>> I just wanted to make sure that if (even if small) a problem
>> arises that you are prepared for it.
thanks, Bigpaws. I appreciate your keeping watch over the shoulders of us newbees.
>> just boot from the Windows XP cd and repair the MBR with fixboot and mbrfix.
Thanks for the reply, jklslvch. Interesting - I didn't know that. Loading the windows install cds always makes me a tad nervious. Unlike Linux, you never really know what's going on behind the closed Windows ;-)
>> .personally I went to the army surplus and picked up a box ...
Wow, OverThere. Your cool idea just helped me graduate up from electronic Dumpster Diving!
>> checkout the live cds...
Yes, I've been evaluating a lot of these - I like KillBill, and that Network-oriented distro --- can't recall it's name at the moment. But you know, I've looked now at probably 10 - 12 different flavors of *nix, and I keep coming back to Vector!
>> Welcome to the Linux fold.
Thanks, DrCR!
actually, it's back to the future for me, having started out on BSD and AT&T, then a long slog through WinWorld, falling into the ditch called OS2 )Ouch(, then back to WinDozing... and before being sucked into the vortex called Vista, I wised up and came *back* into the fold! Ahh, life is good again :0)
Thanks too for the specific tips on backups. The one downside of re/learning *nix stuff is all the weird conventions (?!) for naming and options, which, of course, like mathematics, make sense *after* you understand them! Take '
dd' for instance - is that Disk Dump, Disk Data, Duh Duh, or what? <G> My current favorites are '
klogd'- as in my drain is clogged, and, the infamous '
rc' - my small but nimble mind tells me that stands for 'Resource Control' ... :-)
>> the bespoke PartedMagic distro helpful.
Yes, it us very useful, but I've yet to find the courage to resize a partition that holds real, useful data. Will it end up in the BitBucket()? (And, btw,
an old IBM'er told me once that the BitBucket secretly resides deep in the bowels of a data center in Hobokin, New Jersey...)
I'll check out your link re GRUB.... been interested in it because it seems more flexible than lilo. Been also studying U-boot (
u-boot.sourceforge.net) as I'm learning about embedded linux too.
>> similar doubts [...] but in the end everything turned out fine without any data loses
Hi, budulay. Thanks for the vote of confidence... much appreciated!
>> Code: lilo -U
>> Code: dd if=/boot/boot.0000 of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
Thanks much, Headacher for the exact code. Help like this is one of the main reasons I like Vector!
cheers to all,
- Howard in FL