-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2008-01-21 at 23:19 -0800, Maura Edelweiss Monville wrote:
If the X session was broken, you should have been able to switch to text mode and from there done a backup to an external usb disk, for instance, and/or try to repair. You should get familiar with the procedures so the next time you are caught unawares.
I succeded in switching to text mode. But I did not know how to mout the external hard drive or memory stick or DVD/CD R+W drive.
You have to use the command "mount". The procedure would be to look at the log just after plugging the usb disk to see what device name it has; you may use 'dmesg' to see the messages. If it '/dev/sda1' you could use: mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/somewhere or mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/somewhere Or you could have it prepared in advance editing a line in the fstab file. In my case it is easy, because I always mount manually.
I do not know how to start an email client even less a network browser without a graphic interface.
:-) Not many people do know, nowdays. But it can save your day. Mail: mail, pine, mutt (in order of increased complexity and features). I use Alpine (new Pine) for most of my mail even in graphics mode, because text is text, anyway, and it is very, very fast. http browsers: lynx, links, w3m... I even use some of them in graphics mode beacuse they are fast and low in memory. File manager: Midnight comander, 'mc'. Full of features and fast, I use it in preference to konqueror or nautilus for many operations: it can look inside rpms, for instance, connect by ftp or ssh, compress directories, edit files, view files like html, and within limits, pdf, word... Editors: mcedit (comes with midnight comander, menu driven and easy); joe, aka jstar, jmacs, jpico (it is included in the suse rescue dvd now). Then there is the feature full 'emacs', which you proably will not like, but is interesting to know about, and 'vi', which I'm almost sure you will not like, but comes by default in all linux or unix systems and is thus important to know the baresbones of its ussage for an emergency. If you search for it, you will find flame wars beetwwen people prefering vi or emacs for ages. Both have lots of features, but both need a lot of getting used to: their interfaces are quite awkward if you are used to graphic interfaces or windows or msdos (my case). I mention this because I'm almost sure someone will pop into this thread and say “this one is beeter” ;-)
Is WMware stable and reliable ?
Hum! Quite... as far as things as complex as that go, yes. But it is closed source, you know.
Isn't there a free WMware and a commercial one ?
Yes. I use vmware in the "server" version, which is free like in beer, and works pretty well: so far I have not needed the workstation version. It is a fine piece of software, although some times it has curious side effects. I believe the workstation version (which you can try for a limited time) is a bit faster and has more features, but I don't know exactly which ones. You can find some more info here, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vmware - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHlcnatTMYHG2NR9URAq0rAJ41b99YsgpW04n3z/2tIOhFcAg+vQCfXoxC 8GKKajSqdefcemo3aA4yNbU= =UECJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----