On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Matthew Twomey wrote: > 1. Boot up from some other media that has it's own root partition and get > to a shell. I'm not sure what specifically Debian has for this, but > basically any Linux boot disk set will do.
I think Debian's rescue disk will do this. If not, tomsrtbt will certainly will, but you'll need access to another box to write the disks since you'll need root to write to the floppy raw... http://www.toms.net/rb/ That's my favorite maintenance disk right there, though my favorite floppy-sized distro that I use to use the machine on my desk at work[1] is Floppix, which is Debian based. http://floppix.ccai.com/index.html Doesn't have hard disk support at all, though, so it's entirely useless for what you're trying to do. [1] I'm a private guard at a research hospital on the graveyard shift watching a lobby, so the deal was they put a machine on Campus Police's subnet on my desk, but didn't give me a login. They run Win2000 with Novell Netware, so it's not like I can just cancel and get online. The deal was if I could get it to boot and get network access without compromising data on the hard drive or patient information on the network, I could use the machine. Fortunately, Debian based Floppix (http://floppix.ccai.com/index.html) works with the most widely used network cards in the hospital and has no hard disk support whatsoever. So using SSH to my home Debian box is what gets me though the 10PM-5AM stretch where nothing is going on and I've got everything locked up and can see everything I need to keep track of from my desk... Also, for the younger geeks here: Don't work tech support, especially outsourced. You have no job security, you're forced to deal with the worst Windows users (http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/ or http://www.techcomedy.com/ for prime examples), it's high stress, the pay is terrible, and everybody comes to work sick or not and gives it to you. The job stress of brain surgery with the pay rate of a video clerk. Because of my two years doing tech support, I'm going gray at the age of 20. Find some other tech job, like a go-fer for a sysadmin or law enforcement...you'll be better off for it. -- Baloo
