Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
Le 09/04/2018 à 08:30, Steve Litt a écrit : On Fri, 6 Apr 2018 08:35:20 +0200 Didier Kryn wrote: Le 06/04/2018 à 03:33, Steve Litt a écrit : SD cards (not even speaking of micro-SD) have a higher density and can be put in readonly mode. They are certainly more expensive, but re-usable. Reusable isn't always a plus. If I had a nickel for every reusable backup I saw prematurely reused. Floppies, tapes, zip drives, external hard drives, thumb drives, they're all way too likely to "oops, I just backed up over my latest backup, and the backup didn't take. Let me remind you that the subject was not archiving, but installing an OS from a removable medium. CDs and DVDs have several different standards and most drives cannot read all of them. Show me any consumer optical drive that can't read iso9660, no Joliet, No Rock Ridge, no El Torito, just iso9660 with 8.3 filenames (easy to do if the files are really inside .tgz's. One can argue about the convenience of .tgz's on a backup medium, but it works very well at making your old stuff available at restoration. Recently I burned a DVD with Devuan-ASCII installer on an HP desktop and was unable t read it on a Dell Poweredge server. I had also burned a 700GB CDROM on the same machine with the netinst and couldn't read it either on the Poweredge. I ended up buying an SD-USB adapter and reusing an SD card I had in my bag to make the install. I've also experienced that CDs written on a drive couldn't be read from another one and vice-versa. Drives wear out, and often the first thing to go is their interoperability with others. If you're using a drive to record important stuff, don't let it get more than 3 years old. They're cheap. CDs and DVDs are OK for archiving data for a few years; I don't trust them for longer. Except for paper, what COULD you trust for more than a few years? Thumbdrives? Below is a temptative list of archiving supports sorted by decreasing durability and, decreasing density: 1: marble or other hard stone 2: paper 3: microfilm 4: SAS hard disks 5: other types of hard disks 6: optical disks I don't know yet where to put the SSD "disks" and the SD cards. It is clear that these media are also sorted by inreasing density - the more dense the medium, the less durable. At first sight, it's a pitty that we haven't a medium offering both high durability and high density. But, considering the infinite amount of junk the bureaucracy is able to produce - only limited by the storage capacity - I find fortunate that it autodestroys. Didier ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Fri, 6 Apr 2018 08:35:20 +0200 Didier Kryn wrote: > Le 06/04/2018 à 03:33, Steve Litt a écrit : > SD cards (not even speaking of micro-SD) have a higher density > and can be put in readonly mode. They are certainly more expensive, > but re-usable. Reusable isn't always a plus. If I had a nickel for every reusable backup I saw prematurely reused. Floppies, tapes, zip drives, external hard drives, thumb drives, they're all way too likely to "oops, I just backed up over my latest backup, and the backup didn't take. And if you're reusing media for anything important, you need to create and stick to standards for when you consider them too old and crush them and throw them out. > CDs and DVDs have several different standards and most drives > cannot read all of them. Show me any consumer optical drive that can't read iso9660, no Joliet, No Rock Ridge, no El Torito, just iso9660 with 8.3 filenames (easy to do if the files are really inside .tgz's. One can argue about the convenience of .tgz's on a backup medium, but it works very well at making your old stuff available at restoration. > I've also experienced that CDs written on a > drive couldn't be read from another one and vice-versa. Drives wear out, and often the first thing to go is their interoperability with others. If you're using a drive to record important stuff, don't let it get more than 3 years old. They're cheap. > CDs and DVDs > are OK for archiving data for a few years; I don't trust them for > longer. Except for paper, what COULD you trust for more than a few years? Thumbdrives? Give me a fantastic break, those suckers have self-destructed on me in record numbers, ESPECIALLY when left in that windows format they come in. Tape? Well, maybe if you recorded it on a $10K machine and kept it in metal cans in climate control. External hard disks? Those things are meant to be kept running, and from what I hear if you rarely use them, they can get stuck kind of like those old Mazda rotary engines. Let's talk about "a few years": http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201408/201408.htm#he_who_laughs_last I had 16 year old CDROM backups that were provably bit for bit the same as I recorded them. > > For what concerns an installer, a few weeks is longer than what > you need and there's nothing precious. Better use an USB stick or an > SD card if you can download the content from the Internet. > > I think CDs are mostly good for usages in which it matters that > the support is inexpensive, like commercial videos. But also, of > course, when nothing else is available. I go the opposite way. I use thumb drives for unimportant stuff I'm storing for a few weeks, or for that sneakernet we all deny ever doing. As bootable thumb drives, it's also nice that you can store stuff like drivers on them so as to not do tons of work, over and over again, when you reboot. But if I want to keep something for a long time, and that thing's important, and especially if it's important it not get into anybody else's hands, I go optical every time. SteveT Steve Litt April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
Am Freitag, 6. April 2018 schrieb Didier Kryn: > SD cards (not even speaking of micro-SD) have a higher density and > can be put in readonly mode. They are certainly more expensive, but > re-usable. How do you effectively do so? That little "switch" you find on some cards is a hint for the driver, nothing more. Ok, it's hard on PCs to circumvent this, but if you have an arduino on your hand ... > > Didier > > > ___ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng > -- Please do not email me anything that you are not comfortable also sharing with the NSA, CIA ... ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
Le 06/04/2018 à 03:33, Steve Litt a écrit : Spinning optical media has s many advantages: * Easy to label. * Easy and dense to store. * Read only: No urge to cannibalize backups. * Cheap as hell. * Lasts decades if kept in a box in air conditioned room. * Boots more reliably than thumb drives. * More difficult to lose or confuse with others. Thumb drives are nice for temporary storage, and with USB3 maybe even overflow storage, but AFAIK they can't be put in a read-only state, so if you're booting from them, you're never really sure what's on them. I dare anyone to make a virus to infect an already recorded and finished DVD. SD cards (not even speaking of micro-SD) have a higher density and can be put in readonly mode. They are certainly more expensive, but re-usable. CDs and DVDs have several different standards and most drives cannot read all of them. I've also experienced that CDs written on a drive couldn't be read from another one and vice-versa. CDs and DVDs are OK for archiving data for a few years; I don't trust them for longer. For what concerns an installer, a few weeks is longer than what you need and there's nothing precious. Better use an USB stick or an SD card if you can download the content from the Internet. I think CDs are mostly good for usages in which it matters that the support is inexpensive, like commercial videos. But also, of course, when nothing else is available. Didier ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 13:31:08 +0200 Adam Borowski wrote: > On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 11:09:47AM +0100, ael wrote: > You can get new 68080 chips, too. Ah, sarcasm involving the Appeal to Novelty fallacy. Remind me again, where have I heard that before? [snip] > What I'm arguing here, though, is that new development shouldn't > _optimize_ for musty old hardware. For example, if I had the > non-trivial amount of tuits it would take to reimplement the > installer, it'd have a minimal set of debs for the base system > (unless you download an off-line big image), use a writeable > filesystem instead of iso9660, As an elder in the Church of the Known State, I appreciate that what's on the iso9660 is exactly what I put on it: Nothing more, nothing less. For the same religious reasons, I prefer a data storage that's plainly marked as to what it is, without using a microscope to read it. SteveT Steve Litt April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 11:09:47 +0100 ael wrote: > Sorry, but some current and next generation laptops still have > CD/DVD/BD drives. I would hope so. > You do seem to have a very narrow view of the > diversity of hardware currently being manufactured and sold. I am > typing this on a Clevo laptop purchased (without operating system, so > linux friendly) within the last couple of years. This and the current > revision has the usual CD/DVD drive. Spinning optical media has s many advantages: * Easy to label. * Easy and dense to store. * Read only: No urge to cannibalize backups. * Cheap as hell. * Lasts decades if kept in a box in air conditioned room. * Boots more reliably than thumb drives. * More difficult to lose or confuse with others. Thumb drives are nice for temporary storage, and with USB3 maybe even overflow storage, but AFAIK they can't be put in a read-only state, so if you're booting from them, you're never really sure what's on them. I dare anyone to make a virus to infect an already recorded and finished DVD. SteveT Steve Litt April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 08:28:38AM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote: > Le 05/04/2018 à 04:20, Hendrik Boom a écrit : > >On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 03:40:55AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > >>On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > >>>I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > >>>will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. > >>Ascii and Jessie are Stretch and Jessie respectively, both of which have CD > >>as the _primary_ install method (USB storage being just dumb wasteful > >>emulation that doesn't allow any goodies a writeable medium would allow). > >>There are no plans to change this for Buster, either. > >> > >>On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD > >>drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few > >>drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative > >>to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already > >>rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > >> > >>>My machine's USB has died. > >>Then how do you attach peripherals? New boxes don't tend to come with a > >>PS2 port anymore. > >It's an old machine with a PS2 port. I've been planning to replace it > >with a modern system, but I can't bring myself to buy a machine with > >malware known to be built into the hardware. > > > >That leaves very slim pickings. > > > I guess you can buy some PCI-USB interface and plug it in. No free PCI slots left ... I guess it would be possible to disconnect my second ethernet port while installing... I'm just making sure I have a recovery mode in case I screw up and make my machine unbootable during creative :-) maintenance. -- hendrik. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 11:09:47AM +0100, ael wrote: > On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 03:40:55AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > > On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD > > drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few > > drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative > > to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already > > rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > > > > > My machine's USB has died. > > > > Unless your machine is a laptop, in which case you already have a keyboard > > and a bad pointing device, but have no way to attach a CD drive even if you > > wanted. > > Sorry, but some current and next generation laptops still have CD/DVD/BD > drives. You do seem to have a very narrow view of the diversity of > hardware currently being manufactured and sold. I am typing this on a > Clevo laptop purchased (without operating system, so linux friendly) > within the last couple of years. This and the current revision has > the usual CD/DVD drive. You can get new 68080 chips, too. I'm not advocating for dropping support for CD -- heck, old x86 gear most of which did have a CD drive are more popular than all other architectures together (keyboardless ARM excluded, obviously -- it rarely can run De??an well). Guess who's preaching "legacy-less boot"? As for existing popular hardware, the code already exists and works, keeping it afloat is a matter of running a test from time to time. As long as someone steps up to do the maintenace, dropping support would be bad. What I'm arguing here, though, is that new development shouldn't _optimize_ for musty old hardware. For example, if I had the non-trivial amount of tuits it would take to reimplement the installer, it'd have a minimal set of debs for the base system (unless you download an off-line big image), use a writeable filesystem instead of iso9660, save your install choices (for easy-to-use convenient preseeding) and cache all debs you download while installing, thus using the very minimal bandwidth whether you install a single machine or hundred, small servers or newest BloatDE. What this has to CDs? Note that if you burn such an install image to a CD, such a filesystem (I'd pick f2fs but ext4 would work too) will still work fine if the media is non-writeable. It'd be a notch less effective than iso9660 which was designed for CDs, but other than missing on new goodies (auto-preseeding and apt cache), you'll still be fine, just like with current installer. Another such possible improvement would be using all cores the system has (last year, I shopped for the very cheapest SoC that has local storage, ethernet and USB, and the smallest I could get locally had 4 cores, 512MB ram) -- note that any userspace code that can run in parallel will still work perfectly on uniprocessor. So it'd be optimizing for modern but 100% supporting legacy. Etc, etc. Meow! -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ ... what's the frequency of that 5V DC? ⠈⠳⣄ ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 03:40:55AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > > I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > > will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. > > > On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD > drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few > drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative > to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already > rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > > > My machine's USB has died. > > Unless your machine is a laptop, in which case you already have a keyboard > and a bad pointing device, but have no way to attach a CD drive even if you > wanted. Sorry, but some current and next generation laptops still have CD/DVD/BD drives. You do seem to have a very narrow view of the diversity of hardware currently being manufactured and sold. I am typing this on a Clevo laptop purchased (without operating system, so linux friendly) within the last couple of years. This and the current revision has the usual CD/DVD drive. ael ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. > > My machine's USB has died. > Why should we disable cdroms? And to fix what exactly? We are actually considering distributing the installer on *more* media types rather than less, including 80-cols punched cards, 1" punched tapes, 8" floppy disks, and QIC cartridges, respectively targeted at KDE/XFCE installations, *box desktops, light-WM setups, and CLI-only server configurations :P HND KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ] signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
Le 05/04/2018 à 04:20, Hendrik Boom a écrit : On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 03:40:55AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. Ascii and Jessie are Stretch and Jessie respectively, both of which have CD as the _primary_ install method (USB storage being just dumb wasteful emulation that doesn't allow any goodies a writeable medium would allow). There are no plans to change this for Buster, either. On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already rare and will become unheard of very shortly. My machine's USB has died. Then how do you attach peripherals? New boxes don't tend to come with a PS2 port anymore. It's an old machine with a PS2 port. I've been planning to replace it with a modern system, but I can't bring myself to buy a machine with malware known to be built into the hardware. That leaves very slim pickings. I guess you can buy some PCI-USB interface and plug it in. Didier ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
Quoting Hendrik Boom (hend...@topoi.pooq.com):
> It's an old machine with a PS2 port.
At a guess, isn't the CD-ROM optical drive of which you speak an ATAPI
drive on a PATA ('IDE') chain?
If so, distro support requires installation kernel support for your
motherboard PATA chipset and ATAPI, which is a pretty minimal
requirement, IMO. Suggestion: Try and see.
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Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 03:40:55AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > > I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > > will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. > > Ascii and Jessie are Stretch and Jessie respectively, both of which have CD > as the _primary_ install method (USB storage being just dumb wasteful > emulation that doesn't allow any goodies a writeable medium would allow). > There are no plans to change this for Buster, either. > > On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD > drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few > drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative > to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already > rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > > > My machine's USB has died. > > Then how do you attach peripherals? New boxes don't tend to come with a > PS2 port anymore. It's an old machine with a PS2 port. I've been planning to replace it with a modern system, but I can't bring myself to buy a machine with malware known to be built into the hardware. That leaves very slim pickings. -- hendrik ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
In the spirit of Devuan's going back to the old, good way of doing things, you may only use phonograph records. On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 6:40 PM, Adam Borowski wrote: > On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > > I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > > will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. > > Ascii and Jessie are Stretch and Jessie respectively, both of which have CD > as the _primary_ install method (USB storage being just dumb wasteful > emulation that doesn't allow any goodies a writeable medium would allow). > There are no plans to change this for Buster, either. > > On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD > drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few > drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative > to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already > rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > > > My machine's USB has died. > > Then how do you attach peripherals? New boxes don't tend to come with a > PS2 port anymore. > > Unless your machine is a laptop, in which case you already have a keyboard > and a bad pointing device, but have no way to attach a CD drive even if you > wanted. > > > Meow! > -- > ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ > ⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ > ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ ... what's the frequency of that 5V DC? > ⠈⠳⣄ > ___ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng > ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] I hope one *can* use a CDROM?
On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 08:06:10PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote: > I hope fixing this doesn't disable the CDROM and that ascii or jessie > will still install from a CDROM when you *have* a CDROM. Ascii and Jessie are Stretch and Jessie respectively, both of which have CD as the _primary_ install method (USB storage being just dumb wasteful emulation that doesn't allow any goodies a writeable medium would allow). There are no plans to change this for Buster, either. On the other hand, I for one haven't owned a machine equipped with a CD drive in like a decade (and DVD or BD: never), although I do have a few drives in the junk pile, briefly attached one last year to help a relative to sort through old stuff. CD/DVD/BD drives are hardware that's already rare and will become unheard of very shortly. > My machine's USB has died. Then how do you attach peripherals? New boxes don't tend to come with a PS2 port anymore. Unless your machine is a laptop, in which case you already have a keyboard and a bad pointing device, but have no way to attach a CD drive even if you wanted. Meow! -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ ... what's the frequency of that 5V DC? ⠈⠳⣄ ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
