Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2008 mails)

[Stan Goodman <stan.goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 20:29:16 on Monday Monday 27 April 2009, "Rajko M." 
<rmatov101@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Monday 27 April 2009 11:26:21 am Stan Goodman wrote:
> > At 22:34:14 on Saturday Saturday 25 April 2009, "Carlos E. R."
> >
> > <robin.listas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Saturday, 2009-04-25 at 20:32 +0300, Stan Goodman wrote:
> >
> > -----snip all-----
> >
> > I elected to use Midnight Commander, which has a UI that I recognize
> > (but apparently imperfectly) from elsewhere. In principle, the
> > operation preceded like duck soup, except for my imperfect
> > recollection. As follows:
> >
> > I did everything from a maintenance partition that I keep on the
> > machine for purposes like this when it seems wise not to operate from
> > a partition that I am trying to change. This is an openSuSE v10 on
> > sda8.
> >
> > 1) I formatted the target partition (destined to be v11.1 /home),
> > which is sdb7, to ext3. (sda7 is the source partition to be copied to
> > sdb7).
> >
> > 2) I made two subdirectories in the maintenance machine,
> > called /mnt/homeSource and /mnt/homeTarget, mounted  sda7 and sdb7 to
> > them respectively.
> >
> > 3) I loaded Midnight Commander, and but the sda7 in the left panel,
> > sdb7 in the right. I can see that what is iin each is exactly what
> > should be there. I make the left panel (the source) ACTIVE.
> >
> > Right here my memory betrays me. I remembered that pressing F5 would
> > copy the left (active) panel to the right panel, but 'tain't so. What
> > happened is that the copy took place to the /home directory of the
> > the maintenance machine, that was supposed to be outside the game
> > altogether. File managers of the commander type are, unfortunately,
> > so ubiquitous that everyone is assumed to now instinctively how to
> > use them, and developers do not trouble to write documentation for
> > them.
>
> F1 is not up to today's standards, but it is still good help.

I did read the F1 Help in its entirety. It too tells me that F5 should 
copy from left-panel selected item to the right panel. But that is not 
what happened.

In the left panel, I navigated to /mnt/homeSource, and I saw there only 
one item, "home". I selected this item. In the right panel, I navigated 
to /mnt/homeTarget, which was empty (since I had just formatted that 
partition with mkfs.ext3), so there was nothing to select. From there, 
there was nothing to do but press F5. Then I sat and watched the 
previously almost empty desktop of the maintenance OS fill up with what I 
knew to be on the Source desktop.

I am not arguing that I did everything right; I am sure that I didn't. But 
I am trying to identify what it was that I did wrong, and I don't see it.

I'll run through the whole operation again tomorrow.

> > I do not find anything
> > helpful through Google.
>
> Not even
> http://en.opensuse.org/Midnight_Commander
> http://en.opensuse.org/Midnight_Commander/Tips
>
> :-)
>
> I recommend to use Lynx Like Motion.



> It is not enabled by default, and IMHO it is one of things that make mc
> my file manager of choice for all operations except those that benefit
> from image preview. Basically only multimedia files browsing is what
> I'm doing using Dolphin.
>
> The only assumption, after years of Midnight Commander use, is that
> your destination panel was /home on sda8.
>
> F5 never did unexpected copy.
> It was always copy from active half to inactive.
>
> Though, I did mess source and target directories not once.
> The most recent was backup of old home, where I moved around picking
> files, checked something in new home and forget to go back to old, so
> continued "backup" was from the new one.
>
> > Please remind me how to perform the required copy from one panel to
> > the other. I am embarrassed to have to ask this question.
>
> I can only advice to check twice where you are.
> It is showed at the top of each of the panels, which is not always
> useful for long paths, as you can see only the last part, but the
> command line at the bottom is longer and most of the time it has whole
> path. Switching with TAB key between panels you can check both.

I haven't used the command line  at the bottom; I don't think it would be 
useful for the simple operation I am trying to do. Until now, all I have 
seen down there is "Hint: ...."
> HTH
> --
> Regards, Rajko
> http://news.opensuse.org/category/people-of-opensuse/



-- 
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel
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