Re: file system inconsistency

Bill Marcum <bmarcum@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

On 09 Sep 2006 21:38:55 -0400, Allan Adler
<ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm running RedHat 7.1 on a HP Pavilion 6635 PC with Netscape 4.76.

Why are you running RedHat 7.1? If you bought your PC when 7.1 was new,
your hard drive is probably on its last legs.

Does this mean you're not going to answer my questions, which don't have
anything to do with how old the PC or its version of RH are?

Regarding the PC:
(1) I made a mistake: it is not my HP Pavilion 6635 PC; I write about it
so often that I just wrote it again without thinking. Actually, this
time it is the Dell Latitude CsX laptop that is the afflicted PC.
(2) I can't afford to buy computers. This was a gift from its former owner
who had gone on to better hardware some 6 years ago. If you want me
to have a better computer, give me one.
(3) Even if you do give me one, I'll still hold on to this one because I
have a lot of uses for computers, some of which are better carried out
on old expendable ones. Also, I've found that sometimes a computer that
I've considered expendable can turn out to be the only computer that can
do a particular job. That was certainly the case with this Dell Latitude
CsX and now it is my only decent access to the internet from a computer
of my own. Also, I like to study old computers.
(4) The reason it still has RedHat 7.1 is as follows:
(a) This laptop has a floppy drive and a CD drive, both of which have
to be plugged into the laptop externally. The CD drive can only
read CD's, not write them. For several years from the time I
acquired the laptop, that meant that I had no viable way to back
it up. I asked the person who gave it to me, and also people on
various newsgroups, probably including this one, how to get around
this problem which threatened everything I had on this laptop,
and got no answers, or at least none that I felt I could implement.
Then one day, not very long ago, a friend of mine showed me a 256 MB
flashdrive. I tried inserting it in the USB port of the laptop and,
after a lot of experimentation with the mount command, and probably
some help from this or another linux group, I managed to get it to
work. I then backed up the laptop, 256 MB at a time, to the HP
Pavilion, which does have a CDRW drive, and burned it all onto CD's.
This solved my previously insoluble problem of backing up the laptop.
Now I think flash drives are the greatest thing since sliced bread.
(b) One reason the problem of backing up the laptop had such urgency
is that I had accidentally dropped the AC adaptor of the laptop
on the floor and damaged its cable right at the point where the
cable enters the AC adaptor box. HP's phone representative in India
told me that it would cost me $80 to replace the AC adaptor, which
I didn't want to spend and which is probably more than the laptop
is presently worth. The AC adaptor, after this mishap, only worked
marginally. More precisely, it would only conduct electricity to
the laptop if the wire was bent in a very precise position and, as
time went on, it became more and more difficult to find that position.
Once I managed to backup the laptop, I considered it expendable
due to this hardware problem, which I didn't consider it worthwhile
to fix.
(c) That being the case, my only access to the internet from my own
PC's, was via an even more ancient PC with 16 MB of RAM, since I
prefer to separate the machines I work on from the machines I use
for surfing and email, just as a security precaution. The laptop
has been hacked into twice over the internet and I think such
precautions are justified. It was after the last such break in
that I upgraded to RedHat 7.1. Before that, it was running RedHat
6.3. This upgrade to RH 7.1 took place in 2001, I think. This
ancient machine is extremely slow and inconvenient to use on the
internet, but it had the advantage of discouraging me from spending
so much time online.
(d) Whatever my feelings might have been about upgrading the OS on
the laptop, it simply was not feasible as long as the AC adaptor
was broken. Happily, it finally became completely impossible to
use the AC adaptor. I say "happily" because that meant that I
could finally make an attempt to repair it without the risk of
losing the little functionality it did provide. As it turned out,
contrary what I had expected, it turned out to be quite easy to
repair. I fixed it a few weeks ago and now it is the solution to
the problem of getting better access to the internet on my own
PC's than is afforded by the ancient PC with 16 MB RAM.
(e) Therefore, it is only within the last few weeks that all of the
major hardware problems I have had with this laptop have been
solved to the point where I can contemplate upgrading the operating
system to a more recent version of Linux. And I am indeed
contemplating doing so. At the moment, I have the RedHat Fedora 2
installation CD's. I'm not sure if the hardware on this laptop
will support such an upgrade. It only has 64 MB RAM, for example,
and only about 4 GB of hard disk space. I found out that 64 MB RAM
is not even enough to boot the hikarunix 0.4 CD. If I destroy the
operating system presently installed on the laptop in the process,
and such an outcome is not at all unlikely given my experiences
trying to upgrade on other machine, some of which have been duly
reported on this newsgroup, I need to have a plan for what I am
going to install on this laptop in case that occurs. One possibility
is to install the UMBC RedHat 7.3 distribution that I downloaded
using a friend's laptop that is equipped with wifi and which I used
to install that version of Linux on the ancient 16 MB PC mentioned
earlier. Another is to try to install the UMBC RH 8 distribution
which I downloaded the same way. The wifi laptop isn't available
to me at the moment, but when it is I intend also to get the UMBC
versions of RH9, Fedora 1 and Fedora 3. So, the maintenance of this
laptop goes forward but there is a lot to think about.
(f) Another reason I like to keep RedHat 7.1 and other old versions of
Linux around is that some of the books I am trying to learn from
are based on these old Linux kernels. For example, I've been trying
to learn some of what is in the book, Linux Device Drivers, 2d ed.
Maybe much of what is in the book is obsolete, but I'll be glad to
get to the point, after reading it, where I can appreciate how
obsolete it is. I can't afford to keep throwing money at the moving
target that is Linux by constantly buying books that I can't read
fast enough to keep up with the changes that will make the books
obsolete before I'm even a few chapters into them. I have no problem
with the trailing edge of technology and, that being the case, I'm
content for the moment to study the books I have that are suited to
to the machines and operating systems I have. There is nothing wrong
with that. Everyone has his own way of learning and his own limit
on the resources he can commit to the learning process. This is mine.
(5) But Bill Marcum asks about the age of the laptop and the condition of its
hard drive. I don't really know how old the laptop is but I think its
former owner had it for at least a couple of years before giving it to me.
So, maybe it is 8 years old or so. I think the machine is in pretty good
shape, all things considered. I tend to give computers a lot of credit
for durability. But why should this be a matter of speculation on my part
or on the part of Bill Marcum? Is there something I can do to determine
whether the hard drive is in a bad way and to test all the other hardware?

Anyway, as I mentioned at the outset, none of this has anything to do with
my original questions. If anyone knows the answer to them, I'll be very
interested in what they have to say.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
.

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