Jon Masters wrote:
> What a horrible thought :P A binary registry is the last thing GNU/Linux
> needs and I have heard several quite significant people quite rightly
> say "over my dead body". . . . . .
> . . . .Any binary only system which requires a periodic complete re-install to
> fix unrepairable damages is fundamentally flawed in design.
> Re-installation is not a fix for anything - neither is rebooting.
Couldn't agree with this more!!
I've been using Linux since late '96, and exclusively since around mid '98.
Only one machine at home is dual boot, and only 300mb allocated at that (just
enough for minimal win95 & MS Access. Pressures of work y'know)
However prior to my "road to Damascus" conversion I was all set for going down
the MCSE route and even sat one test on NT.
A couple of questions from that test still stick in the mind even now; the
first was to do with some corruption of system files or suchlike, and I
answered "re-run setup from the CD" WRONG.
The correct answer was "find them boot disks and wipe your hard drive" or words
to that effect. A complete re-install of a so-called server OS to fix some
minor problem with some minor component!!!
Then it got worse...
Another question dealt with the retention (or lack thereof) of user profiles
following the application of a repair disk. Again, an OS which Microsoft
would have us believe is an enterprise solution, and a few tweaks and pokes
result in the loss of all user accounts, passwords and so on.
You can't even make a copy of /etc/passwd and then put it back when you're
done, because (you've guessed it) there ain't no such thing!
So hurrah for plain-text, hurrah for dotfiles which can be tarred and copied
somewhere safe to be reapplied in seconds, and especially hurrah for my baby
number-3 server, which is currently showing an uptime of 146 days despite being
a sheep-dip for every new bit of software I get my hands on.
Just my two-penny worth. Feel free to flame me if you disagree.
Sean King
ming@merciless.fsnet.co.uk
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