GNU/Linux to the rescue (Again)

For a while ago I talked about how I recovered from a blue screen scenario using GNU/Linux tools. Yesterday I came across a Windows 2000 server that did not boot. When I booted up the server it froze at Preparing network connections.

I tried to boot into safe mode, and got this error:

Directory Services could not start because of the following error: There is not enough space on the disk. Error Status: 0xc000007f. Please click OK to shutdown this system and reboot into Directory Service Restore Mode, check the event logs for more detailed information.

Ok, what now? It seems like we got a drive that is out of disk space. And if I can't boot - how can I delete some files?

Luckily for me there is an effort to make a good NTFS implementation for Unix freely available. And since ntfs-3g came with a SystemRescueCd it took only a few minutes to delete some files so I could boot the server.

About GNU/Linux rescue CD's

There are lots of Linux boot disks available on the marked. I have tried some and most of them are small images made for only one purpose, like changing Windows passwords and so on. But you can also find other boot disks that are general purpose. Here you can find a small collection I know of.

Ubuntu	Small GNU/Linux CD with lots of support. Can boot and run from a CD or memory stick. Every thing you need of software is easily installed from the Internet.
SysRescueCD	Description: SystemRescueCd is a Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It contains a lot of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic ones (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use: just boot from the cdrom, and you can do everything. The kernel of the system supports most important file systems (ext2/ext3, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), and network ones (samba and nfs). From their homepage
Trinity Rescue Kit	Trinity Rescue Kit or TRK is a free live Linux distribution that aims specifically at recovery and repair operations on Windows machines, but is equally usable for Linux recovery issues. It is possible to boot TRK in three different ways: As a bootable CD which you can burn yourself from a downloadable isofile. From a USB stick/disk (optionally also a fixed disk), installable from Windows or from the bootable TRK cd. From network over PXE, which requires some modifications on your local network. TRK is a complete commandline based distribution, apart from a few tools like qtparted, links, partition image and midnight commander. From their homepage
Offline NT Password & Registry editor	This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system. You do not need to know the old password to set a new one. It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD. The bootdisk includes stuff to access NTFS and FAT/FAT32 partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together. Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts! It is also an almost fully functional registry editor! From their homepage

Tags

Linux, bootcd