On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Georgina wrote: > Hi > > I thought that I'd give your floppy system a go but as I use mainly Windows > I tried to download your images via Internet Explorer. Unfortunately it > insisted that I was downloading text files. Therefore, I wondered if you > could either compress them to give an tgz or zip extension or just try > renaming them with an extension? So that IE is forced into binary mode. good god. Nowever I think there was something emntioned about anonymous-ftp on his site. That would be usefull for you. You also need a program called rawwrite to write the images to floppy. > Cheers. > Gena > > Announcing Blindness Advocacy and Self-Help at www.bashonline.org > > Personal pages at http://www.visson.freeserve.co.uk/ > Mobile (Cell) Phone 07951 196268 > > -----Original Message----- > From: blinux-list-admin@redhat.com > [mailto:blinux-list-admin@redhat.com]On Behalf Of Karl Dahlke > Sent: 16 August 2001 20:39 > To: blinux-list@redhat.com > Cc: "blinux-list@redhat.com"@redhat.com; > "blinux-develop@redhat.com"@redhat.com > Subject: Rescue/Boot Floppies, Internet Access > > > Starting with my DOS days 20 years ago, up to the present, > I have always had a floppy that I could use to boot or escue the computer, > a floppy that talks to me, and accesses the drives, > so I could fix things up as necessary. > The floppy also included some repair programs such as checkdisk (dos), > or fsck (Linux). > All this holds true today, but now there is something new. > > If you check my intro web page, > http://eklhad.hispeed.com/linux/jupiter/ > you will find a couple of disk images. > If you write these out to floppies, > you can boot with the first, then load the initial ramdisk from the second. > This brings up my speech adapter, and enough tools to view and modify > dos, windows, and Linux files. > You can also repair Linux file systems, repartition the disk, > run lilo, create new file systems, unpack tarballs, > reload utilities from your installation cd, > and if your Linux system isn't too badly trashed, > you can chroot into that partition and do almost anything from in there. > > But what if it is trashed, or you don't > have a working Linux system yet? > > I've recently added a third disk image, > with yet more programs and utilities. > They just wouldn't fit on the first two floppies. > You import this third floppy by typing "disk3". > This provides enough machinery to access the internet, > without using anything from the hard drive. > I can run ftp, telnet, rlogin, and lynx. > It's crude, but I can even use telnet to read and send mail, > using the pop3 and smtp protocols. > I can also download anything I need off the internet > to repair or rebuild my system. > > all this won't work for you unless you're somewhat lucky. > > 1. You must have a synthesizer that I support. > The generic setting actually works pretty well for most external synths. > > 2. You have to have some idea how to use Jupiter; > it's quite different from a screen reader, though it does have a screen > review mode. > > 3. You need a 3com, ne2000, or tulip compatible ethernet card. > > 4. You need a hard connection, such as a cable modem. > There wasn't room for ppp dial up software. > > 5. You need to know your ip address and gateway address. > > 6. You need at least 32MB of ram. > > More instructions are available at my aforementioned web site. > > Now here's the interesting thing. > If a newby can get his computer up using these three floppies, > and if the internet connection actually works, > and if he issues the proper command, > I can log into his box and help him fix the problem, > or get Jupiter running, or whatever he is trying to do. > This isn't a security risk. > He has to type a special command, > which lets me in once, and only once, > and nobody gets in after that, unless he types the command again. > I jusst tested it out on my wife's machine. > I logged in and had access to the entire machine. > > I think it's a pretty neat approach, > especially for the Linux newby, without sight, > who is absolutely overwhelmed by all of this. > I can go in and do some of the hard work, e.g. kernels and lilo etc, > and he can concentrate on learning the applications and the adapter. > That's enough of a learning curve right there. > > Others may wish to use this three floppy system, with or without Jupiter. > For instance, you could replace the Jupiter kernel with a speakup kernel > in floppy number one, and everything else should fly. > It doesn't seem to matter what version of kernel you use. > 2.2.16, 2.4.4, whatever. > Of course it must be configured for networking, > with the ethernet drivers built in, > not as modules. > > More work is required for process level adapters such as Emacsspeak and > brltty. > This is because the programs and shared libraries on my floppies > are taken from an earlier Redhat distribution. > You couldn't fit a hello world program from Redhat 7.0 or above > on one floppy, > because the shared libraries themselves are already larger than 4 meg, > and when compressed, they just don't fit on a floppy. > I mean you just can't do anything. > So you'd have to recompile your adapter on an older system > that uses the same shared libraries as my three floppies. > Or - you might try to link your adapter statically, > so it wouldn't draw upon the shared libraries, but this might still create > a surprisingly large executable. > Worse still, I have found some programs that don't seem to need a > shared library until they are running. > ldd doesn't give you a clue. > And the program even starts up and seems to work, > until it needs one of these libraries, > then it better be there, or it just doesn't run properly. > I found this out when I tried to get ftp to work. > It needs libnss_files.so, but you sure don't get > any indication of this - except that the program doesn't work properly > when it tries to establish standard ports for standard services. > I'm afraid a statically linked program might have the same problem. > I just don't know. > The best way is to rebuild any desired programs in the > same environment that built your rescue floppies, > whatever that may be. > > I'd better keep this old redhat distribution around - > I don't think I could replace it if it were lost, > and I sure can't maintain my rescue floppies without it. > > Sorry for the length of this message. > It's a complex and important topic. > > Karl > eklhad@home.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > slainte mhaith (good health), slainte (cheers) Uisce Beatha (water of live/health) ----------- Andor Demarteau E-mail: ademarte@students.cs.uu.nl student computer science www: http://www.students.cs.uu.nl/~ademarte/ Utrecht University irc: see webpage for details ----------- Believe in yourself, know what you want, and make it happen!