Thanking everybody and requesting moderator's advice

[Antipodal]

After the long battle that is described at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... e05c39ac97 my first feelings are of gratitude towards Barry K for having created Puppy, John Murga for running this forum, the moderators for their job, Beem, reg.doug, gerry, Shep, jyore, nooby and noryb009 for their time, concern and advise.

My second feeling is terror.
I am terrified to think that an unexplained shutdown of my computer (such as those I described at at the location mentioned in the previous paragraph) or a power outage (that are not extremely rare in this part of the world) could force me to spend an important part of 2011 trying unsucsessfully to boot Puppy again.

It’s not that I’m not willing to do it, if necessary.

It’s just that during this last year I have not been able to remove from my mind something that I have already stated in my post at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... e05c39ac97 (Sun 07 Mar 2010, 18:08, the paragraph that begins with c) )

In other words, I’m very interested in learning to use small open source operating systems like Puppy but I’m not sure if my skills with computers and/or my management of English are enough for achieving my goals without bothering the members and moderators of this forum with inappropriate questions expressed in an unintelligible English.

I would like to know what the moderators think about these skills before posting another topic

If the moderators consider my computer skills do not reach the necessary level to be able to participate in this forum without bothering anyone, I would appreciate if they could suggest a web site (not biased towards M $) that can help me to improve them.

Looking forward to your response

[CatDude]

Hello Antipodal

If the moderators consider my computer skills do not reach the necessary level to be able to participate in this forum without bothering anyone, ...

I am not a moderator, but i reckon you have nothing to worry about and i doubt that you are bothering anybody at all.

In other words,
just use the forum and if you have any questions, then go ahead and ask for help.

There are plenty of people here that are willing to help (as you have already discovered),
and you do not need to have reached any particular level of skill to take part in this forum.

So chill out and enjoy the ride.
CatDude
.

[RetroTechGuy]

After the long battle that is described at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... e05c39ac97 my first feelings are of gratitude towards Barry K for having created Puppy, John Murga for running this forum, the moderators for their job, Beem, reg.doug, gerry, Shep, jyore, nooby and noryb009 for their time, concern and advise.

My second feeling is terror.
I am terrified to think that an unexplained shutdown of my computer (such as those I described at at the location mentioned in the previous paragraph) or a power outage (that are not extremely rare in this part of the world) could force me to spend an important part of 2011 trying unsucsessfully to boot Puppy again.

It’s not that I’m not willing to do it, if necessary.

Did you create a frugal install (i.e. do you have a pupsave)? If so, make a backup copy of it. Boot to RAM, navigate to /mnt/home/, right-click on your pupsave, and choose "copy". I generally pick a name like: pupsave-06Dec2010.2fs

This gives you the ability to quickly recover if your pupsave is damaged (and I would store a copy on a flash drive in addition, so you can also restore if your HDD fails).

With a boot CD and a pupsave on flash, you can move a copy of your system around, also (i.e. generally easy to migrate to new machines).

Regarding your skills, we were all beginners at one time. I suspect the moderators would note the same.

[Flash]

The only thing I can add to what's already been said is to suggest that you try running Puppy from a multisession DVD (or CD, if that's all you can manage ) before dismissing it as not your cup of tea.

If your computer has a DVD (or CD) burner and at least 256 MB of RAM, it should be able to run Puppy from a multisession DVD or CD. Laptops sometimes won't cooperate, probably because of off-standard burners or firmware, but it costs almost nothing to try, just the price of a DVD+R or CD-R.

[RetroTechGuy]

The only thing I can add to what's already been said is to suggest that you try running Puppy from a multisession DVD (or CD, if that's all you can manage ) before dismissing it as not your cup of tea.

If your computer has a DVD (or CD) burner and at least 256 MB of RAM, it should be able to run Puppy from a multisession DVD or CD. Laptops sometimes won't cooperate, probably because of off-standard burners or firmware, but it costs almost nothing to try, just the price of a DVD+R or CD-R.

I am very fond of the bootable CD and flash drive method. Running that until one becomes comfortable enough to copy the pupsave and .sfs file to the HDD, and run from there (again, with the bootable CD as the foundation).

[Antipodal]

I really appreciate them.!!

PS: I haven’t used a pupsave yet and taking into account your posts I’ll focus on the multisession DVD/flash drive issue.

[nooby]

Read what shinobar has written about a USB memory stick rescue using grub4dosconfig that would allow you to get to your hardisk if something happen to your CD/DVD too.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697

Remember that it is still in development so it has some bug in it so it can place things in the wrong partition but it is a great tool to boot a machine that refuse to boot due to it look for all the OS onboard and start a new boot configuration including all that there is to boot. So a good rescue thing to have for future use.

And one can always make two such CD/DVD. Some years ago I had several DVD with many different puppies. They don't cost much. 5 for maybe 4 or 5 USD. That is affordable and if one wait for a while then some Mall have a USB mem stick for a low prive too. Good to have as a reserve and you can use both to help friends and neigbors to rescue their computers too.

Re annoying the forum members.

It depends. I have done that many times and I felt very embarrassed when I understood how they felt about my too many created threads and my sloppy dealing with their advices.

But I trust you never can be as annoying as I am and even if some do find me very annoying the mods have not thrown me out so if you try to find a good balance between being too assertive or too self deprecating then all will just work fine.

Remember that all is totally volunteerly and the Devs only are in it for the fun of seeing something that works better so you can write questions that none will answer.

Just keep a good spirit and accept that as part of what makes life interesting.

Sadly I am very bad at computers but if none else respond to your question you can always send a PM to me and remind me of this post and I will together with you google to see if hopefully your question has already been taking up by somebody else some year ago and that could be the reason they don't answer. We can at least try to find a work around.

the important thing is to give a good description what you did and what did happen or failed to happen and on specification on the gear you used. But not as wordy as I do here that annoyes people most likely

[Antipodal]

Thank you for your time and comments nooby

I riffled through http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697 and found it very interesting and I’ll try to find time to study it carefully.

Though you have the nickname, I am the nooby in this kind of things!!! And it may take a long time for me to understand that sort of stuff!!

Regarding your kind and generous offer I am short of words to thank you.
I will always keep it in mind and contact you if necessary
Antipodal.