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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
>> Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.
>
> Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all (maybe through
> extensive hacking)?
Yes. It's not extensive hacking. It's a normal supported thing. They
call it "Preinstall Environment." You can buy it from Microsoft, or you
can google for BartPE, which provides a free program that takes the
files from the XP install disk and makes them bootable.
> You *could* call that a "live CD", but not really, IMO.
Nope. This is a full graphical environment and everything. Not the same
as a Linux live-cd, as (for example) most services aren't running. But
it's good enough for what I want to do, which is (for example) resize
the system partition, or back up *everything* including the registry, etc.
> Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> software does have its advantages.
This is true. But the program that takes your legal Windows CD and turns
it into a live CD is free.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Tom Austin wrote:
> I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.
>
> While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the
> roots of what is going on.
People say that about Gentoo too, but... watching pages of gibberish
scroll past keeps you "in touch with the roots of it"? Hmm. Not so much...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...
>
> It makes more sense as "forced eth", even though the idea of a module
> that forces death is somewhat amusing...
>
> Apparently, the ambiguity is at least partially intentional.
Well, "force" because it's the nForce 4 chipset. "eth" because it's the
Ethernet interface. I have no idea what the "d" is for. ("Disassembled"?
As in, they reverse-engineered a drives from the Windoze version?)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many
>> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find
>> the PATA ones just fine.
>
> Weird, my HP system here has that same chipset on it, and the live discs
> do OK with it - SATA drive works beautifully with openSUSE 11.0 running
> on it, too.
When I tried this, openSUSE 11.0 did not exist.
(IOW, now that it's no longer a brand new chipset, maybe drivers are
more widely available.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> > limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> > without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> > software does have its advantages.
> This is true. But the program that takes your legal Windows CD and turns
> it into a live CD is free.
Another question is whether the Windows usage license allows you to do
that...
Commerciality also makes it difficult to distribute projects like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikarunix
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all?
Yes.
My dad owns such a CD. It's Symantec Ghost. (The consumer version.) If
you boot the CD, it loads Windows XP and allows you to perform Ghost
restore operations.
Let me tell you: It runs SLOWER THAN MOLASSES! If you thought Linux live
CDs were slow, you ain't seen nothing yet!
(You'll notice that the Ghost boot CD now no longer allows you to
perform backups. ONLY restores. To perform a backup, you must "install"
and "activate" the program over the Internet. But restore you can do
using the boot CD. Presumably useful if you somehow break your Windoze
installation and can't boot it to run Ghost...)
> Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> software does have its advantages.
Absolutely.
I have nothing against having to pay for software. (I have several
things against M$ products, but the fact that there's a fee isn't one of
them.) But having to keep track of whether you're "allowed" to be doing
what you're trying to do can be really which tricky and awkward - even
if you're *trying* to stay within the law. When companies add features
to try to "enforce" this, it always makes things more complex.
There is definitely a lot to be said for software that you can just
*use*, however you feel like using it.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>
>> I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.
>>
>> While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the
>> roots of what is going on.
>
> People say that about Gentoo too, but... watching pages of gibberish
> scroll past keeps you "in touch with the roots of it"? Hmm. Not so much...
>
It isn't watching pages of gibberish - it's the few steps that aren't
done automatically that does it for me. And that's not selecting "go"
either.
For me a typical LFS build consists of
fdisk
run LFS automated
setup grub
select kernel options & compile
setup boot scripts
pick which actual applications I want & manually install them
I agree that this isn't for everyone.
I have more interest in the guts than most people.
What I think I enjoy the most is learning how each application really
works as I install it. That way I know what my options are - instead of
'just use this'.
Tom
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Darren New wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>> I know how to use it and get to it easier than thru the XP recovery
>> console.
>
> Diskpart runs for me from the XP command line. Oh, I see what you mean.
> You had nothing at all on the machine. OK.
>
yep - blank slate - was kinda nice.
>> I actually tried to get to it, but was prompted for an XP installation
>> to recover before I got to a prompt that I could use.
>
> Yeah, I can see where that would slow you down. :-) BartPE is a good
> cure if you do that sort of thing regularly.
>
I think I remember running across that a couple of years ago - Live
Windows, but for some reason never pursued it.
>> I figured that at that point I would rather learn how to get Linux
>> running on my machine because I plan on messing around with it later.
>
> Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.
>
but finding one that would boot on my machine.....
pendrivelinux is a pretty nifty site.
It's amazing what people are doing.
I wish I had that kind of time.....
> I just thought there might have been functionality missing or something
> that I didn't know about in fdisk.
>
probably not
DiskPart is a pretty powerful program.
I had to use it to set up hot-swap IDE on a Windows Server - along with
a lot of other things.
Later... Tom
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Darren New wrote:
>
> Nope. This is a full graphical environment and everything. Not the same
> as a Linux live-cd, as (for example) most services aren't running. But
> it's good enough for what I want to do, which is (for example) resize
> the system partition, or back up *everything* including the registry, etc.
>
One advantage of using a Live-Windows boot - you can actually do things
with NTFS.
My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of friends.
Tom
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Tom Austin wrote:
> setup grub
Actually, I was wondering about that, and about booting in general.
The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem
like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second step
of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given the
wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is allowed
to be on in Linux.
How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot mechanism
to find the files it needs? Is there something special, such that (say)
copying the file to a different place on the disk would keep things from
booting?
I know you don't have to do anything special if you move NTLDR around,
but that could be a special case in the Windows file system code, I'd
guess. (Maybe I'll try moving it with my live CD and see if stuff still
boots. :-) Even if not, both FAT and NTFS are relatively easy to deal
with, so I can imagine the code being sufficiently simple for a
specifically-named file in the root directory.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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