diskette, one that doesn't fix anything, but might give them a clue which pill has the best chance of fixing their problem.
    • Yeah, I need to go see a doctor so he will give me a prescription.
      Then, i can buy the pills ;-)
    • Where the hell would you start? There could be a million and one things go wrong. I guess you could do something along the lines of the Microsoft troubleshooter. But whenever I've had need to use that, 90% of the time it ends up telling me it doesn't know how to fix the problem. Which is about as much use as tits on a bull :/

  • blue pill ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tiwason ( 187819 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:04PM (#4133632)
    And does the blue pill disk install windows ??

  • A pill for . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by borg05 ( 161991 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:04PM (#4133635) Homepage
    What disk do you use if your floppy disk drivers break?

  • Pills? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:05PM (#4133639) Homepage
    Don't tell me. Lemme guess.

    The "Blue pill" returns your Linux machine back to normal function. The "Red pill" puts a trace on the kernel, and "shows you just how deep the rabbit hole goes...."

    Soko
    • You can take the red pill if you want, but ultimately you'll regret not having taken the blue pill.

      That's just the way it goes.
  • Slackware has had a rescue root disk for as long as I can remember (somewhere ~1995 possibly). It provided most rescue tools that you needed on a single floppy.

    I still occasionnally download a boot+rescue root disk to repair a screwed-up system that fails to boot, even when said machine isn't running Slack.

    • Re:Hardly new (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bhsx ( 458600 )
      It's a new approach at building those emergency boot disks, so that you get exactly what you need/want. I dont' care what you can fit on two floppies; there will be times when you don't have what you need. This tries to address that problem in a rather interesting(if not terribly intuitive) way.
    • You can't fit everything you might need on one floppy, so it's hard to create a Swiss Army Rescue Disk.

      Of course, that's why God gave us zipdisks. . .
    • Yeah but this time they called it a pill!
    • Slackware 8.1 also comes with a rather complete distro on a cd-rom. If your mobo can boot off cd-rom, that's all you need.

      This "Linux Pill Box" thing primarily has novelty value, it's not really that useful. Even if your computer can't boot cd-roms, you'd still be better off with a floppy containing a minimal kernel, some flavor of fsck and a text editor. You can solve most immediate problems with that. Once you can boot your system again, you can take care of the rest.
      • ... you'd still be better off with a floppy containing a minimal kernel, some flavor of fsck and a text editor. You can solve most immediate problems with that.
        ... assuming you know how to solve said problems. This is for less tech-savvy people. If you don't know what the exact problem is, but know "it's something to do with network card drivers", you just stick the appropriate floppy(-ies) and they (in theory) will sort out your system for you.

        • I'd say *especially* for non-tech-savvy people. How are they going to know which of these diskettes they're going to need?

          Not to mention that you'll need at least *some* knowledge to be able to fix Linux disasters.
        • This is for less tech-savvy people.

          As long as they don't log in as root, they shouldn't be able to make any major damage in the first case. In that case the recovery procedure just has to do something like this:

          cd /home
          mv luser oldfiles
          cp -a /etc/skel luser
          chown luser:luser -R luser
          mv oldfiles luser

  • Naw.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:07PM (#4133650)
    I'd rather have everything I need at once, rather than having to switch floppies and reboot for a different function.

    For me a bootable CD solution like Knoppix [knopper.net] is a much better choice for a recovery disk.

    • Re:Naw.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 )
      Yea I just downloaded it last week and I'm really impressed. Things you can do with it off the top of my head.

      Emergency disk repair via a nice gui!
      Network scanning via nmap and ethereal. How cool is it to be able to plug into a compromised network and scan it without worrying about your system.
      Ssh and vnc for admin without having to install it on your machine. This is great if you only have access to windows machine and don't want to have to download/install and software.
      Secure web surfing. Want to check your email or do something else online that won't leave cookies etc on the local machine?
      Great way to demo for people new to linux and let them learn linux without fear of them destroying their machine. This really would work great in a classroom setting and sure as hell beats having to reghost the machines every day.

      You get a usuable full featured linux system on any machine with a cdrom. It really is very usuable as a desktop on any half decent machine. The only time it felt slow was when launching Open Office. Every other app launched faster than I though it would.

      I know its not a new concept and others are available but its the best I've used so far,and should go in any admin's toolkit.

  • Dear god (Score:5, Insightful)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:07PM (#4133657)
    I'd always thought, to a large extent, the frustration of dealing with Windows and Mac had been due to their perverse propensity for the use of abstract metaphors which complicate rather than explicate problems. That may be helpful for new users, but new users Linux users do not tend to be. Do Linux users want to be treated like babies all of a sudden? I know I certainly don't. And, somehow, I don't believe the linux community in general is going to be too impressed with useful utility encased in meaningless, obfuscating metaphors.
    • kernel, mount, daemon, zombie, thread, named pipe, kill (especially Kill : The Command), jiffies, etc, etc.
      • Those aren't really metaphors though, they're just jargon. Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.

        • they're metaphors (Score:3, Informative)

          by Bodrius ( 191265 )
          They are metaphors, they were meant as metaphors and they are still primarily used as metaphors.

          Jargon does not start as jargon, only after it's used has been established in their technical context are they considered the "jargon" or idioms of the field.

          Jargon terms have only three origins:
          - Metaphors: process, kill, zombie, kernel, pipe, thread, batch, stack, etc.
          - Codes and Acronyms: tcp, lisp, java, pc, minix, perl, etc.
          - Idiotic Puns: more, less, archie, most shell commands.

          Some, like GIMP, UNIX or GNU have mixed origins, but I'll let you decide which origins are present in the mix.

          Not only are most computer science terms based on metaphors, very few people expect you to understand them properly without the metaphors. That makes learning concepts more difficult, and makes knowledge incomplete and not-portable.

          • That's not my point exactly, and it isn't what I said. In the case of a zombie process, it's certainly true that the name "zombie process" was established from metaphor ("hmm, we have a situation where a process won't die... we'll call that a zombie, makes sense") but what I'm saying is that it isn't intended to be understood as a metaphor. You have to assign a name to the condition - it's inconvienient to say "process that has terminated but whose parent hasn't read its result code yet" every single time - but the name "zombie process" isn't really an attempt to convey any kind of understanding of what it IS. All the name conveys is that the process is sort of dead but not really; it doesn't purport to suggest how it came about, or what you could do about it.

            A metaphor for a zombie process would be if you called it a "dead limb still hanging to a live tree" or something like that. It's certainly the case that the "process tree" is a metaphor, as the concept is usually taught and understood as a metaphor.

            The reason for my response was to express that there's a difference between concepts that are understood as metaphors and concepts that are only named as metaphors. If you attempt to understand a complex concept using a metaphor, your understanding is limited to the quality of the metaphor. But jargon, merely naming a concept after a convenient metaphor, is not the same thing. No Unix I've seen has a "shotgun" command to do away with zombie processes. Imagine if they did, though; that would result in sysadmins who said "zombie process? just click on the shotgun" and they wouldn't have any clue what was really going on. That's what the concern is.
            • The metaphor starts the conceptualization. The term becomes jargon after it has obtained a more precise meaning. I would guess that a zombie process is one that is dead, or should be dead, but for some reason has not made itself disappear. One reason for a zombie to stick around is that somebody should maybe do an autopsy.
              • A zombie process sticks around until either its parent dies without it being assigned a new parent or until its parent checks its exit status (the 'performing an autopsy' the previous poster mentioned).

                The metaphor extends a bit more, because you can't kill a zombie process the way you can kill normal processes - because you can't kill something that's already dead =)
            • No Unix I've seen has a "shotgun" command to do away with zombie processes. Imagine if they did, though; that would result in sysadmins who said "zombie process? just click on the shotgun" and they wouldn't have any clue what was really going on. That's what the concern is.

              One word: sysadmin-doom :-P

        • Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.

          Au contraire. A human zombie has no soul, no mind. All that remains for him is for the grim reaper to take his body. It's an excellent metaphore for what happens to a Unix process after it has exited, but before it's process slot gets deleted.

    • The stupid acronyms used to describe a useful utility aren't less obfuscating than the metaphors you speak of. Image manipulation program is easier to understand than photoshop... but gimp isn't.
      • I would think that Photoshap actually conveys more meaning then Image Manipulation Program to the general public. But maybe I am just lame
        • Well, when i first heard of photoshop it sounded to me like a program used by the people who develop film, this was when all i knew about computers is you could play little games like outrun and megaman after typing wierd stuff in dos.
          • and image manipulation program would have meant something to you back then?
            I think if you told the average person you have an image manipulation program on you computer they would go huh? But if you said I have a photoshop on my computer the would understand it at least had to do with photo images. I would call my IMP something like Photonator or something catchy like that. Or maybe photo slop, that would easily tell people it is a photoshop work alike.

    • Do Linux users want to be treated like babies all of a sudden? I know I certainly don't. And, somehow, I don't believe the linux community in general is going to be too impressed with useful utility encased in meaningless, obfuscating metaphors.

      I will be.

      If Linux is ever going to replace Windows as a viable desktop operating system - which I think the majority of the Linux community rightly wants - then it's time to get your head out of the sand and look at the reality.

      I'm typing this on a Windows XP box at work. It's not by choice that I am using Windows, in fact, I have defenestrated my home computers despite several problems with Linux as a viable desktop operating system [glowingplate.com].

      This XP box is insipid, insulting, cartoonish, wasteful of CPU cycles and hardware resources. And, I think, Windows is almost at the point where any idiot can use it.

      If you've ever done a stint in tech support, you know how the operating system must pander to the idiot who doesn't realize that a case sensitive password must be entered with the Caps Lock in the same mode as it was when the password was created.

      Linux should not go this way by default, or else we will drive away both power users and developers.

      But there's plenty of room for distributions and tools which are designed to make Linux easy for the proles to handle.

      Don't knock them, applaud them. Unless you want to see all Internet protocols commoditized by The Borg.

      www.glowingplate.com/dissent [glowingplate.com]

  • put all of them into a CD, which is bootable with isolinux and each remedy (that is the pills) is a root file system to mount - easier to use, faster, isn't it. i think that almost all recent years (5 years old computers) are ok with bootable CDs.

  • The windows version.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alien Being ( 18488 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:13PM (#4133677)
    suppositories
  • I was a tad concerned about the lack of drug-interaction information. I mean, I'd be concerned that if I used the blue pill at the same time as I used the yellow pill, that I'd get some sort of green-pill effect. Likewise, if I used the blue and red, would I get a purple pill? :)

  • what are some of the "Linux diseases" these disks cure? What if i have a broken floppy drive?

  • what we need now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mad_cow ( 152516 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:15PM (#4133688)
    Is LOASC (Linux On A Street Corner). The first one's free... and so are all the ones after.


    Instead of lecithin, vitamin and insulin, we could have crack, lsd and heroin. You could even have a marijuana distro, which of course would be a gateway distro.

  • now, we just need 2 tone floppy disks that look like gel-caps to go with it
    • I see real marketing potential: a boxed set of flourescent colored disks, labeled to look like prescription bottles. If a salesman at a floppy manfucaturing plant had a lunchtime to spare with the engineers, it could be possible to buy floppies with different colored sides on the front and back, just like a pill. I can see the possibilities with this and how easy it is to bring a package together. ..
      • Yah, 2 tone floppies!! that's a freaking ama;ing idea!!! i'd buy them, for now tho, i'm gonna try taking some of those translucent coloured floppios apart and supergluing them together with a different one,, so far it looks pretty promising, mwahaha, lol :), Reece,

  • Would like comparison disk (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Krellan ( 107440 ) <krellan@NOspAm.krellan.com> on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:20PM (#4133708) Homepage Journal
    More than a recovery disk/CD, of which several already exist, I would love a comparison disk. It would be for use after suspecting an attack.

    It would boot from floppy or CD, guaranteeing that it would be in control and not trusting the hard drive for anything at all.

    It would contain Tripwire-style keys for every system-installed file in the distribution. When booted, it would check each file against these keys, and output a list of files that do not match.

    So, if one has been rooted with a good rootkit that modifies the operating system to cloak hacked files, one could then boot this disk/CD and be sure of being completely in control with a known good operating system. All files on the hard disk would be able to be accessed honestly, for a true comparison!

    Does such a tool exist already?

    It would be fairly easy to add this to the Red Hat installer. In addition to having an option to install, it would have an option to compare an existing system. It would go through the standard installation steps (choosing partitions, etc.) but compare instead of copy. A byte-for-byte comparison could then be done, for true honesty. If any mismatches are found, it would complain loudly, and give you the option at the end of simply overwriting the changed files (under your control, of course, and on an individual basis).

    What do you think? Does such a tool already exist? I would love to use it if it does.
    • One difficulty is the user configuration files. If the attacker changes things like root's bashrc that may not be noticed by such tools as it is probably not deemed a system file. So what you say could help but still leaves large holes. The same is even more difficult to check if it is a user's bashrc as they may be modified moderately frequently (making them harder to check against a known good file).

    • Re:Would like comparison disk (Score:5, Informative)

      by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @03:06PM (#4133837)

      You can implement this yourself easily enough.

      Let's say you want to do it for all the files in /root, /bin, /usr/local/bin and /etc. The following will get you a list of md5sums:

      #!/bin/sh
      find -s /root /bin /etc /usr/local/bin | while read x ; do
      md5 $x
      done;

      Put the output of that into a file after a fresh install. Save it to disk. At any later point, do it again into another file. Use diff to find the differences.

      The wonderful thing about Unix is that you can do this sort of thing with the standard shell and 5 lines of script :P

      • Re:Would like comparison disk (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Note: While this is a good idea, a kernel module can get around this technique (infiltrate the kernel, and any program on the system can do whatever you want- including md5sum).

        Be sure to boot from a known good floppy/cdrom rescue disk for full effectiveness.
    • Osiris [shmoo.com]

      From the Osiris website:

      Osiris is a file integrity verification system that can be used to monitor changes to a file system over time. Osiris consists of a pair of applications, osiris and scale. The first application, osiris, is used to collect specific data from the local filesystem and store that data into a database. The second application, scale, is then used to analyze, and/or compare the differences between two databases.

      This also keeps an administrator apprised of possible attacks and/or nasty little trojans. The purpose here is to isolate changes that indicate a break-in or a compromised system.

  • The guy's name is Komsta, not Komasta... Do we have a fix-my-spelling pill?

  • link missing (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @02:37PM (#4133764) Homepage Journal
    The link to its ftp server seems to be missing...

    If you want some working linux distro in a floppy you may look at Tom's [toms.net]. It's my favourite, it helps me install Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org] on some boxes cannot boot from CDROM.

    Besides, you can find list of Linux floppy/CD distros here [trash.net]
  • The install CD for Mandrake can boot using a "rescue" image, which mounts a full system. It's got all I need to get my system up and running again.

    I dont know who should ever need this thing, most distros already have a failsafe way of booting the machine (from cd, floppy or even hd).
    • Unless, of course, you need reiserfs. I'm not sure they've added ext3 support to that, either. No devfs, either, AFAIK. This might have changed since last time I checked.

      Of course, there aren't many systems that actually do include these things yet, so that could be the only reason.
  • Women who are pregnant, or think they may be pregnant, shouldn not touch LIAP.
  • In Windows land we just reinstall the entire OS to fix pretty much everything.

    Amazingly enough with XP I have actually seen cases where less and less things work with each continuous fresh install of the OS though, heh.
    • i found it works about the same each time,, might be because i reformat & partiton each time,, or just because, it really can't get any worse, lol :). Maybe i should try a low-level format,,, Reece,

  • SuperRescue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by meff ( 170550 ) <meff@@@spherevision...org> on Saturday August 24, 2002 @03:58PM (#4133951) Homepage
    Personally I prefer SuperRescue http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/superrescue/ [kernel.org] for system recovery, works remarkably well on a system with a CD-ROM. Give it a shot :)

  • Doctor, it hurts when I do this! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Reziac ( 43301 ) on Saturday August 24, 2002 @05:47PM (#4134250) Homepage Journal
    Tell me if I'm imagining unlikely things, but for those of us for whom linux is still mostly a mystery, how about a diagnostic that checks to see what's wrong, then applies the right "pill(s)" ??

  • A better name? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Alien Being ( 18488 )
    "The Linux Apothecary"
  • Each of them is good for one disease, but it doesn't work good enough for another.

    Which pill do you take if you want to learn to read good and do other things good too?

  • When you reinstall Windows on your dual-boot system and it destroys your partition table (not just the MBR mind you), the "morning after" pill comes in and wipes out the unwanted OS (Windows).
  • for those who prefer suppositories.

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