Make your own "System Restore" DVD

Last week I bought a Dell Studio Hybrid on eBay. As a second-hand machine, it has WinXP pre-installed but there are no install disks and the "Dell System Restore" partition has been wiped out. My intention is to image the drive in the "manufacturer condition" before messing with it.

This task is often done with Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. I wanted to find out what could be done with SystemRescueCD. SystemRescueCD is a live Linux distro containing utilities to backup, restore, image, re-partition your hard drive.

WARNING: If you are not familiar with Linux/Unix and hard disk partitions, don't try this on a machine that runs anything useful. It is very easy to render a WindowsXP/Vista system unbootable with the slightest modification. If you use Linux, if you move or modify your /boot partition, you will have to re-install Grub or Lilo.

Summary of operations

1. Download SystemRescueCD and burn .iso and burn it on CD or install on a USB key


2. List the device names of the partition(s) to be backed up and of the partition used to store the images. Usually, you would want to use an external drive to store the images.


3. Reboot in the Live CD environment. Check the partitions to back-up, mount the storage partition, use partimage.


4. Reboot back to your usual OS. Burn the .iso image of SystemRescueCD to a multisession DVD. Then append the backup files to another directory on the DVD. Or, extract the iso image to your hard drive, add data folders and create a new bootable CD/DVD as you would with isolinux


5. Check your backup! Reboot with the newly made DVD and run partimage in simulation mode.
   

SystemRescueCD Tips

At the boot prompt, you can hit enter and wait for the OS to load. I found that the default kernel works on all my machines, and that when the system didn't boot it was because of read errors from the CD drive. Once SystemRescueCD has loaded, you want to bring up the graphic environment (Xfce Desktop) by typing wizard. This will create an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. If you quit Xfce, you can go back to it by typing startx. You can bring up the network by typing dhcpd, assuming that you are on a network with a DHCP server.

When it comes to customizing SystemRescueCD, the documentation assumes that you will do this from the LiveCD environment. This is probably the best route to make significant changes, adding software or modules. However, if you just want to add a few files to the CD image, you can do this by following the instructions for building a bootable disk with isolinux. SystemRescueCD is based on Gentoo and is using a squashfs filesystem.

Using partimage

Partimage expects you to mount the partition you are going to use to save the image files, but to have your source partition(s) unmounted. You can mount partitions on /mnt/backup /mnt/custom or /mnt/windows, or create your own mount point in /mnt

Here is a screenshot of partimage backing up a partition. I use the graphic environment to have more than one terminal at a time and check the documentation with Firefox.

Using GParted

GParted is a graphic tool to move/resize partitions, similar to Acronis Disk Director. Support for NTFS filesystems is experimental. Back-up your data if you intend to use it with NTFS. Follow the special instructions for NTFS in the GParted manual. I used GParted on clean, defragmented NTFS system partition on a SATA drive, and got a corrupt filesystem that couldn't be recovered with chkdsk. I had to recover it with partimage.

Simple pleasures

Sometimes there are simple pleasures in life, like cantilevered balconies.

H.264 encoding for Vimeo

This article describes how to encode videos to be hosted on Vimeo using Windows applications. Vimeo is a video hosting service targeted to filmmakers and video artists. It has the advantage of offering a high picture quality and clear requirements regarding media to be uploaded to the site.

All tests were done to comply with the specifications of the Vimeo site for 4:3 SD material. I used the following workflow:

1. Edit, de-interlace and scale to 640x480 with Adobe Premiere. Export as PhotoJPEG Best Quality to a Quicktime file.
   
2. Transcode to H.264 / AAC with Handbrake or SuperC to a mov,mp4 or avi container.
3. Test with Quicktime Player 7.6 , VideoLAN VLC 0.9.9 and upload to Vimeo

Here are the test results / compatibility matrix:

With Handbrake, I used the Quicktime Preset and changed the Audio options

SuperC is a GUI for ffmpeg and mencoder. The interface can be confusing, and their website certainly brings as much confusion.

Conclusion:

1. VLC seems to be a very good platform to test material before uploading it to Vimeo.
2. Quicktime Player has many issues with H.264/AAC material: the audio is out-of-sync in many cases, images are displayed with incorrect gamma and look slightly washed-out.
3. SuperC is not taking advantage of the 2 cores of my Athlon X2 processor.
   
4. Handbrake is easier to use. The files playback properly with VLC and Vimeo but not with Quicktime Player.
   

Hyperboloid Ruby Script

This is the result of my first Ruby Script for Sketchup. I had never used Ruby before, it is very easy to pick up. Getting a hang of the Sketchup API was quite a challenge. I was going nowhere for a few days, then, something clicked and everything started to work.

Ruby is quite loose on data types and that led me to serious problems with the API. The API accepts triplets (arrays) for 3d points and vectors, but if you haven't declared a variable with a Geom::Point3d.new method, you will run into trouble! Another obvious newbie mistake is to ignore type definition within a formula, Ruby assumes the variable is an integer, you may think otherwise...

The shape generated is an Hyperboloid of Revolution. It is a ruled surface, which means it can be generated from straight lines. This property makes these surfaces easy to produce in real life. They are used in civil engineering, for instance for cooling towers of power stations.

You can download the script here. After installing, the script will create a "Hyperboloid" entry in the Plugins menu.

Sketchup Animation.

Compared to usual 3D animation programs, Sketchup animation options are quite limited. This may be sufficient to create simple walkthroughs.

Sketchup Visualization

My first Sketchup job is a visualization for an event in France. Marly-la-Ville is to host a bi-annual Travel Book Fair. My contractor's proposal was based on oversized book sculptures dotted around the entrance of the building hosting the event. Quite a nice homage to pop-artist Claes Oldenburg.

This job is not demanding in terms of modelling - the client knows the site very well and detailing is not the point. The difficulty was that I had to work from a single frontal photograph, without plans, CAD drawings or survey, which makes it quite a challenge.