Why you want a Linux Live CD

For the most part, on this blog, I try to convince readers to do something defensive on their
computers - like a parent nagging a child to eat their vegetables. Only once have I put my foot
down, so to speak, saying unequivocally last year that all Windows XP users should employ
DropMyRights. Now, another emphatic endorsement - all Windows users should have a Linux
Live CD, and, know how to use it.

If you're not familiar with the term "Live" applied to a CD, that's because it's not something that
exists in the Windows world. Linux can do something Windows can't, run (not just install) from
a CD. You can run Linux off a Live CD even on a computer that doesn't have an internal hard
disk.

There isn't a single Linux Live CD any more than there is a single Linux. Live CDs were initially
a great way to kick the tires on various Linux distributions. That still holds, but I suggest them
for other reasons.

Have you ever panicked when Windows won't boot and you really need the files on the
computer? You can boot from a Linux Live CD and easily copy files to an external hard disk, a
USB flash drive or another computer on a Local Area Network. With a little work you should
also be able to burn a CD or DVD. In the old days Linux struggled with the NTFS file system,
but those days are long gone. Depending on the Linux distribution you chose, the hard disk may
default to "read-only" mode, but this isn't a problem if all you want to do is copy files off the
machine.

Speaking of the old days, Linux distributions used to have install CDs and Live CDs. Now, many
CDs do both. Ubuntu, for example, introduced the ability to install onto the hard disk from the
Live CD in version 6.06.

When Windows won't startup, the first debugging issue is always whether it's a hardware or
software problem. Here too, a Live CD can help. If Linux boots and runs fine, and can see and
view all the files on the hard disk, then you most likely have a software problem. If a Linux Live
CD won't boot, there's a chance that it stumbled on some hardware it can't deal with. Therefore,
it's best to boot with your chosen Live CD as you as you get it. If a previously tested Live CD no
longer boots, you've probably got a hardware problem. No rocket science here.

If Windows is corrupted or infected with malware, a Linux Live CD can give it a new lease on
life. Although running from a CD is much slower than running from an internal hard disk, the
Live CD can restore Internet access. This is all but guaranteed for an Ethernet-based broadband
connection and may even work for a WiFi connection.

The previously mentioned read-only mode for the hard disk can prove useful too. To some
children, the web browser is the computer. You can set them loose on Firefox running off a Live

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CD and be 100% sure they won't screw up the installed copy of Windows in any way, shape or
form.

A Live CD can also be used to fix a broken copy of Windows. Yes, Windows has a Recovery
Console, but a Live CD has its pluses. For one, the Recovery Console is only an option if you
have a Windows CD. Also, at least with XP, you have to provide an Administrator password to
use the Recovery Console, not so with a Live CD. And, if the problem with Windows has to do
with the part of the registry that stores passwords, you'll never be able to get into the Recovery
Console. Plus, it's command line based whereas Live CDs offer a GUI. Finally, a Live CD offers
many more options for copying files off the computer than does the Recovery Console.

Windows XP users may also appreciate that Linux Live CDs can be used to re-partition the hard
disk, saving the cost of commercial products such as Partition Magic. I have to stress however,
that any partitioning operation is dangerous, no matter what software is employed, and you
should always backup everything you can think to backup before changing partitions.

As for cost, Linux Live CDs are free. You can download the Live CD for any number of Linux
distributions as a single ISO file. Just burn it to a CD and you're done. Ubuntu goes ever further.
If you don't have a broadband connection or can't burn your own CDs, Canonical will send you a
free CD in the mail. For other ways to get it see here and here (look for the 8.04 LTS Desktop
edition).

As with DropMyRights there is no down side to having a Linux Live CD at the ready.

Extras

The Live Ubuntu CD offers a very handy extra, a ram diagnostic program. Below you see the
options presented when booting from the CD. The first option "Try Ubuntu without any change
to your computer" runs Ubuntu from the CD. The fourth option "Test memory" invokes the
Memtest86+ ram diagnostic.

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When Windows is acting up, a ram diagnostic is always a good thing to try. Memtest86+ will run
forever if you let it. I'd run it for about 8 hours. Look at the "Pass" and the "Errors" column.
Eight hours should be enough time, on most computers, for quite a few passes through the ram.
Needless to say, we want zero errors. They'll be hard to miss, Memtest86+ displays details about
any errors in bright red.

Bought a new computer? A few hours worth of ram testing is highly recommended.

In researching this, I also tried the Linux Mint Live CD which seems like it provides access to
Memtest86+. It didn't. In my virtual machine, the Live CD ISO booted straight to the Linux
desktop. Likewise, the "hybrid" Live CD of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring One also didn't offer a
boot time menu, but instead booted to the desktop after asking some questions about my
preferred language and country.

OpenSUSE version 11 has a boot menu that, like Ubuntu, offers a "Memory Test" (see below). It
too invokes Memtest86+, in fact, it runs version 2.01 which is newer than the version included
with Ubuntu 8.04.

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Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

The Linux user interface isn't all that different from Windows. Still, if you're allergic to Linux, or
married to Microsoft, then check out the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. It's the closest thing
I've found to a Linux Live CD, in fact the price is the same: free.

The downside however, is that it requires a Windows XP or Server 2003 CD and support for
Vista is far from complete. In a nutshell, its an XP thing. Also, there are a number of steps to
creating the CD, it's more involved than simply burning an ISO file.

But, if you spend time with UBCD for Windows you can run assorted anti-malware programs
from the CD you create to (hopefully) disinfect a copy of Windows. Even without anti-malware,
it comes with a huge list of useful reporting and diagnostic programs. I was introduced to my
favorite disk image backup program, Drive Image XML from Runtime Software by UBCD for
Windows. If nothing else, it too, can be used to copy files off a computer when Windows won't
boot. Highly recommended

Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer

If you’ve ever asked for help with your Windows computer that won’t boot anymore, you’ve
probably been told to “Backup all your data and then reinstall”… but if you can’t boot, how can
you get to your data? That’s the question we’ll be answering today.

One of the easiest methods to access your data is to simply boot off an Ubuntu Live CD… and
it’s completely free (except for the cost of a blank cd).

Burn an Ubuntu Live CD

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If you have another computer, you can download and burn the Ubuntu Live CD using a very
simple application called ImgBurn. Otherwise, you can bug one of your friends to help you burn
a copy.

Just open up ImgBurn, and click the icon to “Write image file to disc”

Then click on the icon next to “Source”, pick the downloaded ISO file, stick a recordable CD
into the drive, and click burn.

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Now that you have the boot cd (which you should keep in a safe place, as it’s very useful), just
stick it in the drive of the computer and boot from it. You should see an option to “Try Ubuntu
without any change to your computer”.

Once the system has started up, the first thing you want to do is choose Places \ Computer from
the menu.

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This should show you all the drives available in the system, including your Windows drive. In
my case, that is the 52.4 GB volume.

You can try and double-click on the drive to open it… and if it immediately works then lucky
you! Most of the time it’s going to give you an error saying “Unable to mount the volume”,
because Windows didn’t shut it down cleanly.

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Click the Details link so that you can see the full message, and leave this window open. You’ll
see a “Choice 2″ in the message, which includes the commands to force Ubuntu to use that drive
even though there’s something wrong.

What you’ll want to do is open a new Terminal from Applications \ Accessories \ Terminal on
the top menu. Once you’ve done that, then you’ll want to type in a bunch of commands, which
I’ll walk you through.

First, we’ll want to switch to “administrator” mode, which in Linux terms is known as “root”.
The simplest way to do it is with this command:

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sudo /bin/bash

Now we’ll need to create a directory that we’ll mount the drive on. The full explanation of
mounting drives is a little complex, so just run this command:

mkdir /media/disk

Now comes the tricky part. You’ll need to type out a command very similar to this one, but
you’ll need to replace /dev/sda1 with what you see in that message box we showed you above.
This command tells Ubuntu to use the ntfs-3g driver, and force mount even if there is a problem.

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/disk -o force

If your drive is FAT32 instead of NTFS, then you can use the following command instead:

mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sda1 /media/disk

If you are having problems figuring out whether you have NTFS or FAT32, and you can’t figure
out which /dev/whatever to use, then type in the following command at your prompt (make sure
you already ran the command to run things as root)

fdisk -l

In the output you should see a lot more information about the available drives… you can see in
this example that the filesystem type is NTFS and the device name is /dev/sda1.

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At this point, you should be able to access your hard drive through the icon in Computer.

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Note: If you have more than one drive in the computer, or more than one partition, they should
show up separately in Computer. You should perform the same steps as above to open those
drives up as well.

Backing Up to External USB

The absolute simplest thing to do at this point is to plug in an external USB drive, which should
place an icon on the Ubuntu desktop, and most likely immediately pop up a nautilus window
showing the contents of the drive.

Note: I plugged in a USB Flash drive for illustration… it would be better to plug in a full
external USB drive so you’ll have more space for backups.

What Should I Backup?

If you aren’t extremely technical, you might be wondering what on earth you should be backing
up… and that’s a very good question.

1) Best Method

If you have loads of empty space on your external drive or network share, you should simply
backup the entire contents of the drive, and sort through it later. It’ll take a little longer, but at
least that way you can be sure everything has been backed up.

2) Still Good

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You should try and backup your entire user folder… on XP you’ll go to “Documents and
Settings”, and on Vista you’ll go to “Users”, and you should see your username in the list:

You can simply copy this entire folder to your backup drive, which should contain your music,
documents, bookmarks, and most of your important files.

Important Note: This will not backup your application files, and you should look around your
drive and see if you’ve saved anything important somewhere else. This is especially true if you
have more than one drive. Again, your best bet is to simply backup everything.

Backing Up to Network Share

If you would rather backup your drive to a network share on another computer, you can use the
Places \ Connect to Server item on the menu.

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Change the Service type menu to “Windows share”…

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And then enter in the details for your network drive, with these being the required fields:

 Server: Computer Name

 Share: Shared Folder Name
 User Name: your username

Using a liveCD as your Linux Desktop

Most of the "Desktop" Linux liveCD distributions (distros) are meant to to be used for
trying out or demoing Linux before installing them to your hard drive. Popular distros like
Ubuntu, Mepis, and PCLinuxOS are good examples and in my mind are some of the
best offerings. I've been there and done that. These are great distros, and there are
many more! If you're looking for a Linux distribution to install on your hard drive, these
are all great distros, and you won't be disappointed. Test drive the liveCD, install to your
hard disk, and enjoy.

However, many liveCD distros can be used as a day to day desktop without ever
installing them to your hard drive. Huh? Wait a minute, everyone installs the OS to a

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hard disk! Well yes, that's the way it has always been done, but I am not sure why we
should continue in that direction... "ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than
that now" (Robert Allen Zimmerman).

Why would anyone want to use a Linux liveCD as a basic day to day desktop? Here are
some thoughts:

 Easy to load and update -- Easy, because your data (including configurations)
are separate from the operating system (OS). The idea of separating data from
the OS has always appealed to me. It seems like a very logical and smart thing
to do. Even when I partition a system for a hard drive Linux install, I create a
separate partition for /home. Doesn't everybody?

 It's portable -- You can take it with you and securely boot up from just about any
PC. Also, Linux liveCDs can often be installed and booted from a USB drive
(thanks to some excellent standards around booting from USB drives). This really
beats lugging a laptop around (especially when airport security is involved). The
downside is that your Live-CD might not boot on all hardware. The distro might
not detect the hardware correctly or the hardware might not be able to boot from
CD or USB.

 Most run on older PC hardware -- Not only do they run, they usually run quite
fast! (Did you ever notice that you usually cannot upgrade old PCs from Windows
95 to Windows XP?) Some of the older PCs don't support booting from CD or
USB. In such cases, you can usually copy the CD to the hard drive and create a
boot floppy to load the image from the hard drive.

 Security -- It's hard for someone to violate your OS when it resides on a read
only CD. And, you can always reboot to a pristine state. This is kind of like going
to communion and being forgiven for all past sins. Linux by design is a very
secure OS. This just improves on it. Amen.

 It's just plain fun! -- You can remix if you like. You can do your own. This is one
of the great things about open source. I am waiting for the next version of
Windows XP liveCD. Don't get me wrong here, Microsoft does allow generating
DOS 3.1 boot disks so you can network stage new XP clients. But that is more of
an enterprise moment...

If you like the idea of using a Linux liveCD on a daily basis, there are several features
that need to be present to make this an enjoyable experience:

1. Saving and restoring configuration data from one session to the next.
Specifically, changes to /etc, /usr, /root, and...

2. Saving and restoring your home directory. This includes the configuration files for
applications like your browser or word processor.

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 3. Adding additional persistent software packages without remixing/re-mastering the
CD. Using tools like apt-get or rpm do not meet this need. I cannot download and
install applications each time I boot up.

4. After boot, freeing up the CDROM for other use (like ripping a CD or just playing
CD/DVD). This can be accomplished by loading the entire OS into RAM or by
copying the CD image to your hard drive and booting and running from there.
Loading your OS into RAM creates a very responsive PC. LiveCD distros without
this option do not get much playing time in my space.

Four four-star liveCD Linux distros

Considering the above, if I were to award a star for each feature, how many four-star
Linux distros would there be? Of the more popular distributions (per Distrowatch hit
count), I would like to highlight four four-stars liveCDs -- Puppy Linux, Kanotix, Damn
Small Linux (DSL), and SLAX.

I really like and use all four. They are all capable of saving and restoring system
configuration data and home directories. They also each have an easy mechanism to
add persistent software packages and they all can be loaded entirely into RAM. One
caveat: Kanotix requires a gigabyte or so of memory to load into RAM; however,
memory is cheap, and after you get Kanotix loaded into memory, it screams!

 Puppy Linux -- developed by Barry Kauler, this small 60MB distro is loaded with
applications and is one of the easiest distributions to work with after initial setup.
When you boot it up for the first time, it looks for a place to put it's default 250MB
file and just does it. It saves everything in this file -- configurations, home
directory, and added software packages. Next time you boot up, everything just
happens. Software packages are downloaded and installed with PupGet and
DotPup tools. Really easy with a good selection of packages to choose from. For
the size of this distro, it is really surprising how much you get. Also, it loads and
executes in RAM by default. That's a default I can live with!

Puppy has the option of Booting from writable CD or DVD and saving everything
back to the CD/DVD. No hard drive or USB drive is needed to save your data or
added packages. I have not tried this feature, but it sounds very interesting. This
method seems to create an audit trail of everything you do. When the CD/DVD
fills up, it copies your current state to new media and continues.

One security concern that I have with Puppy is that you boot up as user root. I
would prefer booting up as user doggie or fido and using sudo for commands
needing root privilege. Ubuntu has implemented their distros in this manner.

 Kanotix -- developed by Joerg "Kano" Sdhirottke, this distro is somewhat larger

(~700MB) than the other distros discussed. It is full featured based on Knoppix
and Debian-Sid. It contains many of the latest software applications and is
optimized for the i586 architecture. It has the backup/restore and persistent home

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 directory features found in Knoppix.

In addition, Kanotix comes with a software management tool called Klik that allow
for easy persistent installation of additional software applications. The Klik agent
is installed and ready to use. Each software package from the Klik website
consists of one compressed image file (.cmg). After you download this file (of
course you put this in your persistent home directory), all you have to do is click
on it to load and execute. Simple. If you want to delete the software package, you
delete the one file and you are done. The solution is quite flexible and most of the
downloaded applications actually work.

 Damn Small Linux (DSL) -- a small (~50MB) distro developed by John Andrews
and Robert Shingledecker. DSL's backup/restore methods are unique in that the
user can specify the files or directories to backup and restore. Once done,
backup and restore are done automatically by default. A cheat code is provided
to allow you to override this feature. In effect, this cheat code allows you to be
pure again. Amen. It's optional to load the entire image into RAM. Needless to
say, it's an option that I always select.

The DSL philosophy is to start small and add any additional software that you
need. To do this there are "extensions" or modules that can be loaded at boot
time or when needed. All you have to do is download these extensions to your
persistent area and they are there for you use at every boot. Very easy! Actually,
you can load extensions at boot with cheat codes or manually after boot.

DSL has a very small footprint that can then grow to fill your needs... a great
Linux distro.

 SLAX -- this distro is based on Slackware, one of the oldest linux distributions.
Developed by Thomas Matejicek, it provides scripts (Linux Live Scripts) for
others to create their own liveCDs. And, there have been many takers -- STUX,
Goblinix, Buffalo and Mutagenix to name a few. Note that many of these hacks
provide four-star features, as outlined above. Note: if you like gnome, Mutagenix
is a worthy distro.

SLAX uses "modules" to load system components and applications. This is all
done at boot time. So, it is very easy to add additional persistent applications.
This same module methodology is used to backup and restore user data and
configurations. Very clever.

The bottom line

There are many Linux liveCD distros that are not really meant for installation to a hard
disk. They can be booted from CD or USB and used as your everyday desktop. They
are easy to update, are portable, work on older hardware, are very secure and are great
fun.

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Once you click the Connect button, you’ll be prompted to enter in your password. Typically you
can leave Domain set to the default, but if you have a custom workgroup name you should enter
that instead. I also chose the “Remember password until you logout” button just so I won’t have
to enter the password again.

Once you click the Connect button you should have an icon on the desktop for your network
share.

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Now you can open up the network share, and if everything is setup correctly on the shared folder
side of things, you can copy all of your files across the network using the instructions above on
which files to choose.

At this point you should have a backup of your data. If you backed up to an external hard drive,
you might want to consider also copying those files to another computer just in case, and if you
copied across the network you could consider backing that up elsewhere as well.

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