Re Looking for more Debian packages

[Jianan Huang]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the responses.

Those double d commands are marvellous; simple and yet effective. It even
produces a positive side-effect; a backup copy of the floppy image in the
harddisk. I don't know if I'm the only one with this problem; I read through
'dd' with 'man' but is left with the impression that it is only for files
copying. Which part indicates that it can do image copy?

More about the BIOS. In DOS machine, hardware diagnostics and initialization
is done by the BIOS. For instance, if the keyboard or mouse is not plugged
in, the diagnostic will detect this and the system will not proceed beyond
this point until the error is corrected. If a user wants a set-up without
keyboard or mouse, he will have to twig the BIOS. Without source code, and
means to recompile, this is impossible. How does a Linux user overcome this
problem? Kernel re-configuration?


Cheers

__________________________________________________ _______________
Send a fun phone greeting to your friend!
[url]http://www.msn.com.sg/mobile/fungreetings/[/url]


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email]debian-user-request@lists.debian.org[/email]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email]listmaster@lists.debian.org[/email]

[Colin Watson]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 01:36:17PM +0000, Jianan Huang wrote:

> Those double d commands are marvellous; simple and yet effective. It
> even produces a positive side-effect; a backup copy of the floppy
> image in the harddisk. I don't know if I'm the only one with this
> problem; I read through 'dd' with 'man' but is left with the
> impression that it is only for files copying. Which part indicates
> that it can do image copy?

In Unix, devices are typically presented as files, and you can read from
them (sort of) just like ordinary files. With this knowledge it's more
clear that you can treat a floppy disk as a file and just read off all
the data.

'info dd' has an example of copying between a disk and a tape.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email]debian-user-request@lists.debian.org[/email]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email]listmaster@lists.debian.org[/email]

[Andreas Janssen]

Hello

Jianan Huang (<huangjianan1@hotmail.com>) wrote:

> More about the BIOS. In DOS machine, hardware diagnostics and
> initialization is done by the BIOS.

And this is done before the operating system is loaded. Which means that
it is done by the BIOS, independent of if Linux or DOS is installed on
the computer.

> For instance, if the keyboard or
> mouse is not plugged in, the diagnostic will detect this and the
> system will not proceed beyond this point until the error is
> corrected.

Unless of course set the BIOS to ignore these errors and start anyway.

> If a user wants a set-up without keyboard or mouse, he will
> have to twig the BIOS. Without source code, and means to recompile,
> this is impossible.

It is not. Most (all?) standard PC BIOSes allow you to change this
setting. Look you for something like "Halt on erros: all" and see if
you can change it to "Halt on errors: all but keyboard and mouse".

best regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen
[email]andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com[/email]
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674
Registered Linux User #267976


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email]debian-user-request@lists.debian.org[/email]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email]listmaster@lists.debian.org[/email]