USB Rescue/Emergency Stick (Parachute on a stick)
Some of you will already know about this little project that I’ve been working on. Basically I’m producing a USB memory stick with all the things which I think it needs. Quoting the wiki page:
http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick
If you’re in a situation where you only have one memory stick, what’d you want on it? If baggage handling lose all your bags and you just have the encrypted hard drive in your jacket pocket and the memory stick round your neck, what do you want on the stick?
You’re stranded on an island (or somewhere with a really poor internet connection) and you want to acquisition a computer for your own uses, what do you want on your stick? Someone else on the island wants you to fix their computer, what do you want on the stick?
In general, what do you want on a memory stick when you don’t trust or want to use your internet connection? This is what the Chute Stick project is meant to provide.
Although there are many different situations where this may be of use and some of them wont require most of the software provided this is meant to be an ‘in any event evacuation plan’. I know a lot of you have already contacted me about this and so there probably wont be that many comment; however, there are several things which I’d love to be posted here:
- Situations where you might need a rescue stick.
- Software suggestions/requests.
- Things to stay away from.
- Suggestions for replacement software, I know I may not have picked the right stuff all the time.
- Suggestions about ways of packaging or unpacking software.
- Ways to make things more accessible to more people.
Of course you could just tell me I’m doing something useful!
Which brings me to another point, what am I doing? Well I don’t intend to distribute too much software, I’d prefer to write a script which downloads and updates software to a memory stick for you. Much of the software I’m looking at is either not free/libre and so I don’t expect to be able to do more than provide a script to get the end user to download and use the software correctly. If anyone is familiar with the gentoo ebuild context they’ll understand more of what I mean, my script wouldn’t require pre-built packages but do it’s own work.
The wiki page is: http://www.robertsmall.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Chute_Stick
Kind regards, Robert.
Tags: Announcement, Chute Stick, Computers, Emergency, Linux, Mac, Mobile computing, New project, Pen Drive, Rescue Disk, Software, Technology, Thumb Drive, Travel, USB, USB Memory Stick, Windows
February 27th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
(Yes, commenting my own blog, shush)
Just thinking that facilities for recovering hard drives might be of use.
Some form of firewall might be of use as well, but I’m not up to date with Windows software enough to know what’s needed there.
Kind regards, Robert.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
paritioning tool.
MBR / repairing stuff.
undelete tools.
filesystem repair.
internet access.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Could use a partitioning tool, as Daz said. Actually, all of Daz’s items are good suggestions.
But then BackTrack contains all of them…
February 27th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I agree with Daz too. BackTrack would provide most needed things if you’re willing to boot from USB and use it. I feel it’s highly likely I’ll use it for a bootable distro. However stand-alone software which does the same would be useful on the non-booting side.
Kind Regards, Robert