need a live CD with sshd already loaded and a passworded acct

I have a laptop with a broken display and the display broke before
I could get the networking setup on it's Fedora core OS.
So if I just power it up and let Fedora boot, I can't get in
via the ethernet since it's not setup. And I can't read the display.
So I want to put in a
CD live distro that will boot up with the sshd already configured
to run by default and so it has a valid user password.
I want to have ssh so I can log in via ethernet, then try
to see if I can get a hint of what's wrong with the hardware
(the display just shows random pixels)
I downloaded dsl-n (damn small linux-N) and I don't see how you set it
up to save it's configuration so I can just put it in the drive,
power up the laptop and not have to type in a cheatcode (which
I can't see with the broken display).
I think I might be able to guess when the "boot:" prompt
is waiting and type in the "ssh" cheatcode:

boot: dsl ssh

this does launch the sshd in daemon mode for incoming ssh
but the problem there is I still don't have a password so
I can log in !
If someone knows of a better network-able live CD that
has ssh and a pre-setup user account so I know the password
before I try to boot, that would help a lot.

I even tried mounting the dsl-n iso file via loopback to hack the
passwd file to contain a pre cooked up password for the "dsl" user
but the problem is that they pack all the stuff into this big
"KNOPPIX" file that I don't know the format of, you don't see
a tree of dirs with /etc/passwd in it.
Mark

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:38:51 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:

> I have a laptop with a broken display and the display broke before
> I could get the networking setup on it's Fedora core OS.
> So if I just power it up and let Fedora boot, I can't get in
> via the ethernet since it's not setup. And I can't read the display.

Just a suggestion, have you looked into doing a headless install on that
box?

Mark Schlegel <nospam@---.com> wrote:

> I even tried mounting the dsl-n iso file via loopback to hack the
> passwd file to contain a pre cooked up password for the "dsl" user
> but the problem is that they pack all the stuff into this big
> "KNOPPIX" file that I don't know the format of, you don't see
> a tree of dirs with /etc/passwd in it.

It's probably still a crypto (cloop) iso, although it's been awhile
since I've used KNOPPIX. Anyway, here's an old recipe to try:

From the KNOPPIX sub-directory of the top Knoppix CD mount directory,
or from any HD directory that has a copy of that KNOPPIX file in it.

To mount:
modprobe -a isofs cloop; file=KNOPPIX && mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/cloop /mnt

To unmount:
umount /mnt && modprobe -ar isofs cloop

The device file:
brw-r--r-- 1 root root 240, 0 Sep 14 2002 /dev/cloop

And this to install the cloop module:

mkdir /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc && \
cp /var/shop/Knoppix/cloop-0.67/cloop.o /lib/modules/$(uname-r)/misc && \
depmod

I don't recall where the cloop package comes from and leave it as an
exercise for you to find and compile.

--
Clifford Kite

thunder wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:38:51 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:
>
>> I have a laptop with a broken display and the display broke before
>> I could get the networking setup on it's Fedora core OS.
>> So if I just power it up and let Fedora boot, I can't get in
>> via the ethernet since it's not setup. And I can't read the display.
>
> Just a suggestion, have you looked into doing a headless install on that
> box?

I suppose I could try that but for now I don't want to wipe the
whole disk but just get on it to try and diagnose the video problem.

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:59:20 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:

> thunder wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:38:51 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:
>>
>>> I have a laptop with a broken display and the display broke before
>>> I could get the networking setup on it's Fedora core OS.
>>> So if I just power it up and let Fedora boot, I can't get in
>>> via the ethernet since it's not setup. And I can't read the display.
>>
>> Just a suggestion, have you looked into doing a headless install on that
>> box?
>
> I suppose I could try that but for now I don't want to wipe the
> whole disk but just get on it to try and diagnose the video problem.

I'm a little confused. Is the display broken, or just not configured?
Regardless, sudo su should give you a root shell in DSL.

thunder wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:59:20 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:
>
>
>>thunder wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:38:51 +0000, Mark Schlegel wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I have a laptop with a broken display and the display broke before
>>>>I could get the networking setup on it's Fedora core OS.
>>>>So if I just power it up and let Fedora boot, I can't get in
>>>>via the ethernet since it's not setup. And I can't read the display.
>>>
>>>Just a suggestion, have you looked into doing a headless install on that
>>>box?
>>
>>I suppose I could try that but for now I don't want to wipe the
>>whole disk but just get on it to try and diagnose the video problem.
>
>
> I'm a little confused. Is the display broken, or just not configured?
> Regardless, sudo su should give you a root shell in DSL.

broken, it shows random pixels it doesn't even show the bios
post test or "press DEL for Bios setup" screen so it's
not a problem with the X setup. Running the VGA port out
the back to a CRT gets the same result so it's not the
LCD.

Probably it's hopeless and the video hardware on the motherboard
is bad but I'd like to see if dmesg says anything useful.
I had some luck with Puppy linux 2.13, I was able to install openssh
configure a user/password, and configure it to boot up, launch sshd,
get a IP from dhcp and go to the desktop. So I should be able to
log onto it blind.
Mark