Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au!news.apana.org.au!cantor.edge.net.au!news.teragen.com.au!news.access.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.radio.cz!CESspool!news.apfel.de!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Free BSD trouble Date: 1 Feb 1997 01:25:55 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 56 Message-ID: <5cu633$6fc@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <32EAF919.17A0@neosoft.com> <5cflae$gal@bonkers.taronga.com> <5cpfsk$fqk@uuneo.neosoft.com> <5cq569$i8f@bonkers.taronga.com> <5crcho$6tt@uuneo.neosoft.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34897 conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier) wrote: > Hmmm. Hadn't thought of trying that. Believe me, in the desperate state I > was in the other day I was trying everything I could think of. The fixit > floppy is practically undocumented, though. It's a plain minimal Unix filesystem. What sort of documents do you expect for it? > I may still give it a shot, but not right away. It was pretty depressing > losing so much of my root slice just like *that*. I hate to say it, but that's what backups are for. Sure, Winxxx people seem to like re-installing all over the place, and never make backups. :-) [*] OTOH, i never involunteerely reinstalled a Unix machine yet, i always enjoyed using the backups. [*] Some Windows convert recently told me that he's now starting to seriously miss his weekly Windows reinstallation procedure. ;-) > Shame on me for having no backups (no tape drive, hate doing floppy > backups). Well, yes, that's your real problem. You tried to save a few bucks at the wrong corner. While you've apparently bought enough disks to have 3 GB left for Win now, and apparently also enough power to heat up a reasonable CPU that would even start up Windows 95 :-), you have tried to save money where it isn't really appropriate: to save some 50 or so dollars, you bought something of the cheapest ATAPI CDs, something that even requires a custom driver under Windows since the vendor didn't think he should adhere to something roughly resembling a standard. And, you tried to save money at the corner where you should never try saving it: a decent backup system. Sure, buying another Gig of hard disk capacity is cheap. Making sure you've got the data available even in the worst case is no longer cheap. Before you're going to buy your next Gig of disk space: get a suitable tape drive. Even a good ol' Archive Viper 150 will do better than nothing. There's dump(8), and it does a reasonable job in incremental backups. This way, do a full backup once every six months (will take a few hours), and do incremental backups whenever appropriate. Don't argue that the SCSI controller is too expensive: a SymBios controller runs at less than US$ 100, and performs very well. (Mine drives a `make world' right now while i'm writing this.) The difference between a good IDE disk and the same SCSI disk is not big, likewise for a good CD-ROM drive. Sure, SCSI manufacturers *have* to adhere to a standard, they can't get away with a ``custom driver'', not even under Windows. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)