Hi all,

Well I recently undertook to write a document describing how to create
a bootable rescue CD for a linux-based server.  I was motivated to create
the rescue CD by a Dell PowerEdge 4400 server we received, which came with
the original Red Hat CD's and the OS & Dell RAID drivers on the hard drives.

I wasn't happy with the partitioning scheme Dell used, so I thought I would
re-partition the RAID "disk" and restore the OS from a tape backup I had
made.

I found that the Red Hat 6.2 boot CD would boot the system and find the
tape drive (connected to an AIC7xxx SCSI card) but would not load the
device driver for the PERCRAID RAID controller.  Similarly, I tried to
make my own boot diskettes to use with the Red Hat CD but they would not
load the tape driver st.o .  Since I do not know how to force a module
(device driver) to load into a kernel version it doesn't like, I was
totally unable to boot from diskettes or CD, read from the tape drive,
and write to the hard drives behind the RAID controller.

I decided to make my own bootable rescue CD, which would contain all of
the device drivers I needed for that systems' hardware, the current Linux
kernel, and a full system environment that one might need for the restore.

I documented the process here: http://www.us.pason.com/rescue.html .
I also put a copy of it on my CLUE web page http://www.ockers.net/clue/ .

That document represents a learning process that used about 10 CD-Rs
to finally get it right.  :)  I also made a rescue CD for our IBM
NetFinity servers, which use the ips RAID device driver.  Since the IPS
device driver comes with the kernel this was probably not as necessary
but it's nice for peace of mind.

None of this would have been necessary if you could load a kernel module
from a kernel with version, say, 2.2.12-20-BOOT into a kernel with version
2.2.12-20-RUNNING or something like that.  Even though they are the exact
same kernel version the module from one will simply not load into the other
kernel, at least I can't figure out how to do it.

-- 
Jim Ockers - Pason USA (ockers@pason.com)          Ask me about Linux!
Contact info:  http://www.us.pason.com/contact.html

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