How to create a USB flash software repository?
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From: David Bolt on 24 Jan 2010 04:24 On Saturday 23 Jan 2010 17:25, while playing with a tin of spray paint, script||die painted this mural: <snip> > Well speak of the devil, wickerman! That free 10.3 install I was talking > about, the one that's been grinding since 2003 without intervention, it > stopped showing images in FF, something I was going to fix it this > evening. It was a dual boot with dozeXP aboard too but never used. The > owner told me a week ago but couldn't wait They never heard of patience? Maybe searching Google? How about 5 mins on a phone, when you have that 5 mins to spare? > and called out a 'tech' who ^^^^^^ Oh dear. > immediately erased everything on both drives, Why the hell did he wipe the Windows drive? More to the point, why did he wipe _both_ drives? > installed a leftover Vista > he probably couldn't sell anymore on them and told him he had been > dealing with an idiot who had created a mess he'd never seen before (or > congrats to that effect, I wasn't there). The bill came out to something > less that $200. Sounds like he thinks he's found someone who can become an easy source of money. > It's only a question of time :-) That's especially true if he's going to charge loads of money and you were providing help for free, or just a cuppa. You'll probably want to get at least two or three cuppas because I can foresee them not setting them up with any antivirus software and they've quite probably become infected. > So let's say it goes a year without puking. What should my fair price be > for another install that'll last 7 years like the last one I did, 1400? Depends on how charitable you're feeling. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: www.distributed.net OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 11.0 32b | | | openSUSE 11.3M0 32b openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | openSUSE 11.2 64b | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | RISC OS 4.02 | RISC OS 3.11
From: David Bolt on 24 Jan 2010 04:41 On Wednesday 20 Jan 2010 18:14, while playing with a tin of spray paint, EOS painted this mural: > Stephen Horne wrote: > >> >> Is there a tool that can create a software repository on a USB flash >> drive, including all software currently installed on one machine, so >> that I can use that repository to install the same software on a >> non-networked machine? >> > > make you're own openSUSE distro on cd/dvd/iso/....? > http://susestudio.com/ Not exactly what was asked for but could be pretty useful. This will be a bit time-consuming initially, but shouldn't be too bad: 1, Create a base image to be shared amongst the various images; 2, For each person you're "supporting", clone the base image so you can provide them with a customised disc; 3, Customise said image, adding any packages that are needed and removing any that aren't; 4, build and download the results, burning the image to CD if you're creating a live CD, or a USB stick if not; 5, once you've downloaded one image, delete it and start on the next, so you don't end up using all your available space. With a little pre-configuring, you could even set it up so they have persistent storage on their hard drives but the OS is present on either the CD or USB stick. How you'd do that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader :-) Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: www.distributed.net OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 11.0 32b | | | openSUSE 11.3M0 32b openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | openSUSE 11.2 64b | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | RISC OS 4.02 | RISC OS 3.11
From: Harold Stevens on 24 Jan 2010 12:01 In <1372907.SPYKUYFuaP(a)dev.null.davjam.org> David Bolt: [Snip...] > at the very least ditch as much of the Microsoft programs as they can FWIW... Simplest explanation I know: many consumers follow a false economy based not on *value* but rather *cost* (cheapness). It seems netbooks might be the only recent development that might have a chance at cracking through the thick skulls of most consumers in valuing function above cost/brand. M$ isn't actually cheap; they're just very good at herding sheep. JMO; YMMV... -- Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS * Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots. Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT. I toss GoogleGroup (http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/).
From: script||die on 24 Jan 2010 13:51 On 01/23/2010 06:45 PM, houghi wrote: > script||die wrote: >> On 01/23/2010 02:24 PM, houghi wrote: >> >>> Keyboards? Want to talk about keyboards? I have the best keyboard in the >>> world. >> >> Not the maximus or whatever, the one with the led keys? > > I has a keyboard, not a game pad. > http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/8xYqEajOfaLmAG8pCUWauQ Is the band aid on the finger related? > http://www.flickr.com/photos/19428171(a)N00/2446994680/ > http://www.flickr.com/photos/19428171(a)N00/2446992282/ Why oh why would a body spend 1500 just to place a FF fox icon where the only morally acceptable one is the old netscape one? >> All I want is one of those ibm clankers made for big fingers, they don't >> make them anymore. Once I walked into this surplus store and they had >> like 100 of them $5 ea. Should have bought the lot. > > I has a better one. The IBM ones are to big. exit;
From: Stephen Horne on 24 Jan 2010 21:24
On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:57:15 +0000, David Bolt <blacklist-me(a)davjam.org> wrote: >It depends. The memory cards I have were, up until last year, used >quite frequently in my cameras. And not wanting to lose pictures, I >would move the images off the card as soon as possible. That sometimes >meant emptying a card several times in a day. OK - so lets assume that means a maximum of 2000 writes per year to any one block (365 days per year, averaging 5/6 erase/write cycles per day) which seems a big much to put on one memory card (a lot of going back to the computer to save and wipe) but what the hell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear "Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 write-erase-cycles, before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage." So you have "only" 50 years before you need to start worrying ;-) To me, 100,000 cycles only seems low when thinking in terms of a main drive - especially something like a swap partition, though you're no doubt right to worry about last-access time stamps. I have considered tweaking the cache settings for USB flash drives, though. Most apps don't worry about this - leaving it to the OS - and of course removable drives tend to have cache settings that write data out immediately, just in case someone disconnects the drive without warning. That can mean pointless repeated writes to the same block for each incremental slight change, and some of that seems to happen even with subversion repositories doing a commit. It's only noticable in a large commit of course, but even in a smaller commit it's presumably wasting erase/write cycles. |