Text 7849, 163 rader
Skriven 2006-11-04 01:34:52 av Maurice Kinal (1:140/13.1)
   Kommentar till text 7842 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
Ärende: ttylinux
================
Hey James!

Nov 03 15:20 06, James Bradley wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 JB> I guess that's why I pestered you to clarify your workings for me.

Pretty straight forward stuff.  The only hew fangled thing is the bootable usb
flash disk thingy.  The rest is standard although I tend to be really fussy
about what I consider good which explains why floppy, CD and now DVD drives are
not on my wish list, bootable or otherwise.

 JB> was expecting all along, your boxes were built from the ground-up, 

Sort of.  Most are used but I strip them down and if there is anything left
then it stays.  Otherwise it hits the recycle bin.

 JB> thus avoiding the pitfalls I envisioned. When someone carts in an 
 JB> HP/Sony/laptop, and says it goes much slower since they started 
 JB> 'surfin'... My first instinct is to suggest a power tool to open 'em 
 JB> up, but that doesn't meet with too much approval for some reason. 
 JB> [-|O

Yeah.  I am not a fan of laptops.  I see Intel seems to be headed in my
direction about much of their stuff and looks to be abandoning the questionable
stuff.  I am thinking they are beginning to see the light but we'll see.

 MK>> Currently by using usb for hotswapping regular drives and 
 MK>> then plugging them into the targetted machine and booting 
 MK>> it up.  

 JB> That's the part in the puzzle I was missing.

Right.  No sweat as it does work whether or not it is bootable.  I've found
some decent pci based cards in the past that proved to be great addons towards
this idea.  However I no longer need that and found them good homes.

 JB> Hell man, I just plug my USB->IDE interface into the wrong wall-wart, 
 JB> and take it right out of the equation.

That can and does happen.  I did that once.

 JB> For me, however, I salvaged 
 JB> the DVD burner, and threw it into the RM case. I should check if I 
 JB> just burned a diode out, but I'll bet the fuse was protected by a $40 
 JB> IC.

Beats me.  I got rid of the one I had.  A complete waste of time and money
methinks.

 JB> ...And where I have one machine in the trailer, (Getting rather 
 JB> cold.) two in the livingroom, two in the second bedroom/office, and 
 JB> another about to leave for Edmonton... ... ... Because I can't always 
 JB> count on the USB port to boot the rigs...

It doesn't have to.

 JB> I'm buggered by *your* principles? <G+D> No, I understand your 
 JB> workings now, and as I suspected, reverse engineering is not nearly 
 JB> as time consuming there, as it is here.

No reverse engineering whatsoever.  I use the same utils as I use for
everything else.

 MK>> Huh?  Once booted it can be safely removed.  I am not sure 
 MK>> if we're on the same page here.

 JB> If the stick isn't burned with a kernel, (...or if an "initrd" is the 
 JB> right term?) the BIOS just keeps telling me to put the OS in its 
 JB> place, or pull the stupid thing out already.

Ah!  That can happen with a HD as well.

 JB> I was a little shocked, 
 JB> as the BIOS said nothing about "USB" in the boot order, but 
 JB> obviously, it goes first all the time, regardless of what I want.

Strange but I have seen stuff like that before.  In the case of the Intel board
(the 64-bit guy) I have the bios set to boot to usb first only if there is
something there and if there isn't then the first HD it encounters, which could
be a sata drive or regular HD.  It works except that I preferred the Gigabyte's
bios where I could hit f12 on bootup and it would give me a choice of all the
drives plugged in at bootup.  However overall the Intel wins (chipsets etc).

 JB> No working interface here, which is why your 'operating system' 
 JB> <chuckle>  was even further off my radar.

Bring it down and I'll tell you if it gets on my radar.  :-)

 JB> As all the big Dells here, have front-accessible SCSI hotswap drives, 
 JB> your system could work for those too, by unmounting them, then 
 JB> running something or another (I think I read somewhere.) to tell the 
 JB> controller to let go of the device number.

Perhaps hotplug.  I'd have to see that but for the usb interface all you have
to do is unplug it (after umounting of course).  Should work for you too.

 JB> Powering it down would be 
 JB> the no-brainer way of accomplishing the whole dance in one step. The 
 JB> burned drive(s) could then be mounted in the target(s).

Yeppers!  Now you got it.

 MK>> anything is  possible with the right kernel.  Everything else can be 
 MK>> (u)mounted later and thus a vastly flexible and dynamic 
 MK>> system can be tweaked on the fly with no need for reboots.

 JB> ... Only if bootable to USB. I only have the newest project that will 
 JB> do that here, AFAICT.

Doesn't matter but that is a nice feature for sure.  It already saved both me
and the neighbour's hide when screwing up an install and being able to boot a
minimal system to make quick repairs.  Paul definetly sees the light now and
like you didn't fully appreciate the beauty until it became mission critical. 
Now he listens ... sort of.  He was just here complaining about kernel headers.
 Kids these days eh?

 JB> I've poked into some of the Linux NGs, and was astonished at the 
 JB> volume of "RH rules" and "Deb users make better lovers" posts. Of 
 JB> course, Knoppix, Mepis, ubunto, bla-bla-bla always gets mentioned by 
 JB> the new converts. SuSE never seems to be mentioned much, unless the 
 JB> briefcase bunch start talking about corporate issues.

Right.  It used to be Mandrake not that long ago but I don't hear as much from
those people much these days.  Debian and derivatives have been steady over the
years.  RedHat seems to be far less popular these days.

 JB> You were the two customizing antennae for them, right?

Paul.  He plans to pick that up again soon.

 JB> apart a microwave oven for some real power? <Holding breath>

No.  Microwaves are for popcorn.

 JB> I guess I could try to carve them off the MB to save some shipping $. 
 JB> I only have one AAA Adaptec expansion card, but I'm thinking it will 
 JB> be much better behaved than the ones that came with the Dell towers.

It's okay.  I have a couple pci cards if I need them.  I lack scsi drives since
I sent the array to Shawnigan Lake.  I have enough drives.

 JB> I haven't tried to sell my second case here, but if there's no 
 JB> takers, you'd be welcome to it. Shipping alone, might cost close to a 
 JB> hun., though.

I don't really need any at the moment.  Been keeping an eye open lately waiting
for prices to drop.  Shouldn't be too much longer.

 JB> Sometimes at auction, I just wonder if everyone fell asleep, and 
 JB> other times, I wish *I* was asleep.

Yeah.  I hear you.

 JB> Sometime, I think my Aunty Olga has the best life of us all. Who's to 
 JB> say, eh?

I had an Aunt Olga.  Maybe the same one?  ;-)

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.2.0
 * Origin: The Pointy Stick Society XXV - Almost there (1:140/13.1)