Trinity Rescue Kit

[viking60]

In my Windows days I always had a set of rescue tools to remove viruses and reset passwords etc. Since I started with Linux I got sloppy in that department so I wanted to update myself in the rescue department. In the XP days Bart PE was a favorite. simply because it was a full fledged windows installation on CD. Now that even made it Virus resistant! And it could fix everything in XP. Now I have come over the Linux based rescue program called Trinity Rescue Kit. And it comes highly praised so it must be good; among other things it is based on the Mandriva 2008 rescue "cd". So I "burned" a copy to my USB stick and booted from it. (I will not go into how this is done here but do feel free to ask - the instructions are on the site.). The reason I wanted it to a USB pen was to be able to download AV programs etc. So time to boot up the USB pen then hitting F8 on my keyboard let me pick the right dongle but It did fail to find itself the first time so I made sure to mount it in Mandriva before rebooting and then there was no problem (That is the advantage of burning these things to CD - they will always boot and you can put TRK in RAM so the AV download should still be possible). I could easily set my keyboard so that hurdle was no problem. And the network worked out of the box. If you get in trouble, TRK will suggest the command to fix it.

Time to play with my Windows7 then. TRK mouted everything and found my Windows easily. I picked it and chose to reset the password for one (of three) Windows users. The reason I only opted to delete it was that to alter it can bring you in trouble on some Windows versions according to TRK. I could choose to promote a normal user to admin! That is nifty - mesa like. All was done via an intuitive text menu. Now over to the virus scan - this part requires a download and I was given the choice between: Clam AV F-prot BitDefender Avast (license required - free but a hassle) So I picked F-prot because I have not heard of it before It downloaded the free trial (that is all you need because TRK will download it every time I guess) So I am now checking my box with a fancy corperate AV system It is still scanning, When it is finished I will log in to windows and tell you guys if all my operations have been successful. I am confident - this thing looks solid....

[viking60]

I logged into Windows and the password for that account was removed - no problem. This thing is good for saving any data and works well.

[rolf]

I should probably get an iso. Someone spoke well of SystemRescueCd, so I got that. It turned out to be helpful when GF's reiserfs filesystem or something else was a bit confused, needed a kickstart.

I also am impressed with Bart PE, have one on a usb key. That one is for a portable platform on eee-pc for a cool little DOS program from Western Wood Products Association to design size, spacing, etc. for post and beam members when out of office. I wrote about this already, somewhere, maybe here, but for ease and completeness, some photos:

[viking60]

Yes good old Bart there. And great CAB!
Regardig SystemRescueCD That is what everyone recommends - so I will give it a test. I think it does not have the Windows reset password and promote users functionality. But Parted and other tools are a must so I guess it belongs in the Berserk toolbox too. Trinity seems to be a Linux distro that has its fokus on reparing Windows (even if it works with Linux too - well it is Linux!).
So far I have
TRK and
REDO (Great for total backup of my main box regardless of OS. Backup and restore tested and working!)
And
Ophcrack (Not sure I need this anymore with TRK)

[viking60]

I am cloning an Arch installation to another box via the network now -
I booted the box to clone from the USB-pen and I booted another laptop from a TRK CD (It makes sense to have both an USB and a CD)
On the main box I picked Mclone sender from the menu.
On the receiving empty lap I booted the CD into RAM and made sure it got an IP (It did). Then I picked Mclone client from the menu and hit enter and the process started.
The network speed is 94.xx Mbps and this is going to take a while because I am cloning a heavy duty Arch installation with both KDE and Gnome.

After rebooting the receiving box I am stuck with a GRUB prompt. So I guess I will be needing the Systemresxue CD to fix the booting

[rolf]

I don't do much in the way of 'Mcloning' but that looks like an interesting part of an effective rescue system.
When copying systems over leads to the grub> prompt, I start to suspect fstab, uuid, menu.lst...

[viking60]

Yes those were the good old days. This is the box that I recently converted to Grub2 I dunno much about it yet....
I built an iso with mindi (part of Mondorescue).
But that seems to panic a bit om the new box (It will probably work perfectly to rescue the box that I am cloning).

So I have the Mandriva based TRK which is great and even clones Windows to perfection - people make 40+ installations over the net) - but not Arch
The partitions and the content are created and there, Including /boot
I guess I need to make the kernel see it again or something - I am not house broken on Grub2 yet....

[viking60]

I did it!
TRK did clone everything over to my new box and did in fact make an exact functioning copy. And then there was the slight problem that it would not boot.
The GRUB with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner was only to tease me - I could do nothing with it. I tried manual approaches (from within TRK) but since I am really fresh with GRUB2 I would really like to check that everything was ok first.
So I downloaded and burned me a supergrub2 disk and booted from that.
Then I picked detect any grub2 configuration file and it made one suggestion that I could pick.
Et Voila! I booted into my good old system and it was all there!
Updating with Pacman and rebooting did not fix the boot though so here is what I did:

Code: Select all

modprobe dm-mod

and

Code: Select all

sudo grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck --debug /dev/sda

I would probably have achieved the same from a shell within Trinity Rescue Kit to begin with. But I like doing it in my familiar environment and after knowing that it is in fact working.
So now I know
1. Clone with TRK
2. Check if it works and if it is not booting...
3. Boot your system with the supergrub2 cd and re-install/reconfigure grub2

My toolbox is getting completer by the minute..... And I must say TRK is a big favorite, together with the Subergrub2 lifesaver.

[rolf]

Über-Guru-Berserk->