How do I create a rescue/boot disk in SUSE Linux 11?

5 Comments

1. mr. c says:

   22. March 2010 at 14:52

   as opposed to M@kes $h!t’s LostDOS, where the user loses pretty much all his / her settings when the @#$%€ registry goes south, which seems to be build in by design, you can easily protect "your data" by simply backing up your HOME DIRECTORY; no cr@p with "documents and settings" for All Users, Defaults, Locals, others, roaming and all that non-sense, even the idiots in Redmont probably can’t sort out.
   respect if they do.

   so, even if you have to use the install media the chainsaw way, that is, reinstalling the whole thing, as long as you have a copy of HOME DIRECTORY you can get back to work in a matter of an hour after disaster.
   burning it to a DVD-/+RW every few days is definitely a smart thing to do.

   the install media isn’t much help as rescue media, simply because Linux still runs under the assumption that the user knows what he is doing, so, if your system doesn’t start up anymore, the install media or the safe boot option in the (GRUB) boot menu most likely will work just as well, will leave you with a command prompt, assuming that you’ll know what to do to get things back to work.

   if your graphical interface (KDE or Gnome) is the problem, a safe bet is to restore a copy of
   /etc/X11/xorg.conf (from /etc/X11/xorg.safe for example).
   most of the time, this will do the trick.

   rescue in openSUSE?
   1) copy your HOME DIRECTORY to a DVD regularly

   2) copy the /boot DIRECTORY to the DVD, as well
   if you have two DVD drives and oS doesn’t startup anymore, you can boot from the install media (in rescue mode) and copy /boot back from the backup DVD; if you only have 1 DVD drv., put the back copy on a 2nd partition or an USB media

   3) if openSUSE starts up, but the GUI doesn’t anymore, restore xorg.conf

   4) if none of this helps you can still save the day (before reinstalling oS) by starting up the install media in rescue mode and copying your HOME DIRECTORY to an USB media or another partition.

   your mileage may wary but learning by doing gets you there

2. Colinc says:

   22. March 2010 at 14:52

   You can use your installation cd or dvd to boot the machine, mount the drives and carry out any repairs required.

3. phoenix says:

   22. March 2010 at 14:52

   All versions of opensuse allow u to repair system with the install dvd or cd, no need to create anything, suse is one of the earliest distro to support all this stuff, they even have GUI recovery tools on run level 1.