begin quoting James G. Sack (jim) as of Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 07:51:53PM -0800: > Carl Lowenstein wrote: > > On Jan 31, 2008 7:19 PM, James G. Sack (jim) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I'm setting up a Linux system for a relative, who is a fairly naive > >> computer user (hey!, at least there's not too much MS-culture to undo). > >> > >> I will be doing remote admin, in fact it will look a lot like George > >> Geller's "Eola" system from the last Kplug meeting -- Linux Mint (for > >> the codecs), and all. Primary usage will be low-volume email, websurfing > >> and watching NASA-like videos over DSL 1.5Mbps (I think). Not much else, > >> actually. Maybe eventually graduating to photo-editing and a little > >> document writing .. who knows? > >> > >> One thought I had was to add a small emergency boot partition (/EBP/) in > >> case the main system got really botched up. > >> > >> Q1: is that worth it? (Failure is not an end-of-the-world situation, > >> merely annoying). > >> > >> Q2: if so, what should I use for the EBP? > >> > >> Knoppix? > >> DSL? > >> Ubuntu? > >> -what- > > > > Sort of first things first: how would you boot this Emergency Boot > > Partition remotely? > > Heh! I didn't want to get that fancy. > > My niece, although somewhat computer-naive, is intelligent and capable > of choosing among alternate boot options. > > ==> In case of emergency, boot to XYZ and call jim. > > You do make me ask what I would expect to do from an "EBP", though. I > guess fix grub.conf and fstab, empty full filesystems, run fsck, check > logs? Don't know what else, really -- just seems like cheap use of a > couple GB of disk space.
Could also be "insert this CD, boot, and call Jim." After all, it may be a grub problem, so you'd want that CD around anyway. Back in the bad old days when I suffered in MS hell, I discovered that dual-booting NT in just the way you describe saved me all sorts of pain. So yah, it's probably worth it. Debian seems to be the least pain for the smallest practical system (I haven't tried DSL, however), and like all the rest it can easily acquire tools for doing what needs to be done once you have an Internet connection. -- Truly in troth Why not both? Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
