-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 CA> Ever run across the BOFH files?

 Nope, not a clue.
 
 WC> When I screwed up yesterday overwritting the DOS FAT my
 WC> three Linux partitions were unaffected. Everything is back
 WC> now except I need to snag the Multimail reader for Linux,
 WC> already got ATP.

 CA> I'm really curious about this "overwriting the DOS FAT" thing.
 CA> I don't want to embarass you but frankly I could use a good
 CA> laugh right about now. ;-)

 Well... I've always known intuitively that to 
 cp filename /hda1 would likely be a VERY bad thing to do.
 Yesterday in my haste I did exactly that and Linux 
 faithfully obeyed and copied the file to the root of C
 and when I say root I mean deep down root ;-)
 Splat.
 I've always mounted /dev/hda1 /mnt before but for some reason
 tired and in haste...
 Funny now that I think about it in my exposure to Linux
 no-one has mentioned this hazard.
 Immediately after this stupid move I did a shutdown and reboot
 expecting what I got, invalid media.
 
 WC> Have you heard of Abiword (word processor) and the Linux
 WC> (Dillo) browser?

 CA> Yes, to both. Alan Zisman mentioned Abiword recently and said
 CA> it was his preference but incompatible with his associates.
 CA> Dillo I recall but no details.

 I haven't checked it out extensively either just bookmarked the web 
 page. Interesting stuff to be found there including a relatively small
 Redhat install with most goodies anyone would want.
 The web page claims Dillo uses less than 900K RAM
 and the screenshots are very impressive, more than enough to dump
 Netscape in favor of. The author claims it's almost entirely
 original code.

 CA> From what Steven D. is saying the size of the actual browser's
 CA> binary is often the tip of an iceberg. Some small browser
 CA> binaries require HUGE libaries of support files. :-\

Oh sure, even the MultiMail OLR download mentioned needing
Slackware 3.0 libc5.tgz to function.
 
 WC> Wish I'd had a copy of my FAT for recovery yesterday. Still
 WC> only a few hours to restore most everything.

 CA> You really must reveal more details about how this was done.

 Colorado tape backup took care of the DOS partition for the most 
 part and a good memory allowed me to retrieve everything else,
 well that and previously tried radical operations.
 See I've blasted the MBR before and having written down the 
 starting and ending numbers of each partition recovered from
 that but had not done so on this occassion sooo...
 I put in my installation boot and root disks from which I
 installed my old Slackware release off a RAMDRIVE file
 system much like Basic Linux 1.7 and did an fdisk -l
 revealing that the Linux partitions were untouched.
 I tried Linux fdisk'ing primary partition 1 primary 
 type 6 DOS >= 32 meg and setting that partition as bootable 
 however the file was larger than just the MBR so ....
 I formatted C and DOS 5.0's format doesn't recognize
 Linux, on went the Colorado tape drive which I've 4 identical
 backup tapes of C for from last November.
 Believe it or not I even DOS fdisked the drive and deleted
 partition 1 primary, this _did_
 see the old drive and having seen that I went right back
 to ramdrive Linux and re-established the start and end
 points of the partitions _than_ formatted just that partition
 DOS could see up to block 435. Linux owns 436 - 768 in
 three partitions. It really only took a second to mess
 up and maybe 5 hours to retrieve everything, 22 minutes tape
 and the rest retrieving Linux packages off the net.
 
 WC> Lost some of my scantilly clad, nude, brunette JPG's
 WC> however :-(

 CA> I visit the 'page3' girls when the need for a battery charge
 CA> hits me.

 Haven't really looked at my collection much as A
 it ain't the real thing and B I'm sorta out of circulation
 and it's a kind of a tease.
 
 WC> Gotta drop that newsgroup too because there a lot of
 WC> _lolita_ crap being dropped in there

 CA> At the age of 40 or so I went, for the last time, into nudey
 CA> bar. You know how hard it gets to determine the age of young
 CA> people once you get past a certain age? I couldn't convince
 CA> myself that these 'ladies' were anything but children and I
 CA> became embarassed to be there and left never to return. Friends
 CA> have insisted that they probably _were_ underage in that
 CA> particular establishment but I won't go anymore, it was too
 CA> uncomfortable for me.

Yeah, I really don't look at young stuff either and by that I
mean just 7 years younger than I, well sometimes a brief
glance but absolutely nothing under 18.
last time I went into such an esablishment was 15 years ago,
Tanga Lounge in Tampa.

 WC> as well as some very determined spammers with an AI program
 WC> generating random text messages and spamming the newsgroup.

 CA> My news-server won't even allow me to cross-post in more than 3
 CA> groups. If the servers were setup properly this couldn't happen.

Think Verizon :-(
You know when it was GTE it didn't require authorization
for SMTP and I recall them sending me an e-mail to the effect
that would be soon be the case after they changed their name
to Verizon thus leading to my current 
Linux SMTP problem that would otherwise not exist.

 CA> Tape was necessary when there were no affordable alternatives.
 CA> QIC tape is, however, not entirely dependable based on my
 CA> experiences using it.

Alternatives cost and I don't have assets.
I _was_ having trouble with the drive but a cotton swab dipped
in alcohol fixed that. I still don't trust the old tapes
either thus four identical copies.

 CA> OS9 wasn't competing with any other OS and therefore could move
 CA> in any direction the users wanted it to. Linux seems locked
 CA> into a contest with Windows and by doing so is destined to
 CA> become another 'Windows' if it hasn't already accomplished that
 CA> feat in recent distributions. Knoppix claims to have 2000 files
 CA> on the CD and I think 200 software applications? I seriously
 CA> doubt I would ever _want_ 200 applications. Apparently everything
 CA> on the CD is compressed?  Only 24 hours in a day.

I think the Redhat release mentioned on a web page I tripped
across mentioned having both Abiword and Dillo.
This is available for download by someone that hacked the relatively 
small footprint, 340 Meg or so install. 
Basic Linux doesn't appear to mind at all
that I used the boot.bat, modified to reflect /hda2 instead
of ramdrive and the 1.8 image file.
I've yet to reinstall the ramdrive version but may well do 
so to try some stuff out, recreate and format /hda2 perhaps
a bit larger as I didn't reinstall everything on the tape.
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