The good, the bad and the ugly

**kof94** · April 29, 2007

I know you guys probably hate threads like these but I'm just curious.

Whats everyone putting into there projects?

I'm mainly looking to see if there's any really good freeware boot apps out there that I'm missing out on but feel free to post the lot.

Here's mine at present:

Windows XP Pro & Home /w RVM Updates, BTS DriverPacks and WPI for my Win apps.
Windows XP & 2K Recovery Consoles (XP ver inc textmode Mass Storage Drivers)
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows 3.04 (BartPE)
Ubuntu Desktop Edition 7.04
Knoppix LiveCD 5.1.1
Slax KillBill 5.1.8.1 /w stable ntfs-3g (c/o jetman)
GParted LiveCD 0.3.4.6 (Partition Editor)
Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.0

Edit:

Removed all my DOS tools and added UBCD v4.1.0 since so many fixes have been included!

So, is there any thing else anyone can think of? I'm now considering adding the Trinity Rescue Kit, since it looks very good.

-kof94

Edited May 8, 2007 by kof94

**Jotnar** · April 30, 2007

You might want to add the new Seagate DiscWizard or Maxtor PowerMax (They're both the same program and work for both Seagate and Maxtor drives). Its some kind of crossbreed between Acronis TrueImage and Acronis MigrateEasy. The linux boot cd version will boot from ISOLinux just fine and you can install the windows version if you want (more features, Vista compatible).

You might want to have a windows 2000 recovery console option too (no password required when booting on an XP box). If you have to deal with Dell machines you could throw the Dell Diagnostics on there as well.

Cheers

Edited April 30, 2007 by Jotnar

**kof94** · April 30, 2007

Good suggestions Jotnar, I like it. The new DiskWizard apps are probably a def, just depends on the size of the kernel and ramdisk files, I'll have to check it out.

I was unaware that the 2K Recovery Console didn't require an admin password to use on xp. There's still life in the old dog yet *scrambling for my 2K disc*.

This is good stuff keep it coming.

**google44** · May 1, 2007

Dreampack PL, this tool is brilliant in my opinion. Testdisk also deserves attention. I'm surprised that you use just a few tools when there are many good freeware applications.

**kof94** · May 1, 2007

I'll have to check out Dreampack PL.

Testdisk comes as part of the GParted liveCD so I couldn't see the point in having the DOS ver as well!

I plan to have only the latest and greatest on my disc with the exception of some really useful tools e.g Smart Boot Manager.

Thanks for your suggestions though buddy, keep 'em coming.

Edited May 2, 2007 by kof94

**jetman** · May 2, 2007

I'll have to check out Dreampack PL.
Testdisk comes as part of the GParted liveCD so I couldn't see the point in having the DOS ver as well!
I plan is to have only the latest and greatest on my disc with the exception of some really useful tools e.g Smart Boot Manager.
Thanks for your suggestions though buddy.

Does GParted Live have Partimage (a clone of Ghost) ? I haven't tried it yet, but the System Rescue CD has Partimage, GParted, Testdisk, and some other stuf I forget now. Partimage has its own server, so it can clone across a network all by itself....

**kof94** · May 2, 2007

I'll have to check out Dreampack PL.
Testdisk comes as part of the GParted liveCD so I couldn't see the point in having the DOS ver as well!
I plan is to have only the latest and greatest on my disc with the exception of some really useful tools e.g Smart Boot Manager.
Thanks for your suggestions though buddy.
Does GParted Live have Partimage (a clone of Ghost) ? I haven't tried it yet, but the System Rescue CD has Partimage, GParted, Testdisk, and some other stuf I forget now. Partimage has its own server, so it can clone across a network all by itself....

Yes, it's on the GParted LiveCD 0.3.4.6 but I don't know if it was in previous versions though. I've had no call to use Partimage before so I wouldn't have noticed!

The GParted LiveCD has to be one of my favorite utilities. Who needs Partition Magic when you've got this.

Another triumph for Linux (there's never a flag flying emoticon when you need one).

So, back to the question at hand. Whats your setup consist of, c'mon don't be shy

Edited May 2, 2007 by kof94

**eriqjaffe** · June 14, 2007

I've got the following in my AIO disc:

OS Install

Windows XP SP2
Windows 2000 SP4
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000 Server SP4
Windows 2003 Server SP1

Rescue / Utility CDs

UBCD4WIN (XP-Based)
UBCD4WIN (2003-Based)
RescueMe CD
Knoppix 5.0.1 Live CD

DOS-Based Network Boot Disks

ModBoot (Novell Boot Disk)
ModBoot (NT Boot Disk)
Custom-built "Magic Floppy"

Miscellaneous Boot Disks

Ghost 2003 (No Network Support)
Drive Image Pro 6 (No Network Support)
Partition Magic 8
Ghost 4 Linux (G4l)
Volume Manager 2
CMRR HDDErase"
Active@ KillDisk
Darik's Boot and Nuke
Datapol NTFS4DOS Boot Disk"
AIDA PC Information Tool
NSSI PC Information Tool
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor
TestDisk 6.4
Norton SystemWorks Emergency Disk (FAT32 ONLY!)
Windows 98/ME Registry Editor
Windows 98 Boot Floppy
MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Floppy

Manufacturer-Supplied Drive Diagnostics

Dell 90-90 HDD IDE Diagnostics Utility v1.31b
Fujitsu FJDT v6.30
Hitachi Drive Fitness Test v4.08 (Works With All Manufacturers)
Hitachi Diskcheck (Legacy)
Maxtor PowerMax v4.22 (Works With All Manufacturers)
Samsung Utilities
Seagate DiskWizard v10.50
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools v11.0
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics v5.04f

...and a dozen or so miscellaneous Dell diagnostic disks.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get GParted in there? I have it booting, but it fails after the keyboard mapping with a "determining root device" error...

**kof94** · June 15, 2007

That's quite a collection!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get GParted in there? I have it booting, but it fails after the keyboard mapping with a "determining root device" error...

I'm not all that knowledgeable when it comes to kernel errors, however, if I look at yours logically I would say that "determining root device" means that the kernel couldn't find the gparted.dat file (compressed filesystem file) to cache.

I have a few questions:

Is gparted.dat at the root of your disc?

What version of the GParted LiveCD are you using?

How have you created your disc i.e. what program with which switches?

Are you trying to boot GParted on a laptop? (seams stupid but I've never had any problems with desktops, even older ones)

The current ver I'm using is 0.3.4-6. (I know 0.3.4-7 is out but that was a week after my current build ) and I can't say I've really had any problems with it.

**playsafe** · June 15, 2007

Hello everyone,

Great collection everyone specially eriqjaffe.

I m new to this multiboot CD/DVD work. But i have successfully included OSes mulitple unattended for different requirements and attended for installation (No upgrade or recovery).

I want to ask how can I include GHOST and GParted on that DVD and some Hard Disk utilities bootable as well.

If there is any post already on this very subject i am looking to read through it. But currently the search function at MSFN.org does not give results as I require.

Thanks for any help that is coming

**eriqjaffe** · June 15, 2007

Is gparted.dat at the root of your disc?
What version of the GParted LiveCD are you using?
How have you created your disc i.e. what program with which switches?
Are you trying to boot GParted on a laptop? (seams stupid but I've never had any problems with desktops, even older ones)
The current ver I'm using is 0.3.4-6. (I know 0.3.4-7 is out but that was a week after my current build ) and I can't say I've really had any problems with it.

Basically, I just extracted the contents of the ISO into a folder at the root of my disc (c:\aio-dvd\gprt)

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd\gprt

06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  .
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  ..
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  boot
05/18/2007  02:24 AM		43,663,360 gparted.dat
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  syslinux
			   1 File(s)	 43,663,360 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd\gprt\boot

06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  .
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  ..
05/18/2007  02:24 AM			 2,048 boot.cat
05/02/2007  03:31 AM		 3,044,400 gparted
05/18/2007  01:40 AM		 3,342,147 gparted.igz
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  grub
05/18/2007  01:40 AM			 6,222 help.msg
03/16/2005  11:09 PM			91,940 memtest86
			   5 File(s)	  6,486,757 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd\gprt\boot\grub

06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  .
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  ..
05/18/2007  01:31 AM			 4,134 clonezilla.lst
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 5,910 Csplash.xpm.gz
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 7,456 e2fs_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 7,296 fat_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 6,592 ffs_stage1_5
05/18/2007  01:29 AM				 0 grub.conf
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 5,216 Gsplash.xpm.gz
03/17/2005  02:08 PM			 1,420 help.msg
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 6,592 iso9660_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 8,064 jfs_stage1_5
05/18/2007  01:29 AM			 3,642 menu.lst
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 6,720 minix_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 9,056 reiserfs_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			   512 stage1
04/03/2007  01:06 PM		   102,268 stage2
04/03/2007  01:06 PM		   102,268 stage2_eltorito
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 6,944 ufs2_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 6,144 vstafs_stage1_5
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			 8,776 xfs_stage1_5
			  19 File(s)		299,010 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd\gprt\syslinux

06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  .
06/14/2007  11:19 AM	<DIR>		  ..
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			   149 boot.msg
04/12/2007  02:46 PM			   496 options.msg
04/03/2007  01:06 PM			79,457 splash.lss
04/12/2007  02:44 PM			 1,540 syslinux.cfg
			   4 File(s)		 81,642 bytes

I have modified the cdshell.ini entry like this:

if $lastKey == key[h]; then isolinux /gprt/boot/gparted initrd=/gprt/boot/gparted.igz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc looptype=squashfs loop=/gprt/gparted.dat splash=silent nosound cdroot=/dev/sd

I'm pretty sure the problem is the "cdroot=/dev/sd", but I'm not really sure how to go about fixing that - that same syntax works just fine for Ghost4Linux.

I'm using the current (0.3.4.7) release - I'll give 0.3.4.6 a go and see if it behaves any differently.

So far, I'm just testing it in Virtual PC - the gparted ISO seems to work just fine on its own, so it has to be a configuration problem, I would think.

Playsafe: I based what I have off of this tutorial - as far as Ghost goes, I just made a Ghost boot floppy with the tool that ships with Ghost and converted it to an IMG file using RawWrite - I call it using memdisk. Gparted...well...I'm still working on that.

Edited June 15, 2007 by eriqjaffe

**playsafe** · June 16, 2007

Playsafe: I based what I have off of this tutorial - as far as Ghost goes, I just made a Ghost boot floppy with the tool that ships with Ghost and converted it to an IMG file using RawWrite - I call it using memdisk. Gparted...well...I'm still working on that.

Thanks for ur quick reply, I have created DVD from this tutorial and the unattended one. But I dont know how I missed the "Support Tools" Page, where it is mentioned to add other tools as well.

I will try it and come back with questions if i face some confusion or problem.

**kof94** · June 17, 2007

@eriqjaffe

There's only two things I can think of:

1. Your right about appending commands to cdroot.

2. The isolinux version that's integrated in to CDShell is way out of date and the author has no intention of updating CDShell anymore either. My suggestion would be to abandon it for isolinux/sylinux. Thats what I did!

**eriqjaffe** · June 18, 2007

2. The isolinux version that's integrated in to CDShell is way out of date and the author has no intention of updating CDShell anymore either. My suggestion would be to abandon it for isolinux/sylinux. Thats what I did!

So, I started putting together a multi-boot disc using isolinux, but I get the same error message.

Here's what I have for a directory structure:

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd2

06/18/2007  04:01 PM	<DIR>		  .
06/18/2007  04:01 PM	<DIR>		  ..
06/18/2007  04:01 PM	<DIR>		  boot
06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  gparted
			   0 File(s)			  0 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd2\boot

06/18/2007  04:01 PM	<DIR>		  .
06/18/2007  04:01 PM	<DIR>		  ..
06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  gparted
06/18/2007  04:26 PM	<DIR>		  isolinux
			   0 File(s)			  0 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd2\boot\gparted

06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  .
06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  ..
05/02/2007  03:31 AM		 3,044,400 gparted
05/18/2007  01:40 AM		 3,342,147 gparted.igz
			   2 File(s)	  6,386,547 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd2\boot\isolinux

06/18/2007  04:26 PM	<DIR>		  .
06/18/2007  04:26 PM	<DIR>		  ..
06/10/2007  03:52 PM			 3,592 chain.c32
06/18/2007  04:27 PM			11,603 isolinux.bin
06/18/2007  04:24 PM			 1,119 isolinux.cfg
06/10/2007  03:51 PM			20,056 memdisk
06/18/2007  04:26 PM		   112,469 splash.png
06/10/2007  03:52 PM		   120,676 vesamenu.c32
			   6 File(s)		269,515 bytes

 Directory of C:\aio-dvd2\gparted

06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  .
06/18/2007  04:03 PM	<DIR>		  ..
05/18/2007  02:24 AM		43,663,360 gparted.dat
			   1 File(s)	 43,663,360 bytes

And here's what's in my isolinux.cfg at the moment:

DEFAULT /boot/isolinux/vesamenu.c32
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 300
TOTALTIMEOUT 450
####
MENU BACKGROUND /boot/isolinux/splash.png
MENU TITLE Super-Disc  **  09Mar07 Edition
####
####  The 1st byte of the fgnd color is brightness.
####									blue
MENU COLOR title		1;36;44	#ff0000ff   #00000000   std
####									blue
MENU COLOR unsel		37;44	  #ff0000ff   #00000000   std
####								   white
MENU COLOR sel		  7;37;40	#c0ffffff   #ff000000   std
####									 red
MENU COLOR hotkey	   1;37;44	#ffff0000   #00000000   std
####								   green
MENU COLOR hotsel	   1;7;37;40  #ff00ff00   #ff000000   all
####
LABEL gparted
MENU label ^1  gParted
MENU DEFAULT
KERNEL /boot/gparted/gparted
APPEND initrd=/boot/gparted/gparted.igz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc vga=788 looptype=squashfs loop=/gparted/gparted.dat splash=silent nosound cdroot=/dev/sda

LABEL memtest86
MENU LABEL ^Memtest86 (RAM Diagnostic)
KERNEL /boot/isolinux/memtest86

But I get the same behavior:

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

**kof94** · June 18, 2007

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Personally, I would try leaving gparted.dat at the root of the disc and remove any appended locations from cdroot i.e. "cdroot=/dev/sda".

I hate to point out the obvious but I think your over complicating things by hard coding this command. Besides gparted.dat is only one extra file at the root of your disc!

Edit: Where it you get /dev/sda from anyway? You don't seam to have any SCSI/SATA/USB devices attached!

Edited June 18, 2007 by kof94

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