Free swap partition software for linux

PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent RIP (Recovery Is Possible) distribution. PING can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated in a PXE / RIS environment.
Several tools have been added and written, so to make this ISO the perfect choice to backup and restore whole partitions, an easy way. It sounds like Symantec Ghost(tm), but has even better features, and is totally free.
Main features:
- Backup and Restore partitions or files to a MS Network Shared directory;
- Backup and Restore the BIOS data as well;
- Either burn a bootable CD / DVD, either integrate within a PXE / RIS environment;
- Possibility to Blank local admins password;
- Create your own restoration bootable DVD (see the Howto Documentation);
- Partition and Format a disk before installing Windows (so to make sure your unattended Windows installation will happen on the right partition);
Specific advantages Linux brings you over DOS and Ghost :
- Most network cards automatically recognized by the Kernel (unlike DOS);
- Most CD/DVD readers automatically recognized by the Kernel (unlike DOS);
- You dont have to run a Ghostcast server to receive images over the network.
Whats New in 2.00 RC7 Development Release:
- NTFS filesystems were not being resized to the maximum size that the partition could contain, though logging reported such.
- An occasional hang on some systems when it came to mount NTFS partitions was fixed.
- For an unknown reason, using NTFS-3G drivers rather than native kernel drivers seems to resolve the issue.
- The kernel was updated to Linux 2.6.22.4.
- Some more network and S-ATA/SCSI drivers have been compiled.

Ghost for Linux project is a hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tool similar to "Norton Ghost" and by Symantec.
The created images are optionally compressed, and they can be stored on a local hard drive or transferred to an anonymous FTP server.
A drive can be cloned using the "ClicknClone" function. g4l supports file splitting if the local filesystem does not support writing files >2GB. The included kernel supports ATA, serial-ATA, and SCSI drives.
Common network cards are supported. It is packaged as a bootable CD image with an ncurses GUI for easy use.
Enhancements:
- This release adds new kernels and syslinux, plus other support program options.
- It adds ntfs-3g to support writing to ntfs partitions for the local backup images and adds ntfsclone backups to local drives or partitions.
- Users can now copy the files from the CD image to a flash drive that has been made bootable, and it will then work from flash.

Partition Image application is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves partitions in many formats (see below) to an image file.
The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example); partitions can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0.
Partition Image will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file.
This is unlike the dd command, which also copies empty blocks. Partition Image also works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB.
This is very useful to save partitions to an image in some cases:
- First you can restore your linux partition if there is a problem (virus, file system errors, manipulation error) . When you have a problem, you just have to restore the partition, and after 10 minutes, you have the original partition. You can write the image to a CD-R if you dont want the image to use hard-disk space.
- This utility can be used to install many identical PCs. For example, if you buy 50 PCs, with the same hardware, and you want to install the same linux systems on all 50 PCs, you will save a lot of time. Indeed, you just have to install on the first PC and create an image from it. For the 49 others, you can use the image file and Partition Images restore function.

SystemImager is software that automates Linux installs, software distribution, and production deployment.
SystemImager makes it easy to do automated installs (clones), software distribution, content or data distribution, configuration changes, and operating system updates to your network of Linux machines. You can even update from one Linux release version to another!
It can also be used to ensure safe production deployments. By saving your current production image before updating to your new production image, you have a highly reliable contingency mechanism. If the new production enviroment is found to be flawed, simply roll-back to the last production image with a simple update command!
Some typical environments include: Internet server farms, database server farms, high performance clusters, computer labs, and corporate desktop environments.
Whats New in 3.8.2 Stable Release:
- fixed a bug in the monitoring: REBOOTED state was not properly reported in some minimal image (without the command which)
- added "--config FILE" option to si_prepareclient and si_mkbootpackage (and removed from si_mkautoinstalldisk: the option must be used in commands that explicitly create an initrd.img from initrd_template)
- do not hard-code common patterns of exclusion in si_getimage (created the configuration file /etc/systemimager/getimage.exclude)
- si_getimage didnt stop correctly the rsync daemon in the golden client, using rsync over ssh for the image retrieval
Whats New in 3.9.2 Development Release:
- Added support for the PS3 architecture
- Improved support and compatibility with Debian (now deb packages can be automatically built from source using the new target "make deb")
- updated BOEL kernel to 2.6.21 (for i386 and x86_64)
- fixed a bug that broke si_mkautoinstalldisk
- free unused RAM of the initramfs (only with cpio initrd.img) after switching to tmpfs
- updated udev to udev_108-0ubuntu4
- support old versions of the BitTorrent client (better compatibilty with *Ubuntu)
- fixed a lib/lib64 bug with ppc64
- fixed a bug in si_monitor daemon that didnt start correctly when the directory /var/lock/systemimager was not present
- added missing manpages
- remount the filesystems in read-only before giving-up when the umount fails at the end of the installation
- create all the swap partitions before the other filesystems in the autoinstall script: this avoids potential OOM conditions that could occur during the filesystem creation
- removed unused coreutils package from initrd.img
- removed unmaintained package imagemanip
- removed deprecated command si_mkbootmedia

Super Grub Disk is a bootable floppy or CDROM that is oriented towards system rescue, specifically for repairing the booting process.

Super Grub Disk is simply a Grub Disk with a lot of useful menus. It can activate partitions, boot partitions, boot MBRs, boot your former OS (Linux or another one) by loading menu.lst from your hard disk, automatically restore Grub on your MBR, swap hard disks in the BIOS, and boot from any available disk device.

The ISO has multi-language support, and allows you to change the keyboard layout of your shell.

This version has Gpareted included.

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

pam_mount is a Pluggable Authentication Module that can mount volumes for a user session.
This module is aimed at environments with SMB (Samba or Windows NT) or NCP (Netware or Mars-NWE) servers that Unix users wish to access transparently. It facilitates access to private volumes of these types well.
The module also supports mounting home directories using loopback encrypted filesystems. The module was originally written for use on the GNU/Linux operating system but has since been modified to work on several flavors of BSD.
- Every user can access his own volumes
- The user needs to type the password just once (at login)
- The mounting process is transparent to the users
- There is no need to keep the login passwords in any additional file
- The volumes are unmounted upon logout, so it saves system resources, avoiding the need of listing every every possibly useful remote volume in /etc/fstab or in an automount/supermount config file. This is also necessary for securing encrypted filesystems.
pam_mount "understands" SMB, NCP, and any type of filesystem that can be mounted using the standard mount command. If someone has a particular need for a different filesystem, feel free to ask me to include it and send me patches.
If you intend to use pam_mount to protect volumes on your computer using an encrypted filesystem system, please know that there are many other issues you need to consider in order to protect your data.
For example, you probably want to disable or encrypt your swap partition (the cryptoswap can help you do this). Dont assume a system is secure without carefully considering potential threats.
Enhancements:
- pam_mount now uses an XML config file, which also has a few new variables and options.
- Support for truecrypt was added.