Why I Love Linux

Thu May 9 12:21:32 EDT 2002

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What a beautiful recovery doc, most would have pulled the sheets over the
patient's head.&nbsp; Well done and Bravo!! :-) 
 
This is one of the wonderful things about Linux, also one of the 'bad'
things.&nbsp; Linux is strong enough to let you recover from 'user'
mistakes, but will also gladly let you do what you want, even though
sometimes it's not REALLY what you want to do.. but it IS what you told
the system to do. LOL 
 
I did a similar thing when first getting into Linux.&nbsp; Was running on
a 166Mhz system with1.6GB hard drive.. Win95 had 1G of drivespace, and
compressed.. Linux had 600MB of space.&nbsp; Went to mount Windows,
couldn't read anything but screwed up ascii symbols, so I figured I
pooched something.. removed the mount point to start over.. but failed to
'umount' first.. Away went Win95 in the blink of an eye.. to be
reinstalled later that day.&nbsp; Just goes to prove.. Linux CAN remove
M$ from a system in one command.. but M$ still can't see/read/'mess with'
Linux :-)&nbsp; MBR aside of course. 
 
Good news.. looks like I will FINALLY be able to make a meeting.&nbsp;
Work schedule has changed a 'bit' and I now have weekends off.. weekdays
too for that matter.. I left my position at my former employer due to a
conflict of interests.&nbsp; So, anyone have any decent job leads in the
southern tier?? :-) 
 
See ya at the meeting, 
Chaz® 
 
At 03:00 PM 5/8/02 -0400, you wrote: 
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>A couple of nights ago I was
playing with my Linux From Scratch (LFS) build.&nbsp; I'm building a boot
disk for installing LFS on other systems. With the boot disk's root file
system incubating deep within my /home directory, my work
commenced.&nbsp; While residing in&nbsp;
/home/&lt;blahblahblah&gt;/installdisk I discovered
<a href="http://www.busybox.net">BusyBox</a>
(<a href="http://www.busybox.net/" eudora="autourl">http://www.busybox.net</a>); a nifty utility which allowed me to purge the boot disk's lib directory.&nbsp; Excited about finally fitting the kernel and root fs on one disk, I began to type. As root, from the&nbsp; /home/&lt;blahblahblah&gt;/installdisk, I typed rm -rf /lib/*.&nbsp; Oops... I meant to type rm -rf lib/*.&nbsp; Unfortunately, I didn't hit control-c fast enough.&nbsp; The /lib casualties were immense.&nbsp; Everything stopped working.&nbsp; Couldn't ls, cd, su, or cp.&nbsp; Couldn't even shutdown with ctrl+alt+del; I had to power off. 
&nbsp; 
Following a colorful commentary on the preceeding action and resultant situation, I found peace.&nbsp; This is Linux, not Windows! I don't need to re-install and sacrifice all my tweaks and mods.&nbsp;&nbsp; Armed with my trusty Slackware 8.0 install CD, I started system CPR.&nbsp; From the install CD, I mounted the root partition, copied the glibc package to the root partition, installed the package, unmounted the root partition, removed the CD and rebooted.&nbsp; My system's pulse strengthened.&nbsp; I repeated the process twice, re-installing the glibc++ and e2fs packages.&nbsp; Upon the final reboot, login welcomed me with open arms and a login prompt.&nbsp; X loaded succesfully, NVidia logo and all.&nbsp; My applications ran with the same vigor as before my surprise attack.&nbsp; Then a lone, white dove soared across my screen... 
 
... Ok, maybe a dove didn't fly across my screen.&nbsp; But my system came up beautifully, as though I had never wiped out the core libraries that 99% of the system relies on.&nbsp; Just imagine if I did this to c:\winnt\system32.&nbsp; The moral is that it's OK to suffer from Windows-panic-itis when you make a mistake as root.&nbsp; Just make sure you take a deep breath and remember you're in Linux land now.&nbsp; For that which cripples Windows only stings Linux.&nbsp; Just ensure a boot disk and the original install media is always close at hand. 
 
Robert Romito.</blockquote></html>
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