On Sat 27 Feb 2021 at 15:19:39 (+0300), Semih Ozlem wrote: > Joe, 27 Şub 2021 Cmt, 12:02 tarihinde şunu yazdı: > > On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 11:30:08 +0300 Semih Ozlem wrote: > > > > > Sorry I can not read emails very often. No I am not new to linux I > > > have been using it for the past 6 or 7 years starting mostly with > > > ubuntu. I had CENTOS and Ubuntu and debian installed on some machines > > > before. Most of them stopped functioning. Some of them in less than > > > six months.
I think you need to elaborate on "stopped functioning". Were they dead, like the system I turned on this evening? The only thing that worked was the power pass-through to the monitor. No fans, no lights. But as the PSU is 21 years old, it's no surprise really. Or did your POST work, but then they did nothing after that? Or perhaps they said there was no operation system? All these faults, so far, have nothing to do with CENTOS or Ubuntu, which haven't even started to be loaded yet. > > OK, that simply should not happen. I don't know if either Centos or > > Ubuntu can do in-place version upgrades, but if not, they should > > certainly run from release to unsupported status. My current server > > installation is a new one, but previously it ran through several > > Debian stable version upgrades and many years, and a couple of changes > > of hardware. There is such a thing as software rot, and it certainly > > affects applications, but the OS of Debian stable should run pretty much > > forever. > > > > > > I am new to the debian users group, because I found out that a user > > > group existed much later. During this time I had a lot of issues with > > > computers. The new computer that I got, originally the store claimed > > > that the insurance on my machine would be invalidated if I installed > > > another operation system on the machine. > > > > > > The reason for hesitating to install debian right now is simply that > > > the machines may become unusable again, and the invested time and > > > machinepower to installing a machine may end up being wasted. The > > > other reason was the claim that insurance may become invalid which > > > later turned out not to be so, but only after asking the company that > > > sells the computer several times. > > > > No software carries any kind of warranty, not even the famous Windows, > > but the warranty should certainly cover the hardware if it isn't > > physically abused. Software warranty service is pretty much limited to > > reinstalling Windows with loss of all data and applications, which any > > user can do themselves. > > > > > The third reason is I simply do not > > > at the moment have the time to backup the existing hard drive before > > > installing a new operating system on it, and also that should it > > > become unusable or stop functioning (I had debian installed on a usb > > > 64 gb of size that stopped booting).. > > > > Ah, USB sticks *do* stop working or lose bits without warning. Well, so > > do spinning hard drives, but not usually in less than about five years, > > often much longer. > > > > > > Yes I did figure out that it was lvm2 package that was needed, and > > > lvs is actually one of the internal commands for lvm2 as well so it > > > could be run from the console lvm2 prodives. I am looking into the > > > option of using lvm. > > > > That's fairly painless to use, as Debian will set it up during the OS > > installation. To be honest, I've had it installed for many years, and > > only occasionally used it. Drives are now large enough that I don't > > outgrow them in the lifetime of the hardware. In addition to adding > > and removing drives, LVM does allow online backups, if you've left > > enough unused space. Read about snapshots. > > > Should I then be suspicious of a possible attack on the system in case the > system fails, if both debian and ubuntu are fairly stable? The usb flash > drives themselves are still functional in the sense that I can view the > files in them after plugging them in. I backed up the data on them. Hmm, I would treat anything copied off those sticks as suspect, not because of any sort of attack, but just corruption by the stick. > But > when I try to boot from 64 gb usb flash disks (one with ubuntu 18 04 the > other debian 10 point something installed on them) the boot process does > not complete and the login screen does not appear. I wouldn't have the patience to wait for a graphical login. A console login and startx might be preferable, so that you get faster feedback on whether booting is working. Add "systemd.show_status=true" to the kernel line is grub.cfg too. > The two recovery modes > (I guess those are the snapshots no?) do not finish booting either. I'm not sure why *two* recovery modes, but a freshly installed system typically has one kernel: recovery mode is just the kernel parameter "single". (You might have two if you installed from out-of-date media, leading to an immediate upgrade during installation.) Anyway, USB sticks. Last week I installed buster onto an 8GB stick to evaluate a laptop with windows on it. The installation went fine, and the next day I booted it up to install a load more packages onto it. Apt-get kept complaining about files with no newline at the end, so I closed down, and mounted the stick on my desktop. Several of the meant-to-be-text files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/ were just binary garbage. Later, I thought I'd look for any errors reported during installation in the installer's syslog, but the stick now wouldn't even mount: the partition table was corrupt, so I had to copy the GPT backup table onto the main table with gdisk. This evening I tried to boot an old laptop with the official buster installer on a stick. I couldn't get the BIOS to see the stick (in order to promote it above the hard drive in boot order). I tried booting using another stick for doing the promotion, and then swapping to the real one, but that just complained of "no operating system". So then I had the bright idea of plugging in a 10-year old Trust hub (£8 at Asda), and putting the stick in that, and, sure enough, it booted up. So persistence pays. Cheers, David.
