So far so good...and a story

[travisf]

Hi - I just wanted to drop a message or 2 saying that as a new Linux user, its coming along. A feel good message I suppose. I think as newbies ( i.e. even with experience with the technology,windows dos etc..) we have to remember something that I tell my users at work sometimes when faced with computer challenges: forget that its a computer, look at it objectively and approach from that angle.
I guess at the risk of overstating, learning Linux or anything else should be like that. Its also very easy to get caught up in what appears to be a horrible problem but may amount to nothing.

An example and maybe an assist to others: I had mandrake (mandriva - is it pronounced "dreeva" or something else? ) 10.1 installed on a desktop pc taking up the whole drive and wanted to install Yoper as a dual boot. Ok, so I did a little research. (ain't the net the most amazing library on earth or what ??!). I found out that when installing a second linux, it apparently does not like to resize existing linux partitions when you have this situation. You have to boot up existing o/s as root then unmount the /home partition in order to resize - at least that's one way. And it makes sense when you think about it.
Great so I resized /home, rebooted and it appeared to work but when I logged in as the regular user, I only got a terminal screen. AAhh crap ! Now what. It turns out, that as I was poking around earlier with mandrake boot options, failsafe etc, the last login I did with the regular user was as failsafe... When I logged in again, I forgot about this and thought that it must be something to do with my resizing. Luckily, I didn't spend too much time digging before I realized this, flipped it back to regular linux boot at the login screen and all went ok. Being a lan admin helps with troubleshooting.. The moral of this lonnnngg story I guess is an oldie.. don't assume.. always keep track of what your doing or did. Messing around with Linux is no different. We all forget these simple things sometimes and go on wild goose chases...when the problem is often unrelated or due to simple unfamiliarity with the issue at hand.. Ok.. now back to wasting more work time and trying that Yoper install..
keeping the rubber side down...
Travis.

[eatinglemur]

The moral of this lonnnngg story I guess is an oldie.. don't assume..

Don't I know it...when trying to install NetBSD on my laptop, the system failed to detect my disk geometry correctly. It wouldn't boot from the hard drive until I manually editted the disklabel.

[jamey112]

when installing a 2nd hard drive for FC3, the installer didn't see the new drive. i got frustrated, then remembered i had to change the BIOS to recognize the drive. i felt like a jackass after that.

[geese]

this has nothing to do with computers but i just had to throw it in.

once when parking my car i left the gear on drive. when i came back it could not start (obviously). i must have spent half an hour in panic trying to get it to start. i checked plugs, battery, anything i could think of.

Only after i sat down, took a deep breath, and looked at the gear shift, realized what an a$$ i was.

[GNU_man]

heh heh... i have a very similar story except it _is_ computer related.

One day i had a bum CD-RW, but i didn't want to throw it out until i was super sure i couldn't
salvage it ( it was an expensive 24x CDRW) Anyway, when you put it in the drive it would stall the OS as it tried to read the disk.

I rebooted the computer but forgot that it was still in the drive. When i booted up the bios checked the drives as usual and stalled trying to read it. I was like WTF? my computer won't boot! I started pulling HD cables, disconnecting all my hardware... i thought my MOBO was fried. After sitting down thinking damn! i can't afford this! About 1/2 hour later i remembered to check the CD-ROM drive

[eatinglemur]

I remember leaving a FreeBSD install disc in my drive after the installation had finished, and I thought my installation was broken because every time I rebooted sysinstall loaded! Oy!

[jaboua]

I remember when I first installed slackware... It would'nt boot for some wird reason, after two days or something I found out that LILO was installed to slack's root partition while the GRUB which was there before booting fedora, could'nt find it's files and simply got me into a grub commandline every time and I was like wtf?

[Red Jam]

I remember leaving a FreeBSD install disc in my drive after the installation had finished, and I thought my installation was broken because every time I rebooted sysinstall loaded! Oy!

It's not possible to leave a disc in and keep booting off that on my system, I have to edit my bios settings to boot off a cd-rom.