Re: Dug myself into several deep holes
On Friday 02 January 2004 09:54 am, Sam Rosenfeld wrote:
> Over several months I have tried to fix (or improve) sound, mail, X
> windows, and much more. Now, each time I boot up it's an adventure.
> For the most part I have tried to decipher whatever relevant docs I
> could lay my hands on, but my fiddling has clearly made things worse.
> I hardly know what's what in my single-user box, which contains Debian
> 3.0, Linux 2.2.20, mutt, galeon, python2.1, tcl/tk8.3 and a host of
> mathematical, analytical, and context-specific applications which may
> not be problematic.
Zero specifics about what's wrong or what problems you're having, so zero
advice possible on how to fix it.
> The question is: Given my current state, is it reasonable to try to
> fix each of my problems separately, or would it be more sensible to
> keep only the critical data and start over with a new installation?
> (At this point I think I'm ready to create a box-within-a-box where all
> changes could be tested before they become part of my working system.)
> My request is vague because I can't even specify where all the problems
> lie, and I'm not sure where I've strayed (as root, no less!) in my
> attempt to get things going as well as I could make them.
You'll have to make an attempt to explain the symptoms, or the question is
impossible to answer.
> Would deeply appreciate any words of wisdom.
Cost/Benefit analysis works here:
Reloading is virtually guaranteed to work if you're careful about backing up
all of your important data. Benefit: Will work. Risk: Could lose data. You
won't learn anything.
Fixing it carries with it the benefit of learning in more detail how things
work and learning where your mistakes were. If you have the time, this is
the path I would personally take, but... many people won't or can't do this.
In other words, just like before your post... it's totally up to you. What do
you want to do? The list is here and most of us will try to help on specific
problems if we've seen them before.
As far as "after it's fixed"... learn this from your experience. Never do
anything you don't know how to back out of. Get in the habit of not running
as root, force yourself to use sudo for things, and ask yourself three times
before you edit something as root if you can get back to where you are. Make
ONE change at a time and let it be for a few days. You'll be a cautious,
professional admin quickly if you start respecting the problems you can cause
yourself as root. (Of course, the Catch-22 is that you have to have messed
it all up at least once to understand this.)
Finally, learn to make backups of your system. They are you "last defense"
against YOURSELF and your users 99.9% of the time. Hardware/disk failure is
the SECOND reason for backups... the majority of the time backups are used in
the real-world admin environment to put back something someone deleted.
Human error is far more deadly to production boxes than hardware failure ever
will be.
Manage your risks. That's the best advice I can give.
--
Nate Duehr, nate@natetech.com
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