Posted on by nick

Tip of the Trade: Recovery Is Possible

ServerWatch brings us an introduction to the recovery LiveCD/DVD/USB/CF/PXE/* which goes by Recovery Is Possible or RIPLinuX.

Recovery is Possible (RIP) sounds like a 12-step program, or some kind of self-help regime. RIP is (yet another) specialized Linux rescue distribution. RIP comes in a number of bootable images: CD/DVD, USB key, Compact Flash, PXE netboot, and even a tiny FreeBSD-based image. You can get a version with X windows, or one without.

4 Replies to “Tip of the Trade: Recovery Is Possible”

  1. RIP is the best rescue system. It boots on more hardware, and supports more filesystems than any other rescue system. It’s based on Slackware. It is, I beleive, the oldest rescue system still maintained, and Kent Robotti does a smashing job with it.

  2. Unfortunately, RIPLinux appears to be RIP. For several months, I have tried searching for more contact information and e-mailing anything I could to no avail. Looking on the tux.org site, it appears that they have also had trouble contacting him again.

    RIPLinux is an excellent live-cd distro, loading entirely into RAM (faster, load another disc for more) and has an excellent collection of tools, collected from a version of Slackware then UPX compressed to the CPIO-GZip archive (for InitRamFS).

    Currently, I am beginning work on a derivative work, currently called RIPALinux (Recover Is Possible Again) so as to distinguish it. My first goals are making a ~70MB ISO that boots both the X and non-X variants by reusing the InitRAMFS archives and making a deeper menu system that also is simpler to start in order to reduce hardware locks I have encountered with Syslinux’s menu.c32 (these may be version specific). I’m considering either talking with tux.org or posting in sf.net. I will post here if I publish anything.

  3. To correct a previous response, RIPLinux is not dead (last version posted yesterday) and I should have made a post about this a long time ago.

    I also worked with H. Peter Anvin to narrow down the SYSLINUX issue (SYSLINUX and variants, v3.53-v3.61, maybe older with any version in that time of menu.c32/vesamenu.c32. Resovled with SYSLINUX 3.62, even using old menu.c32 versions).

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