UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a couple of Rescue Disks I was experimenting with and someone suggested that I use Knoppix instead. I have the newest version of it and it seems more like an Emergency O.S than anything else. The only useful tool I can find on it is Gparted. Do you have to add Emergency Applications to it?

Also could someone please explain how I mount a Rescue Disk or Knoppix to my lost O.S?
Thanks in advance!

It has been a long time since I used Knoppix last, largely because of installation issues on some PCs with exotic hardware. For a list of alternatives see here: DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.
There should be no mounting required for a live CD.

It also has testdisk which can be very useful for things like recovering deleted partitions. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Explain what happened in more detail please?

I thought that a live O.S. had to mount which ever files so it could access them using the file system of the file wanted to view . If I just boot System rescue it displays dummy files and I was informed that I had to mount what I wanted access to. I don't understand mounting as well as I should. I use Redhats (Disk_Utility) so I imagine that I must do this manually for mounting or accessing files that are not part of the running O.S?

Thanks for turning me onto Testdisk!

Try this url. See if it helps:

Code:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-knopx/index.html

What if there's something wrong with your disk -- would you really want it to try and mount it? Wouldn't you rather it boot itself into a stable state where you can do what you want, instead of making unsafe assumptions about your system?

It doesn't know what belongs where, either. Your /etc/fstab is usually what tells it so, and not having been booted off the same drive, it doesn't have your usual one. I don't understand what you mean by "dummy files". mounting is what turns a disk device into a folder full of files. Most UNIX/Linux systems don't bother mounting filesystems they don't recognize -- i.e. aren't listed in /etc/fstab. It has no idea what folder they belong in after all. My above sentence pretty much covers it. Partition editing has nothing to do with it. You never edit partitions in the normal course of accessing your data. No, to mount a partition, you mount it. It is done via the unguessably secret and hidden command name of 'mount'.

Code:

mount /dev/sda3 /path/to/folder