Text 6902, 200 rader
Skriven 2006-08-08 19:53:00 av MARTIN ATKINS (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av WAYNE CHIRNSIDE
Ärende: llf
===========
-=> WAYNE CHIRNSIDE wrote to MARTIN ATKINS <=-


 -> There is no hidden partition. It is a figment of your and DOS 5.0s
 -> imagination.

 WC> No, in fact it wasn't.
 WC> It was Linux that was seeing all this and my primary concern.

You most certanly _did not_ report Linux seeing a "hidden"
partition after you dd'ed the drive.

WC> I was booting the DOS system disk along the way as a means
WC> to both troubleshoot and to and to look for solutions.

DOS is not a solution on a Linux system. Windows can help you
identify hardware and what IRQ it is using and a bit more.  

So yes there is a reason to have a DOS/Win partition if you
have a Win distro and newish hardware.

WC> Many powerful tools use DOS such as fips and BIOS flashing utilities.

fips is only used when you already have a working DOS/Win setup.
As for BIOS flashing well you won't need to go down that raod
for some time.

I did say that if you _must_ have DOS on that disk then build
it first with Linux but don't expect it to work straight out.
You need to read the fdisk man page first.

 ->  WC> I need to go to Maxtor's site and find out how many blocks
 ->  WC> there are suposed to be on this drive.

 -> Total waste of time.

 WC> As was about 80 percent of my efforts in getting to the heart of the
 WC> matter.
 
Old habits die hard. You used DOS to try and fix a problem that
it was never designed to do. You're a Linux user now and there
is no escape. The more you use it the deeper it will suck you
into it's vortex.
 
 WC> Of course the other 20 percent was successful.
 WC> Examining the RAM was a waste of time but worth doing to eliminate it
 WC> as a suspect.

Something can't be a waste of time and worth doing.

WC> Thos os part of trobleshooting problems.

You panicked and went off like a scatter gun. Instead of solving
the problem you caused yourself unnecessary grief.

 -> Like what? Because you can't hear the hard disk heads doing a Mexican
 -> hat dance on the platters? Get a stethoscope.

 WC> Never observed the hard drive doing any sort of dance at all.

'cos these days most good H/Ds don't make any noise.

 -> WC> The clues something was afoot in Linux were more subtle.

 -> So subtle you can't describe them?

 WC> Writes to DMI event log on every boot.

Unreadable disk because you zeroed it and probably left LILO
in the MBR.

 WC> DOS label command inability to alter or clear volume label.
 WC> Inability to have a Linux fdisk _take_.

You've clustered these two events out of sinc. First Linux wouldn't
take so you dd'ed the drive. Then you started playing around with
DOS and shock horror, that gave strange results.

 ->  -> There is nothing wrong with the disks or the bios. It's like
 ->  -> entering a twenty your old cart horse in the grand national
 ->  -> steeple chase and wondering why it dropped dead at the first
 ->  -> fence.

 ->  -> Forget DOS. Put the machine back together and partition it Linux
 ->  -> ext2.

 WC> DOS remains.

Fine, but use it for DOS work.

 WC> It's a small partition.

I should hope so.

 WC> It remains to run FIPS and to enable to run BIOS flashes.
 WC> It isn't hurting anything.

Fips can be run from floppy but none the less keep the partition 
if that's what makes you comfortable.

 ->  WC> Sure, and spread this crud around so everyone can have a copy?

 -> The only crud around that system is between the keybourd and the
 -> chair.

 WC> Uh, motorcycle induced spinal injury.
 WC> I wasn't at fault but thatt doesn't matter.
 WC> Have not been able to use or sit in a chair for years.

Pay no heed to my impertinance. I was letting off steam.

 -> Yea i know i shouldn't have said that but you would test the
 -> patience of a saint.

 WC> Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
 WC> I listened to you about the RAM even though I
 WC> never credited it.
 WC> been wrong before so it was worth checking if only to eliminate it
 WC> as a possibility.

That was what i was after. You still have mismatched ram but so
long as it is not a problem now then there is probably no harm
in it. Remember though it can cause problems during intense
read write activity. 

 ->  WC> Not until you explain away a customized config.sys file
 ->  WC> not even on the hard drive proclaiming itself resident.

 -> It's looking at the floppy.

 WC> No, the config.sys on the floppy was a very sparce and basic one.

Logic should tell you that if you have no config.sys on the
floppy or the hard disk you will get error messages. This is a
DOS problem and of no interest here.

 WC> It was seeing the file on the slave drive and thta was clearly
 WC> indicated by the contents of that file.

How can you expect people to help you if you keep giving 
conflicting advice? In one message you say there is no config.sys
on the floppy or H/D next you say it is on the slave drive.

If the BIOS can't understand /dev/hda then it will look for
the floppy or CD. If that fails it will try and boot /dev/hdb.
That is presuming /dev/hdc is the CD.

 WC> Mozilla was also picking up Netscape Communicator 4.08's
 WC> preferences ( and malware tagged along) to send me to
 WC> a faux trojan scanning web page.

So where is Moz/Netscape? /dev/hda or /dev/hdb.

 ->  WC> Before the last partition attempt I theoretically zero'ed
 ->  WC> and fdisk -l showed *nothing* on the drive.

 -> Did you by any chance forget to plug it back in? If you zeroed
 -> the thing then there wouldn't be anything on it would there?

 WC> One would think.
 WC> One would expect fdisk to work too.

Not neccasarly. fdisk tries to guess the architecture of the disk.
I've never zeroed a disk before but i bet if you used sfdisk
you could see it. Be warned sfdisk can if you don't know what
your doing, ruin your whole day.
 
 WC> They both work perfectly fine now.

Oh joy!

 -> You have Knoppix you could mount the drive and use that to view
 -> the files.

 WC> I am aware of this.

So why were you using DOS 5.0?

 ->  -> If you have a slave drive then so much the better. You can save
 ->  -> stuff on that and not worry about losing it if at a later date
 ->  -> you wish to format /dev/hda.

 ->  WC> Slave's currently disconnected.
 ->  WC> I've pulled the wires twice but will not be connecting it again.

 -> <sigh> I give up.

 WC> I never give up.
 WC> Close sometimes...

I feign giving up and then when their not ready i kick them in the
bollocks.

 WC> Do not go gently into the dark night.

I won't. I'm gonna go out get drunk and start a fight and it will
all be your fault. :-}
 
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