Serial access to a dead machine?

[Free]

Alright this is probably a really dumb question but I havent found it covered by another thread, probably because it's so basic:

Is it possible to access a computer who doesnt want to boot anymore (boot prompt) from a Linux machine with a serial connection? This is not an emergency, I am just interested because I have read about data recovery with Linux but most people seem to do this with ethernet and I dont have a clue how all this networking and connecting stuff works.

And if its possible is there a tool in knoppix to do this? Or do I just have to mount the serial?

[Harry Kuhman]

Alright this is probably a really dumb question but I havent found it covered by another thread, probably because it's so basic:

Is it possible to access a computer who doesnt want to boot anymore (boot prompt) from a Linux machine with a serial connection? This is not an emergency, I am just interested because I have read about data recovery with Linux but most people seem to do this with ethernet and I dont have a clue how all this networking and connecting stuff works.

And if its possible is there a tool in knoppix to do this? Or do I just have to mount the serial?

You might want to ask his again, but rephrase it. I'm not clear on what you are saying and have highlighted the parts above that confuse me. Are you saying that the computer does not boot at all, but you somehow expect to access it with Knoppix by running Knoppix on another system and coming in by a serial port? If that's the case, then no, you need software running on the computer that you want to recover from. This is also the case for people who recover by ethernet. They still need Knoppix (or something) running on the machine they are trying to recover from. They can run Knoppix, other Linux, or even Windows on the machine they want to move the files to. If you're saying that you can boot Knoppix on that computer than that's a different issue, but that's not what I read above.

You very well might be able to transfer data over the serial port if you can run Knoppix. If that's what you want to do then I hope someone with more experience joins in here after you post back. But the serial port will be much slower than an Ethernet connection. And I expect it will take some different tools. You might want to cover a few more things in your response: How much data do you need to transfer? Do you have a CD writer on the computer that you need to recover from (and does it have a normal IDE or SCSI interface on it if you do)? Is there any other interesting hardware on the system (USB, Firewire, ....)? Is installing a NIC out of the question? Could you install another hard drive in the system for transferring data that way? Some idea on the make and model of the system might be of help to some people too.

Good Luck. I'm about to crash so I don't expect I'll respond again for a while, but others will likely join in and help too.

[Free]

Thanks for the answer. Sorry if my question sounded confused, I am obviously not a native speaker, but you got it exactly right!
I just was interested if I could hookup my Knoppix Laptop to my desktop machine in case it doesnt work anymore at all. But of course you are right this is more of a theoretical possibility, if it really would happen I probably just would try to boot the desktop computer with knoppix cd or floppy and then get a connection, or if it doesnt respond at all I would just remove the harddisk physically.
As I said I dont really need to do this, I was just interested because I read so much how people are happy to recover data with knoppix that they thought would have been lost, and I couldnt picture how they would do that. But I guess they just booted the crashed machine with knoppix and then hooked it up with another machine...

As for the serial connection I dont think its a problem with neither Linux or Windows, I think its covered in other threads so I dont need any info on that, thanks!