Should I then be suspicious of a possible attack on the system in case the system fails, if both debian and ubuntu are fairly stable? The usb flash drives themselves are still functional in the sense that I can view the files in them after plugging them in. I backed up the data on them. But when I try to boot from 64 gb usb flash disks (one with ubuntu 18 04 the other debian 10 point something installed on them) the boot process does not complete and the login screen does not appear. The two recovery modes (I guess those are the snapshots no?) do not finish booting either.
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 11:30:08 +0300
Semih Ozlem <semihozlemlinuxuser@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry I can not read emails very often. No I am not new to linux I
> have been using it for the past 6 or 7 years starting mostly with
> ubuntu. I had CENTOS and Ubuntu and debian installed on some machines
> before. Most of them stopped functioning. Some of them in less than
> six months.
OK, that simply should not happen. I don't know if either Centos or
Ubuntu can do in-place version upgrades, but if not, they should
certainly run from release to unsupported status. My current server
installation is a new one, but previously it ran through several
Debian stable version upgrades and many years, and a couple of changes
of hardware. There is such a thing as software rot, and it certainly
affects applications, but the OS of Debian stable should run pretty much
forever.
>
> I am new to the debian users group, because I found out that a user
> group existed much later. During this time I had a lot of issues with
> computers. The new computer that I got, originally the store claimed
> that the insurance on my machine would be invalidated if I installed
> another operation system on the machine.
>
> The reason for hesitating to install debian right now is simply that
> the machines may become unusable again, and the invested time and
> machinepower to installing a machine may end up being wasted. The
> other reason was the claim that insurance may become invalid which
> later turned out not to be so, but only after asking the company that
> sells the computer several times.
No software carries any kind of warranty, not even the famous Windows,
but the warranty should certainly cover the hardware if it isn't
physically abused. Software warranty service is pretty much limited to
reinstalling Windows with loss of all data and applications, which any
user can do themselves.
> The third reason is I simply do not
> at the moment have the time to backup the existing hard drive before
> installing a new operating system on it, and also that should it
> become unusable or stop functioning (I had debian installed on a usb
> 64 gb of size that stopped booting)..
Ah, USB sticks *do* stop working or lose bits without warning. Well, so
do spinning hard drives, but not usually in less than about five years,
often much longer.
>
> Yes I did figure out that it was lvm2 package that was needed, and
> lvs is actually one of the internal commands for lvm2 as well so it
> could be run from the console lvm2 prodives. I am looking into the
> option of using lvm.
That's fairly painless to use, as Debian will set it up during the OS
installation. To be honest, I've had it installed for many years, and
only occasionally used it. Drives are now large enough that I don't
outgrow them in the lifetime of the hardware. In addition to adding
and removing drives, LVM does allow online backups, if you've left
enough unused space. Read about snapshots.
--
Joe