Re: scratch cd (We have liftoff!!)

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

I followed the steps, burned a disk, and I now have its version of X-Windows running on my machine right now. So what did I do wrong before? I was burning the CDs as data disks rather than copying the ISO files as *images*. It's a subtle oversight and the software I used wasn't completely clear about that.

Yes, copying an _image_ file is a different operation than just copying a _data_ file, and image files must be copied in certain ways. For one
thing, back in the old DOS days, traditional "backup" files were image files that filled the whole floppy disk and they had to be in a certain place on the floppy and you could not "look" at those image files until they were "restored" someplace else. A regular file (data or executable) can be copied from anywhere to anywhere else (anywhere in empty/unassigned disk space) and even execute it or look at it.

On top of that, I think you can have image files as other than ISO images (eg. old DOS backup files).

OS X makes extensive use of those, particularly for downloading and installing software.

And, yes, you _can_, in DOS, 'backup'
a single small file into a single small image file (taking up less space than available on a floppy), and use 'restore' to get it back again. I have no ideal how your old Mac OS-? did backups, but if there is a GPLed backup for OS-X, then it should be on you Mac. And, I'll bet all of them (if not most) don't do compression (eg. tarballs), either.

OS X has an compression archiving utility that I've often used. The underlying Darwin can also handle tarballs.


It works now, so I must have done something right.

Congrats on the install. Piece of cake once you know where the stones are just under the surface of the water, eh?

Once I got Slax on a live CD, Linux From Scratch was easy, though the first version I tried hanged itself partway through. I finally got a later version running. I made an Ubuntu CD and it appears to be working as well.

At least with the disks, I can try out a distro without having to install it on the HD and possibly messing it up. I have visions of accidentally wiping out the Vista that was installed and then being stuck


Again, thanks to all who responded to my query.


You've still got a long way to go. You've got to see if you can get a terminal screen,

I've launched terminal apps, so a least I've got access to a command line interface from the desktop.

type ntsysv, hit enter, and see if you get a list of
services that are started, and un-check a lot of the default. YOu should be able to hit F1 key and get an explanation and judge from that. If you don't do this and have a power failure without a graceful shutdown, you _might_ be looking at a whole re-install (it happend to me) because, at least in earlier distros one or more cached data would not be written back the the HD as the OS crashes.

I'll keep that in mind.


Don't forget another one: find out how to get into the alternate virtual screens in case your keyboard locks up in whatever screen you happen to be in (however, I don't know if they have changed this, too, since my experiences with some of the earlier distros). Then, learn how to look at the process list, the hidden process list, and identify and kill processes that are "locked" or nonfunctioning. Be aware that if you ever get a process that _can't_ be killed, then it's a _zombie_ process and you are stuck. They all flush, however, as far as I know, on OS shutdown (shutdown -h now [but you should be able to do a shutdown from the GUI]).

I've had that happen in Darwin and with the MkLinux I installed for my older Power Mac.


Watch the bootup process, too, since it is remotely possible that the OS can crash on bootup (happened to me once), and you may have to enter commands before the bootup is complete (it will hang in the middle, but you can still enter commands and the OS will respond to that, depending on the error message).

None of them appear to allow that but I haven't been watching for that, either.


RTFM

Fortunately, there is on-line documentation available for some of the distros I've looked at.



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