Hi CHARLES.

08-Dec-03 18:28:00, CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE

 CA> I was referring to the necessity to un-mount devices etc.
 CA> rather than the automated way that Windows (and other OS) do it.

 linux has automount... it works quite well.

 Windows doesn't handle writing to floppies well, if your sharing the disk
 between two PCs it can happen that they forget which disk it is and ask
 for it but can't recognise it.  DOS otoh can corrupt floppies if they are
 changed at the wrong time... (my mother was good at corrupting floppies
 using wordstar )

WC>>> I've used xcopy32 with appropriate switches as well.

CA>>> That might work for FAT partitions but won't do much good
CA>>> for the Linux partitions. :-)

cp -a   works well for that sort of stuff.

WC>> You know that's one of many things I'll have to look into.
WC>> No bother now the man pages and HOW_TO's are on the local
WC>> drive :-)

enougt to keep one busy for weeks. :)

 CA> Linux only installs manpages for installed binaries (each
 CA> archive of a binary includes it's own manpages).  If the binary
 CA> is not installed you will not find it's manpages either.

the HOWTOs are recipies and guidelines for doing common tasks.
(setting up a network. recompiling the kernel. interfacing to
homebuilt hardware, that sort of stuff.  they're not man pages.

I have them here as text files but they're also available in other
formats (basically docbook and anything that can be converted to
troff, html, info, etc...)

WC>> I may yet delve into that imagining software you mentioned
WC>> I've on the FAT 32 partition when I obtain a second drive.

 CA> BooitNG compresses the image files but I would think that Linux
 CA> can also compress the image on-the-fly as it is being created.
 CA> I _think_ the general consensus has been to use 'dd' for
 CA> creating image files for backup purposes from a Linux install?

dunno much about BootitNG  but making a compressed image is as easy as

dd if=some_partition | bzip2 > a_compressed_image

In compressed format the image is not much use, it needs to be uncompressed
and mounted before the files it contains are available.

 -=> Bye <=-

---