Re: been up that long_root is jello
robert marley wrote:
Kent, i have no doubt you are at this all the time so i will not be alone in wishing you
only the very best as thanks for your direction. most helpfull and professional.
"Glad to help", says Kent, basking contentedly in the praise.
IRC Gurus suggest this is because i am in "Ramdisk mode" <shrug>
initrd?
dont know what you mean here AND i am yet to lookup what initrd invokes, but i will.
Initial Ram Disk; I'm not well educated in the nuances of the feature,
but basically a RAM disk is created (a simulated disk in RAM, as opposed
to virtual memory, which is simulated RAM on disk); this allows the
system to be stored "on" this simulated disk so that the actual hard
drive is free to be manipulated as necessary. Also, by loading certain
functions into RAM, there can be a significant speed increase, as RAM is
several thousand times faster than a mechanical disk.
I have a "guaranteed boot disk" from an 'IRC Guru', it wont copy to a
floppy ("insufficent space")
Are you using cp? You'll probably have to use dd.
i was using W32 facility. i will try your suggestion now i have
my /DOS partition back up.
Ah, if doing it from Windows, you probably needed to use a tool like
rawrite2.exe. I suspect that this "guaranteed boot disk" is a 1.44 MB
boot image, that includes the disk formatting itself. So you can't copy
it onto a formatted disk like a normal file, because after formatting a
diskette, the diskette no longer has a full 1.44 MB available; it's
something less than that (say, maybe, 1.3 or something; don't know
exactly). So instead you use a special utility such as rawrite2.exe
which copies the file sector-by-sector and lays down the formatting as
it goes.
Have you got a Knoppix CD? If so, boot off it and then you should be
able to get to your /etc/passwd file.
no, i havnt. my limited grasp of Knoppix is that its a 'fixall' GUI driven installer?
maybe i need to research just what it is? from what i read here and elsewhere i am not
prompted to chase after a download or info on it. do you think i should?
I highly recommend Knoppix, if for no other reason than that it's just
cool. (Gnoppix and Morphix may be just as cool, but haven't given them a
try yet.) It's basically a full-featured GNU/Linux distribution that
runs off CD. You boot off of it, and assuming you have sufficient RAM,
in just a few minutes you're looking at KDE3 with OpenOffice.org and
Mozilla and games and sound files and xmms and scan software and samba
and and and and and. And it does a very good job of autodetecting hardware.
So it's a great demo tool to let your Windows-only friends get a taste
of Linux, without having to install it or repartition their hard drives,
etc. (Of course, it runs a bit slow, running off the CD; still . . . .)
Also, it's a great diagnostic tool. Your sound card isn't working in
Windows? Pop in Knoppix; if sound still doesn't work, you've got a
pretty good indication that you have a hardware problem with your sound
card; if sound does work, you know your hardware is okay and your
problem is in Windows; time to rebuild :-).
Also, it's a great recovery tool. Windows is hosed, and you need to wipe
the drive and reinstall, but you need desperately to save your Documents
and Settings folder first? No problem; pop in Knoppix, mount your
Windows partition, smbmount a network drive, and copy the files off to
the network. (And, being *nix, you don't have to babysit the process to
hit "Yes" every time a new type of folder or file is copied. And, being
*nix, if a file can't be copied for some reason, the process doesn't
abort like it does in Windows, leaving you wondering which files got
copied and which didn't and I don't have a clue so therefore I'll have
to start over again only this time doing a folder at a time stupid
Windows I hate Windows why didn't I learn Linux years ago and I hate
Windows even more now.) (Who, me? Have an attitude? I can't imagine what
you're talking about. :-)
You don't have to boot into GUI mode on Knoppix, and you can always
shell out to the console.
So, do I think you should download Knoppix? I think it's a great tool,
but if its capabilities don't offer you anything, then no; don't bother.
On the other hand, it's really cool.
--
Kent
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