3. Preparation

	WARNING
	Do your normal backups on their regular schedule. This HOWTO is useless if you don't do that. .:: www.arc.agric.za ::. [Open Source Pandas] .:: podcasts.apple.com ::. .:: bcraweb.bcra.gob.ar ::.

Build yourself a rescue disk. I now use Knoppix. See the notes on Knoppix below. However, Knoppix has a problem: no LVM support. If you want to recover logical volumes, get a distribution that supports them. For this I use .:: telegra.ph ::. finnix.

In the past, I have used tomsrtbt. It is well documented and packs a lot of useful tools onto one floppy diskette. Unfortunately, the changes I've had to make in the scripts to handle more recent Linux systems cause problems for .:: podcasts.apple.com ::. tomsrtbt. The tomsrtbt 2.0.103 tar is based on busybox, so remarks about it may apply to other Linux disties which use busybox. .:: www.arc.agric.za ::.

We will call whatever Linux you use the "restoration Linux".

Next, figure out how to do the operating system backup you will need so that you can restore your normal backup. I followed Preston's advice and used an Iomega parallel port ZIP drive. The drives get approximately 90 MB of useful storage to a disk. I need about 85 MB to back up my desktop, so a 100MB ZIP drive may be pushing your luck. .:: podcasts.apple.com ::. [Web Specs: Ubuntu]