> Ok, but,
>
> (1) No-one but you has reported it,
>
> (2) I don't have the environment to do ***ANYTHING*** about it,
> including recreate it or make any guesses about it,
> (3) Your symptoms are STILL consistent with my other guesses, and I
> STILL want you to do some work with things like "fdisk -l" and
> "e2fsck" to come up with some useful detail. You current guess
> is both un-testable and contrary to my intuition and experience
> as to the likely causes of your problem.
> So, again, please run "fdisk -l" from tomsrtbt and send me the output,
> then try "e2fsck" from tomsrtbt, then we'll talk about using other tools
> to figure it out. Until then:
tune2fs -l on the affected filesystem might be more useful.
> **************************************************************************
> * I recommend tomsrtbt users not use the "red had" (?sp) distribution, *
> * and stick to one of the main stream distributions such as SlackWare, *
> * DebIan, SuSE, ManDrake, etc., if tomsrtbt isn't enough. There is no *
> * need to shoot yourself in the foot by installing some commercially *
> * forked thing from someone who dreams up a package format like ".RPM" *
> * which required special binary formats and tools just to make life *
> * difficult and be proprietary. Tom recommends, in fact, that you skip *
> * ALL this stuff and just "Use the source, Luke". Join the ranks of the *
> * distribution-free! Also, ***Please, as noted in the FAQ, don't send *
> * me problems specific to "RedHad", I don't have it, I've never run it, *
> * I don't care about it, I don't support it, and the most I'll do for *
> * it is pass on SOLUTIONS submitted by users. Thanks. PS, I don't own *
> * any stock in RHAT or its competitors, this opinion is impartial. *
> **************************************************************************
> -Tom
Err ... Tom? S.u.S.E., Mandrake and other "mainstream"
Linux distributions use RPM format and the rpm command.
Debian has its own packaging format and suite of
commands. Mandrake is a fork from the Red Hat
distribution.
Also the .RPM format and the suite of rpm tools are not
"proprietary" --- they are under the GPL and have been
ported to several forms of UNIX (including Solaris and
HP-UX).
RPM and Debian's dpkg/APT system don't make
things "more difficult" for most people. They serve a
very useful purpose and allow sysadmins to manage many
more packages and machines than they could otherwise
handle. For sysadmins to "scale" to modern jobs with
hundreds of packages deployed on hundreds or thousands of
systems they have to use robust package management tools.
While they could each write their own ad hoc scripts,
possibly using cfengine, et al or they can use one of the
sets of free tools provided by Red Hat (and others) or
the Debian team.
I'm not trying to be a Red Hat apologist here. (I'm
migrating towards Debian, personally). I don't have any
RH stock, either. It just seems that your criticisms
here are not cogent.
At the same time I can certainly see that you are getting
sick of RH "weenies" mailing you questions that are
not related to your work and interests. I call them
"weenies" because they aren't willing to look around and
figure out just where they should send their questions.
I can sympathize.
I get dozens of e-mails every month posing questions about
Microsoft products. They find messages associated with "The
Answer Guy" and don't bother to look at the context (the web
site) to find that it's "The Answer Guy" for the Linux
Gazette! Once every couple of months I'll pick one and
lambast it in public, either to vent or to discourage some
of the ones that might get and read excerpts from a few
Yahoo! search hits.
BTW: Thanks once again for the RTBT. We love it. I
pass copies out at all the classes I teach for Linuxcare and
point people to the web site so they can look at the many
other floppy based micro-disties.
--
Jim Dennis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linuxcare: Linux Corporate Support Team: http://www.linuxcare.com
