A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a complete bootable computer installation including operating
system which runs in a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive;
the CD itself is read-only.
It allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making
any changes to the computer's configuration.
Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with
a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery.
A live ISO is an ISO image of a Live CD which can be used in virtual machine environments,
mounted as if it were a CD/DVD and used as the virtual machine's boot CD.
Live CDs, ISOs, and images usually include an operating system available without charge
or restrictive licence such as Linux, rather than a commercial one such as Microsoft Windows,
for legal rather than technical reasons.
The functionality of a live CD is also available with a bootable live USB flash drive, or even
an external USB drive.
These may have the added functionality of writing changes on the bootable medium.
Write-locked Live SD WORM systems are the direct solid-state counterpart to live CDs,
and can be booted natively in a media card slot or by using a USB adapter.
Write-locked Live SD systems avoid excessive write cycles or corruption by ill-conditioned
software, such as malware.
While a live CD typically does not alter any operating system or files already installed
on a computer's secondary storage, many live CDs include software mechanisms and utilities
for altering the host computer's data stores, including installation of an operating system.
This is important for the system management aspect of live CDs, which can be useful for
removing malware, for disk imaging, and for system recovery.
Unless such software is used, at the end of a live CD session the computer remains as
it was before.
The live system is able to run without permanent installation by placing the files that normally
would be stored on a hard drive into RAM, typically in a RAM disk.
The computer must have sufficient RAM both to store these files and maintain normal operation.
History All except the earliest digital computers
are built with some form of minimal built-in loader, which loads a program or succession
of programs from a storage medium, which then operate the computer.
Initially a read-only medium such as punched tape or punched cards was used for initial
program load.
With the introduction of inexpensive read-write storage, read-write floppy disks and hard
disks were used as boot media.
After the introduction of the audio compact disc, it was adapted for use as a medium for
storing and distributing large amounts of computer data.
This data may also include application and operating-system software, sometimes packaged
and archived in compressed formats.
Later, it was seen to be convenient and useful to boot the computer directly from compact
disc, often with a minimal working system to install a full system onto a hard drive.
While there are read-write optical discs, either mass-produced read-only discs or write-once
discs were used for this purpose.
The first Compact Disc drives on personal computers were generally much too slow to
run complex operating systems; computers were not designed to boot from an optical disc.
When operating systems came to be distributed on compact discs, either a boot floppy or
the CD itself would boot specifically, and only, to install onto a hard drive.
The first live CD was FM Towns OS first released in 1989.
Origin of Linux live Although early developers and users of distributions
built on top of the Linux kernel so it could take advantage of cheap optical disks and
rapidly declining prices of CD drives for personal computers, the Linux distribution
CDs or "distros" were generally treated as a collection of installation packages that
must first be permanently installed to hard disks on the target machine.
However, in the case of these distributions built on top of the Linux kernel, the free
operating system was meeting resistance in the consumer market because of the perceived
difficulty, effort, and risk involved in installing an additional partition on the hard disk,
in parallel with an existing operating system installation.
The term "live CD" was coined because, after typical PC RAM was large enough and 52x speed
CD drives and CD burners were widespread among PC owners, it finally became convenient and
practical to boot the kernel and run X11, a window manager and GUI applications directly
from a CD without disturbing the OS on the hard disk.
This was a new and different situation for Linux than other operating systems, because
the updates/upgrades were being released so quickly, different distributions and versions
were being offered online, and especially because users were burning their own CDs.
The first Linux-based 'Live CD' was Yggdrasil Linux first released in beta form 1992~1993,
though in practice its functionality was hampered due to the low throughput of contemporary
CD-ROM drives.
DemoLinux, released in 1998, was the first Linux distribution specially designed as a
live CD.
The Linuxcare bootable business card, first released in 1999, was the first Live CD to
focus on system administration, and the first to be distributed in the bootable business
card form factor.
As of 2010, Finnix is the oldest Live CD still in production.
Knoppix, a Debian-derived Linux distribution, was released in 2003, and found popularity
as both a rescue disk system and as a primary distribution in its own right.
Since 2003, the popularity of live CDs has increased substantially, partly due to Linux
Live scripts and remastersys, which made it very easy to build customized live systems.
Most of the popular Linux distributions now include a live CD variant, which in some cases
is also the preferred installation medium.
Uses Live CDs made for many different uses.
Some are designed to demonstrate or "test drive" a particular operating system.
Software can be tested, or run for a particular single use, without interfering with system
setup.
Data on a system which is not functioning normally due to operating system and software
issues can be made available; for example, data can be recovered from a machine with
an active virus infection without the virus process being active and causing more damage,
and the virus can be removed with its defences against removal bypassed.
Although some live CDs can load into memory to free the optical drive for other uses,
loading the data from a CD-ROM is still slower than a typical hard drive boot, so this is
rarely the default with large live CD images, but for smaller live CD images loading the
filesystem directly into RAM can provide a significant performance boost, as RAM is much
faster than a hard drive, and uses less power.
Experienced users of the operating system may also use a live CD to determine whether
and to what extent a particular operating system or version is compatible with a particular
hardware configuration and certain peripherals, or as a way to know beforehand which computer
or peripheral will work before buying.
A live CD can be used to troubleshoot hardware, especially when a hard drive fails, and more
generally as a recovery disc in case of problems.
Some live CDs can save user-created files in a Windows partition, a USB drive, a network
drive, or other accessible media.
Live backup CDs can create an image of drives, and back up files, without problems due to
open files and inconsistent sets.
A few additional uses include: installing a Linux distribution to a hard
drive testing new versions of software
listing & testing hardware system repair and restoration
high security/non-invasive environment for a guest
cracking, stealing, and changing passwords network security testing
being the primary or backup operating system for any computer
quick and simple clustering of computers computer forensics
playing video games or running applications that require a different operating system
providing a secure server platform where crucial files cannot be permanently altered
providing a secure, reliable platform for the performance of high-vulnerability tasks
such as internet banking; Internet kiosks and public computers, which
can be brought back to their original state by a reboot
Bypassing parental controls and other restrictions Thematic Live CDs
Several live CDs are dedicated to specific type of applications according to the requirements
of thematic user communities.
These CDs are tailored to the needs of the applications in subject including general
knowledge, tutorial, specifications and trial data too.
Some of these topics covers sub topics, e.g. IT administration breaks down to firewall,
rescue, security, etc. type of live CDs.
In some cases a particular LiveDVD covers more than one topic.
Live CD software appliances Packaging a software appliance as an installable
live CD, or live ISO, can often be beneficial as a single image can run on both real hardware
and on most types of virtual machines.
This allows developers to avoid the complexities involved in supporting multiple incompatible
virtual machine images formats and focus on the lowest common denominator instead.
Typically after booting the machine from the live CD, the appliance either runs in non-persistent
demo mode or installs itself, at the user's request, to an available storage device.
Mounting without burning The files on a live CD ISO image can be accessed
in Microsoft Windows with a disk image emulator such as Daemon Tools, or in Unix variants
by mounting a loop device.
Later versions of Windows, and software available for earlier versions, allow an ISO to be mounted
as a volume.
After mounting the live CD's filesystem, software on the live CD can be run directly, without
booting it, by chrooting into the mounted filesystem.
A live CD ISO image can also be mounted by Virtual Machine software such as VirtualBox
and VMware Workstation or can be converted to a Live USB using SYSLINUX.
Tools such as UNetbootin can automate this process.
Common traits Some live CDs come with an installation utility
launchable from a desktop icon that can optionally install the system on a hard drive or USB
flash drive.
Most live CDs can access the information on internal and/or external hard drives, diskettes
and USB flash drives.
Live CDs are usually distributed on read-only media, requiring either copying to rewriteable
media or complete remastering to install additional software; however, there are exceptions such
as Puppy Linux which has the ability to save files to the live CD itself or other multisession
media, allowing data, programs and customized settings to be written.
The first live CDs used Linux as their operating system, available without charge or restrictive
licence.
The term came to be used for any CD containing operating system and software which could
be run without installation on the host computer; example include OpenSolaris, BeleniX and others
based on Solaris.
Other operating systems which can be used live include AmigaOS 4, Amithlon, AROS, FreeBSD,
FreeDOS, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows installation and repair discs, OS/2, ReactOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
MINIX 3, Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and MorphOS.
There are maintenance versions of Microsoft Windows bootable from CD such as BartPE, Windows
PE, and Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, previously known as Emergency Repair
Disk Commander.
The first personal computer operating system on a CD to support "live" operations might
have been the AmigaOS, which could be booted from CD on an Amiga CDTV in 1990..
Earlier examples of live OS are of course the operating systems used from floppy, and
most widely spread is DOS.
Unlike previous operating systems on optical media, though, Linux and OS/2 "live CDs" were
specifically designed to run without installation onto other media like a hard disk drive.
The live CD concept was meant to promote Linux and showcase the abilities of the free, open
source operating system on conventional personal computers with Microsoft Windows already installed.
On a PC, a bootable Compact Disc generally conforms to the El Torito specification.
Many Linux based live CDs use a compressed filesystem image, often with the cloop compressed
loopback driver, or squashfs compressed filesystem, generally doubling effective storage capacity,
although slowing application start up.
The resulting environment can be quite rich: typical Knoppix systems include around 1,200
separate software packages.
Live CDs have a reputation for supporting advanced auto-configuration and plug-and-play
functionality.
This came out of necessity to avoid requiring the user to configure the system each time
it boots and to make it easily usable by those who are new to the operating system.
Technique A read-only file system, such as on a CD-ROM
has the drawback of being unable to save any current working data.
For this reason, a read-only file system is often merged with a temporary writable file
system in the form of a RAM disk.
Often the default Linux directories "/home" and "/var" are kept in ramdisk, because the
system updates them frequently.
Puppy Linux and some other live CDs allow a configuration and added files to be written
and used in later sessions.
In modern live CDs, a read-only file system is merged with a RAM drive using transparent
techniques such as UnionFS, AuFS or EWF.
Boot loaders like syslinux can boot ISO files from USB memory devices.
Live CDs have to be able to detect and use a wide variety of hardware in realtime, often
using facilities such as udev, hotplug, hal, udisk etc.. which are a common part of all
distributions based on Linux kernel 2.6.
Boot code During live CD initialization, a user typically
may resort to using one or more boot codes to change the booting behavior.
These vary from distribution to distribution but can most often be accessed upon first
boot screen by one of the function keys.
Gallery Here are some screenshots of live CDs:
See also Comparison of Linux distributions
GIS Live DVD List of live CDs
List of remastering software Live USB
Software appliance VirtualBox
Windows To Go References
External links Tutorial - How to Set your BIOS to boot from
CD or USB Bootable CDROM HowTo
Linux Live scripts LiveDistro.org Howto create LiveCDs, build
tool directory, and download LiveCDs Pondering Live CDs - A BSD perspective on
the concept of Live CDs