KCLUG

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Update: Using memory key as boot directory
by Leo Mauler 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

I just wanted to let everyone know that the Compaq PC I was going to boot using a USB memory key, turns out not to support USB booting. I was a couple of numbers off on the Compaq serial number. Fortunately, I've discovered an alternative: Compact Flash cards. Seems you can buy a Compact Flash interface card which attaches like a regular expansion card to your computer. On one end you plug in a Compact Flash card, and on the other end you plug in a regular IDE cable. The expansion card doesn't use a PCI slot. The card has jumpers to select Master/Slave (no Cable Select I'm afraid) and you power it using a regular floppy power connector. Since /boot can fit into 50MB or less, I'm going to make a 64MB Compact Flash card into the boot directory. This will let me use an 80GB hard drive in a computer which has a 64GB hard drive limit BIOS. This did get me to thinking about the whole concept of putting huge hard drives into very old computers, as Compact Flash completely masquerades as IDE. Even if the system doesn't boot USB, it will almost certainly boot CF on an adapter. This makes it a lot easier to bring old hardware back into circulation with larger new hard drives: instead of a 10 year old 1GB hard drive for a /boot directory, you can use a 1 year old CF Card. I'm going to try booting from a CF Card on my old laptop one of these days: it has an 8.4GB limit and I have this nice 10GB laptop hard drive lying around, as well as a PCMCIA CF Card adapter. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&…

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Challenger
by Earle Beason 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

Eerily enough..... Your correct, it does share memory, and a good portion of it. As for upgrading it, I got it this thing in the scarp pile, did enough cleaning and basic troubleshooting to get it operating. I only have plans to use it to teach myself the basic of various Linux systems. My goal is to create an Office document, watch a DVD, play an MP3, get wireless accesss to the Internet on each distro and the scratch it and go to the next distro. It more of a learning toy then a functional computer for whatever it is I do. I have Fedora 7 on my tower that I becoming more and more inclined to use as I escape the clutches from Microsoft. My old tower is starting to look more like Linux bait ever day, I have some programs I haven't figured out how to run on the Linux box. I probably wait until Microsoft hamstrings the XP program in order to force me to go to Vista. The Dell Laptop I have will keep the Microsoft program on until my warranty expires then, It going Linux the next day Good book to read, should be the lug mantra http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg246380.html I suspect that the Thinkpad laptop is using shared video memory with system RAM. You might be able to reduce the amount of shared video RAM in the BIOS to allow the install to complete. Additionally, adding system RAM would be a good idea to enhance system performance especially for Fedora Core 6 or Fedora Core 7. A smaller footprint distro might also be a workable solution as described below in the prevoius post. I hope this helps. Thanks, Jeffrey A. McCright, A+ 816-210-3107

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Question-Challenger
by Earle Beason 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

I got my hands an a Pentium 3. 256Megs of memory, Ibm think pad, I can't upload Fedora 6 or 7 due to lack of resource. I would like to use this for four things, 1 listing to MP3, 2, watching DVDs, 3 office work with the standard Open Office. and 4 Internet accesss using a wireless. It has a fair sized hard drive considering it's age, Like 20G. I am clueless on what to do with this project, at this moment and I am open to options so for anyone with some spare time who can offer ideas and thoughts.

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Re: Kclug Digest, Vol 36, Issue 3
by Earle Beason 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

The Laptop itself is on the skits, and I suspect has a very short life ahead of it, the previous owners were not nice with it.(bad spots on the LCD, the soda that was dumped on it, missing hard drive/memory, cracked case) It was one of those "Neat! a laptop in the scrap pile, wonder what can I do with it" type of situations. Fedora 5 will load, Fedora 6 runs in to a memory error, Fedora 7 just requires to much memory, Suse 10.2 loaded nicely, and worked well on the laptop, but it didn't work well with me. Slackware was horrible, don't know what I did wrong yet, Ubuntu was bloody slow. Knoppix worked, I honestly could have staid with that. I picked up Xandross and was going to give that a wack and the Puppy sounds like fun. I ran out of ideas to try with this laptop and needed fresh inputs Yup, this Laptop going to be the whored out to the distro and pay for my Linux Education and good old Hard Knocks University > >

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meeting on indep. day?
by David Nicol 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

Is the regularly schedld kclug meeting on or off, what with the holiday? -- You can be a coffee achiever You can sit around the house and watch Leave It To Beaver The future's up to you So what you gonna do

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Why wouldn't Fedora work again?
by cragos＠gmail.com 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

I'm not a Red Hat-guy, but I'm hard pressed to see a reason why Fedora wouldn't work on this machine. A recent build of Debian worked just fine on my ~300mhz G3 with similar specs until its recent demise. Try installing FC7 or a recent build of Ubuntu and try it out - It'd probably work just fine with a light weight WM like XFCE, Icebox, or Blackbox. That said, if you'd be happy enough with a minimal distro, DSL-N or Puppy Linux would probably get the job done. DeLi doesn't meet your requirements out of the box as it lacks native OpenOffice support. -Sean

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Using USB memory key as boot directory for older computer?
by Leo Mauler 01 Jul '07

01 Jul '07

I have found a lot of articles on installing an entire Linux distribution onto a USB memory key. What I want to do is install Linux on an older computer, with an 80GB hard drive, but the BIOS doesn't like hard drives bigger than 64GB. The computer is one of those systems built to fit inside a compact case, so there is only room for one hard drive inside the case. As you know, Linux ignores the BIOS, so once it boots any size hard drive is okay. In ye olden days I'd use a floppy to boot the computer, but I'd much rather use a 64MB memory key for /boot so that I can use modern kernels. The computer itself will boot from a USB device. I have all of the parts I've mentioned and not enough money to buy anything else. Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux installation? I'm still deciding whether to use Ubuntu or Debian, though I am leaning towards Ubuntu. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/

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An OLD but 'interesting' article
by Julie 29 Jun '07

29 Jun '07

Hi, I stumbled upon this and got me to wondering if it's not tied to some of the more recents shenanegans of M$ ...and even AT&T. Wahdooya THINK??? AT&T looks into closing its Windows http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5398950.html --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.

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Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives
by Billy Crook 27 Jun '07

27 Jun '07

I think they should lable hard drives with their halflife. On 6/26/07, Geoffrion, Ron P [IT] <Ron.Geoffrion(a)sprint.com> wrote: > > MTBF is a measure of certainty. > > > Thanks, > > Ron Geoffrion > 913.488.7664 > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* kclug-bounces(a)kclug.org [mailto:[email protected]] *On > Behalf Of *Billy Crook > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:45 AM > *To:* Jonathan Hutchins > *Cc:* kclug(a)kclug.org > *Subject:* Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives > > There's nothing quite as reassuring as uncertainty. > > On 6/26/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins(a)tarcanfel.org > wrote: > > > > I think the only thing that stress testing a drive would do would be to > > move > > it closer to it's failure point. Either that will be early, in which > > case it > > might possibly happen while testing, not quite as early, in which case > > it > > will happen just after installation instead of a week after > > installation, or > > it will be later in the drive's life - in which case it will just happen > > a > > bit sooner than it would have. > > > > About the only use I can see for this would bet to stress test a few > > examples > > of a certain model of a drive to failure, and see what the MTBF is. > > > > There are also environmental factors to consider. Testing the drive in > > an > > open, bench-configured computer really doesn't give you any information > > about > > how it will perform in a closed case sandwiched between two other hot > > drives. > > This is one reason that some manufacturer's well intentioned MTBF > > estimates > > are inaccurate. > > > > Frankly, throwing it off a high building seems just as informative. > > > > If you can write a pattern to the drive and it passes fsck, and you can > > repeat > > this two or three times, that is going to be about as good a test as you > > can > > usefully perform. A drive that will function that well is an > > unpredictable > > distance from failure. > > _______________________________________________ > > Kclug mailing list > > Kclug(a)kclug.org > > http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug > > > >

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Even funnier still...
by Julie 26 Jun '07

26 Jun '07

"How to shoot yourself in the foot" by 'bportlock' Pascal - The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot. Delphi -Take a laser cannon and point it at your foot. However be warned that pulling the trigger is liable to result in your entire lower body being vapourised. C - You pull the trigger and the gun fires so rapidly that you empty a whole magazine into your foot. C++ - You can't shoot yourself in the foot, but you can shoot anything derived from a foot. Java - Make a coffee, take out the gun and shoot discrete packets of bullets at your foot in a variety of styles. HTML - Wait for a public gathering, give out your address and announce that anyone wishing to visit may watch in total comfort whilst you shoot your foot. Warn eveyone that speed of performance may be highly variable. Ada - Create several instances of your foot and shoot them all simultaneously. Forth - Foot. Yourself. in the. Shoot. COBOL - Take a 4.5" shell and drop it on your foot smashing your whole lower leg into a bloody pulp. Fortran - Take a front loading musket, ram home the powder and shot and repeatedly pull the trigger until the bloody thing fires. Remember to aim at your foot. SAP - Hire an operating theatre, an expensive surgeon and a professional hitman. Have the hitman shoot you in the foot because you didn't pay all that money to have to do it yourself. The surgeon will then be able to upgrade your foot. RPG - Shoot yourself in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the foot. RPG II - SHTFT. BASIC - Using a toy pistol, shoot at your feet and watch the sucker-tipped bullets bounce off. Your foot will be totally unharmed. VB - Proceed as for Basic but using coloured bullets. Smile during the whole process because it feels so good! Access - The toy pistol provided is too complicated to use so you have to throw the coloured sucker-tipped bullets at yout foot. Performance enhancements are only possible if you buy a bigger gun. OS/2 - You would like to shoot yourself in the foot, but nobody makes ammunition to fit your gun anymore. Assembly - Dig out the ore, smelt the metal and cast a gun, bullet and shell case. Make some gunpowder and fill the shell case and fit the bullet. Point it at your foot and pull the trigger but don't be surprised if it misses and kills someone else. Windows - It is time you had your feet amputated anyway. Nobody uses feet anymore now that Wheels XP is available. ***************************************************** I copied and pasted the above from the comments in this article: "Security Issues" by Paul Murphy http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=899 Have a good laugh! Julie @};- --------------------------------- Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.

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