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I'm looking for a live-distribution (live CD or the likes) which comes - per default - with sshd running at startup.

I want to check the components of my laptop whose graphics has died (card-replacement did not do the trick).

The system seems to boot into Knoppix6 just right (and in typing commands w/o screen I can get it to shut down regularly) but what I need is a live-distro (CD/DVD/USB) which I can fire up and log(ssh) into over the network to check whether the CPU & memory is OK and if the new graphics card is ok too.

Anybody an idea?

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But then you most probably could type not only 'shutdown' but also 'sshd' (and start the ssh daemon). – elv Jul 13 '12 at 20:42
You know - now that you mention it that's obvious... but I'd like to have an extra distro nevertheless - one with sshd and VNC if possible. – Nox Jul 13 '12 at 21:22
I'am sure Knoppix6 livecd contains x11vnc. Besides you could also forward x11 over ssh. – elv Jul 14 '12 at 1:15
Take a USB stick that's sufficiently large, install a regular system on it, set it up the way you like, and boot it where you need it. Linux is flexible - it doesn't have to be a "Live" system at all. – frostschutz Apr 10 at 18:36

2 Answers

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As a rule, live distributions don't come with sshd enabled, because if you can log in over sshd, so can anyone else. Your machine may be on a private network where you are the only user, but that's a rather special case. In general, to be useful, the live distribution needs to have a custom password or other authentication mechanism for every user.

You can start sshd blind, but typically that won't be enough: you'll also have to configure authentication for some account.

You should take a live distribution and customize it by making it start sshd automatically, and additionally creating a password-protected account or adding an entry to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Either make sure that PermitRootLogin is set to yes in /etc/sshd_config, or add a password for the root account, or make the account you can log in to a sudoer account (and give it a password).

For Knoppix, the easiest way to do this customization is to install it to a USB disk and activate its persistent memory feature (illustrated howto). Then edit the configuration files you want in /etc.

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This answer is correct but have a look at a blog post of mine blog.grml.org/archives/… (i was affiliated with Grml) to create a live cd which starts ssh automatically – Ulrich Dangel Jul 15 '12 at 0:36
up vote 0 down vote

I came across the same problem. I decided build my own live linux (USB based).
You can configure networking via syslinux.cfg on the usb stick.
It starts openSSH by default. It comes with nearly no functionality, appart from mounting a drive and chrooting the target system.

You can download it here if you still need it http://heyn-it.de/index.php/ssh-rescue-linux.html

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