Free system software for linux

SystemRescueCd is a Linux system available from a bootable CDROM that provides an easy way to perform administrative tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk or backing up data.
System Rescue CD contains a lot of system utilities (such as parted, partimage, and fstools), and basic programs (such as editors, midnight commander, and network tools).
It also includes QtParted, a Partition Magic clone that makes editing partitons easy with its Qt graphical user interface. This CDROM aims to be very easy to use and accessible to everybody.
Main features:
- GNU Parted is the best tool for editing your disk partitions under linux
- QtParted is a Partition Magic clone for Linux.
- Partimage is a Ghost/Drive-image clone for Linux
- File systems tools (e2fsprogs, reiserfsprogs, xfsprogs, jfsutils, ntfsprogs, dosfstools): they allow you to format, resize, debug an existing partition of your hard disk
- Sfdisk allows you to backup and restore your partition table

system-tools-backends is a package for GNOME.

to extract the configuracion

backend --get

to restore the configuration from XML

backend --set < file.xml

KIWI Image System provides a complete operating system image solution for Linux supported hardware platforms as well as for virtualisation systems like Xen Qemu or VMware. The KIWI architecture was designed as a two level system. The first stage, based on a valid software package source, creates a so called physical extend according to the provided image description. The second stage creates from a required physical extend an operating system image. The result of the second stage is called a logical extend or short an image.
A normal installation process is starting from a given installation source and installs single pieces of software until the system is complete. During this process there may be manual user intervention required. However an operating system image represents an already completed installation encapsulated as a file and optionally includes the configuration for a specific task. Such an operating system starts working as soon as the image has been brought to a system storage device no matter if this is a volatile or non volatile storage. The process of creating an image takes place without user interaction.
This means all requirements of the encapsulated system has to be fulfilled before the image is created. According to this the so called image description tree stores all the information needed to create an image.
Main features:
- Distribution independent
- Support for virtualisation systems like Xen
- Support for deploying images over the network
- Support for VMware / Qemu images
- Support for USB-Stick systems
- Support for LiveCD/DVD systems
- Centralized image description based on XML
- Prebuild boot images for SUSE systems
- Prebuild PXE configuration usable with kiwi netboot images
- SUSE Linux on a 128MB flash card.. yes thats possible