Re: Born this Day (Lord Willing) The Crash Cart Project

Tod Merley schreef:
On 8/23/06, David Desscan <ddesscan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A very good idea. I think the first thing to is to search for existing
tools. This is surely the first thing you thought of ;-). We don't
have to
reinvent the wheel but to improve or add new features or even writing new
applications from scratch. I like the idea of something like a Swiss
Army
Knife. We have very handy Swiss Army knives here and some of them
come with
a lot of tools which can be useful in whatever situation. Anyway
whatever
the name you give it should serve its purpose. Well for bad HW, I am
thinking of a Linux embedded diagnostic board. What about if the first
sector of a HDD is damaged. Is it possible to make the read/write heads
start reading from another position on the disk? This might be possible
with Assembly language programming. There are a lot of nifty tool
like that
which can be part of this recovery set. I think we have a lot of data
recovery tools out there.

http://crashrecovery.org/
http://www.microlite.com/News_and_Events/pressfallcomdex99/pressfallcomdex99.htm

http://www.sophisticated.com/products/kick-off/kick-off_lin.html
(hardware)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/crk/ (refer to crash
recovery)
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Disk_Maintenance_and_Repair_Utilities/SOS_Crash_Recovery.html

(first thing I'll do is backup my user and configuration data)
http://www.softplatz.com/freeware/data-recovery/
What about putting autonomic computing features in Linux e.g. would be
Nitix
http://www.nitix.com/technologies/autonomic.php

Ok the list could grow longer and longer but I like the idea and am
willing
to help.

Good Luck Tod


David


On 8/23/06, Tod Merley <todbot88@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi All!

I would like to start a project (OK, perhaps there is already one
ongoing, if so, I would like to know about it) dedicated to recovery
from a system crash (broken X, bad HW, anything making the machine
non-functional). I am thinking of first a set of applications which
gather information about the running system (or what one should look
like when it is running)(HW list, SW list, Boot sector copy, config
files, critical files md5s, results of lspci, lsmod, "normal" log
files (/var/log) etc.... Then a set of applications designed to go in
(not booting from the crippled system) and gather the same sorts of
information for comparison and understanding the problem now crippling
the computer in the shop. And then a set of applications which fix,
flag, or tell the owner the bad news determined about the problem
computer.

Perhaps the process could make for the developers a standard "Crash
Cart Packet" consisting of parts of the logs and command results
(maybe an X-packet, Kernel-packet, Audio-packet, etc).

Well, that is it. Just an idea.

I really do not know how to start or be part of such a thing. I guess
I will follow those before me and send an e-mail.

If interested in the motivation - read on:

Last night I wrote an e-mail to a gentleman who lost some computers.
He thought it might be FC5 (He was doing a fresh install or upgrade).

I have seen several on the lists needing crash help.

I also responded to another gentleman who was experiencing an
"updated" Xorg which broke (no GUI!!). I encouraged him to copy some
of the basic log files and help us all heal from our very human
tendency to break things.

Today I woke up, pressed the on button on my computer, got a cup of
coffee, and came back to an ncurses error screen partially obscured by
an exit to a prompt. My silly old video card already has some
irritations with X/Dapper (hash on the screen after monitor has put
itself to sleep) so my prompt was without cursor and the screen was
changing colors as I went (I think part of the ncurses applet was
still running somehow along with the shell).

I thought I had swallowed a bug!

However when Puppy and then Dapper Live booted - xorg.conf the same
but the Xorg binary of very recent date - I remembered the problems I
commented on and replaced my Xorg from the live CD and was happy.

Please let me know if there is interest!

Thanks!

Tod

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Hi David!

I did not think of what others had done "first thing". I think I
simply saw my heart had made a decision.

I did look a bit at what other's had done and yes there are some
possible "pieces" there. I believe I am building a system.

Your embedded idea is cool. I do note that Grub does have a fallback
option where if boot fails from one place it can use the fallback
choice, and BIOS already gives boot several options which could be
made "hot". Still, if the MBR is bad, or if the CPU or main Kernel
are bad it would take a separate device to have the brains to know how
to phone home or go to the haven.

How are your scripting skills? My first idea (little project) is to
make a simple script which copies the critical log files from /var/log
(after seeing if they will fit on the reception media chosen and
making decisions about how to handle the situation if they are not).
I am a beginner in scripting. Still, I will start tonight.

Gotta go to work now. I will type to you later.

Good Building!

Tod

i'm always trying out new things and i (probably) have a phd in system
destruction :)
Keep me posted on the progress as i'm willing to test the tools you come
up with

--
They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic
messages.Thats nothing, cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows.

Progress (n.): The process through which the Internet has evolved from
smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart
terminals.

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"Winners don't do drugs." -- The FBI


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