Knoppix question

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leo Mauler
> 
> --- Brian Kelsay <Brian.Kelsay at kcc.usda.gov> wrote:
> 
> > Define "real rescue disk".  If your drive is fubared
> > and swap part. is damaged, then it won't mount it. 
> 
> Does it really have that level of detection?  I'd
> think it doesn't, and that undetected physical damage
> is going to cause problems when it tries to mount the
> swap partition in the physically damaged section of
> the hard drive.
> 
Yes, this is the most likely outcome. Knoppix detects a swap
partition, tries to mount it and either fails or locks up.
If it merely fails and goes on, life is good and Knoppix can be
used to fix the machine, or attempt to. If it locks up then 
one would have to reboot and do the "noswap" option. Whereas a
liveCD made specifically for this type of task would only try
to launch a bare minimum of software. If all you want to do is
check the hdd, then Knoppix is really a Rube-Goldberg machine.
Sure it has all the tools and bells and whistles, but all you
really need is a command line and a scandisk tool (and possibly
cfdisk and mkfs). And if a person is not knowledgeable enough
to do some disk analysis from the command line, then that person has
absolutely no business trying to fix a broken system.