Just rambling commands and package installs

[rokytnji]

And be careful with "dd" aka disk distroyer. Make double sure of your /dev/sd??
or you might end with: see aka.
dd carries no warning!

I usually use something like live Clonzilla or Parted Magic usually. I am usually pretty careful for a Knuckle Dragging Neanderthal Tattooed Linux using Harley rider who does not make his living working IT but instead make my money tuning and building and repairing Motorcycles in my own building/shop/Quonset Hut steel Building.

Code:

# blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="PQSERVICE" UUID="84C0247FC0247996" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SYSTEM RESERVED" UUID="9C2425202424FF40" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Acer" UUID="6AC2CA02C2C9D28D" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="26a54718-3581-4c8b-958a-a03d4ce2b96f" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda7: UUID="a6ae8d53-ff84-420d-93f2-820aeee3722a" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda6: UUID="9b2b59c3-470f-4a0f-82d0-9c933bc0ca4a" TYPE="ext4"

This latop is for tuning bikes. Hence the Windows 7 on the drive. If I decided to use just dd to create a backup or whatever and I have used PUDD in Puppy to clone a netbook 8gig internal XP SSD drive to external 8 gig Camera SD flash drive.  Anyways. It would go something like this. Me being a bull in a china cabinet and all.

1. Boot up your Live cd or dvd of your choice
2. Open a terminal window on the Desktop/Window Manager.
3. su into root. Then password.
4. Plug in some external drive. Do not mount that sucker yet. If Automounted. Unmount that Puppy.
5. use fdisk or blkid to get /dev/sdx number so no mistakes are made in the next steps.
6.  Lets say  that the external drive was shown as a folder  as /media/disk as that is the usual/norm

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -c >/media/disk/system-image.gz

The above should copy,compress,stuff like the bootloader/partitions/and partition tables of your whole hardrive sda. Including Windows if dualbooting. So make sure you use a good size external drive before doing this. I have a 1 TB drive for stuff like this.

To unzip

Code:

gunzip -c /media/disk/system-image.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

 

[rokytnji]

Might as well throw this in here also.

When I want to trouble shoot graphics. I use everything from

Code:

xrandr -s <video resolution like 1024x768 goes here>

If I like the resolution. I try and find what controls startup for my Windows Manager or Desktop Environment and add that line to the startup.
It is just easier for me than editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf as certain distros are now coming out without a default /etc/X11/xorg.conf. They use a
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

For other trouble shooting besides using glxgears or whatever is normal for dri stuff.

Code:

xvidtune -show

Code:

glxinfo | grep -i "direct rendering"

Code:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i "dri" | grep -v -i "driver"

in conjunction with the inxi -G command. I show how to install inxi in the how to section of this forum. It is just a information gathering script that does not
install anything. I help out H2 just a very little bit with checking smxi and sgfxi scripts also in AntiX.

Code:

$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS780M/RS780MN [Mobility Radeon HD 3200 Graphics]
           X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS780 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5