kof94

Ooooookay..... . I'm intrigued... keep talkin'...

Does GParted Live have Partimage (a clone of Ghost) ? I haven't tried it yet, but the System Rescue CD has Partimage, GParted, Testdisk, and some other stuf I forget now. Partimage has its own server, so it can clone across a network all by itself.... Yes, it's on the GParted LiveCD 0.3.4.6 but I don't know if it was in previous versions though. I've had no call to use Partimage before so I wouldn't have noticed! The GParted LiveCD has to be one of my favorite utilities. Who needs Partition Magic when you've got this. Another triumph for Linux (there's never a flag flying emoticon when you need one). So, back to the question at hand. Whats your setup consist of, c'mon don't be shy

The first post I read on LinuxQuestions HCL about my card: This guy was also running it under Ubuntu. Hay-ho all is not lost, I'll have my wired connection in a tidy, permanent condition in a few days so none of this will matter so much. I wouldn't be so hasty if it wasn't such a necessity. Ubuntu without the internet is like cutting an arm off! I'm gonna keep play with this though. I might be able to grab another card (not Belkin/Broadcom) of a work colleague to try out so I'll see what happens then. At the end of the day this is all good practice. I'm determined to be less Windows dependent and more Linux savvy so the more I play with the better. Thanks for your help Jet.

Exactly my thoughts. I went back to have another go and discovered NDISWrapper was actually unable to use the generic Broadcom driver I use or the bodged Belkin/Broadcom driver that came with the card. Although it's probably only bodged under Windows cause it installs extra sortware that peaks the CPU to 100% after about half an hour on the net. I'm gonna have another go tonight with a fresh sense of humour and see what happens. I nearly forgot, I switched to WPA as well last night (after all of the above) is this a good idea now or am I just asking for trouble?

Well wireless networking in Linux sucks. I cannot for the life of me get this to work in Ubuntu. I've now resorted to trailing a large cat-6 cable across the landing and downstairs to the router, much to my Wife's discussed. Actually that's not true she finds it bloody hilarious . The drills coming out tomorrow along with some cable clips and a hammer. Shortest route is a straight line and all that! As far as Ubuntu was concerned, it knew exactly what my wlan card was and assigned a driver to it, just didn't want to work. I've even gone as far as broadcasting my ssid and disabling all security, still no go. Oh well, as least I'm on the net now. I'll probably return to this again but to be honest I was losing my patience with it and that doesn't help anyone.

I'll have to check out Dreampack PL. Testdisk comes as part of the GParted liveCD so I couldn't see the point in having the DOS ver as well! I plan to have only the latest and greatest on my disc with the exception of some really useful tools e.g Smart Boot Manager. Thanks for your suggestions though buddy, keep 'em coming.

I realised that but without people willing put the pieces together where would we be!? I ran mount from right click after discovering an empty drive when I double-clicked my on my DVD but nothing happened! I'll take another look. I decided to install Ubuntu 7.04 a minute ago and had similar problems with no connection. Granted I do use a WEP key and I don't broadcast my ssid so this may be causing me some problems. Drilling holes in the house is starting to become more appealing by the minute though. On the subject of Ubuntu I like some of the new features but what a pig to install. During live boot up I had an error which I ignored and carried on cos it disappeared so quickly. Then at first boot, post-install, I was taken to some kind of disc check/filesystem check which failed and then rebooted the machine before I could read anything. Following that everything went fine but I'm still left with a nagging question 'is anything broken or not'. How frustrating... All-in-all the rest of this week I'm probably gonna spend a lot more time with Slax and Ubuntu so I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

Ok, I only have one thing to say... SLAX ROCKS . Your ntfs-3g driver + fuse (what is fuse by-the-way) works a treat. I really pushed the boat out moving stuff around on my Win partitions and editing files. I admit this was probably stupid but hay 'no pain, no gain' . Unlike previous encounters with ntfs-3g this time I didn't encounter chkdsk on reboot and as far as I'm aware I havn't killed anything. This is great!!! Anyway, besides that, I was also very pleasantly surprised at the speed, especially since I was running everything from a DVD. Bart/WinPE has a lot to live up to now with this kind of speed and access. There are a couple of things I need to sort out though. The first is wireless networking. Since moving house I've had to stump for wireless networking. Needless to say on more than one occasion I've threatened to buy a long cat-5 and start drilling holes in the house just so I don't have to put up with it. That aside... Slax was unable to config my wlan card. This may be my inexperience or just a lack of drivers, any ideas on how to solve either? The second is, I was unable to view the contents of my boot DVD and I was unable to mount the drive via right click (You can tell I'm a Windows user ). I gather this might be because I'm actually running Slax from it but I wondered if this was normal behavior? Apart from that though, quite a successful outing if you ask me. I'm now torn between going back and playing some more or doing what originally planned and install Ubuntu... life is so unfair sometimes .

Good suggestions Jotnar, I like it. The new DiskWizard apps are probably a def, just depends on the size of the kernel and ramdisk files, I'll have to check it out. I was unaware that the 2K Recovery Console didn't require an admin password to use on xp. There's still life in the old dog yet *scrambling for my 2K disc*. This is good stuff keep it coming.

Fair enough . I been 50% playing with Slax and 50% trying to make a common sense menu for everything on my disc, which is a bit like moving into a new house. I can't stop moving the furniture around! As far as Slax goes, I've only managed so far to put your ntfs-3g + fuse drivers in and test in VM to see if it works. When I get back from work tomorrow I'm gonna burn a test build of my current disc inc Slax and give it a full outing. I'm also gonna install Ubuntu 7.04 on my Linux drive since I nuked my 6.10 install last week (don't ask cos I don't know ) and haven't got around to fixing it. Once all that's done I'll get back to you. -kof94

Wohhh, I really didn't mean to hit a nerve with this . At the end of the day I am just an end user. I respect the fact that there are a lot of people around me that contribute a hell of a lot of time and effort into developing software that I use. The least I can offer is ideas or suggestions that may enhance this software. I by no means expect or demand anything and/or wish to offend anyone by making these suggestions. You may not have been trying to have ago at me, but I thought I better clear that up. Please take this in good Jest, like all my other ramblings . -kof94

I know you guys probably hate threads like these but I'm just curious. Whats everyone putting into there projects? I'm mainly looking to see if there's any really good freeware boot apps out there that I'm missing out on but feel free to post the lot. Here's mine at present: Windows XP Pro & Home /w RVM Updates, BTS DriverPacks and WPI for my Win apps. Windows XP & 2K Recovery Consoles (XP ver inc textmode Mass Storage Drivers) Ultimate Boot CD for Windows 3.04 (BartPE) Ubuntu Desktop Edition 7.04 Knoppix LiveCD 5.1.1 Slax KillBill 5.1.8.1 /w stable ntfs-3g (c/o jetman) GParted LiveCD 0.3.4.6 (Partition Editor) Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.0 Edit: Removed all my DOS tools and added UBCD v4.1.0 since so many fixes have been included! So, is there any thing else anyone can think of? I'm now considering adding the Trinity Rescue Kit, since it looks very good. -kof94

I have to agree that the ability to directly boot a .iso image is useful and I say this is from experience with CDShell/Diskemu. This doesn't mean you can just bung a load of your favorite .iso's on your disc and go 'there, I'm done'. However, it does mean you can directly boot apps like say Super Grub Disk or chntpwd without having to decompile them or resort to an older floppy ver. There are some other advantages as well. I worked out a system that enabled me to use the original isolinux menu/display for any linux app/distro I liked by booting mini .iso's. These .iso's just contained the isolinux dir, kernel and ramdisk the rest of the disc i.e. .squashfs etc was then in a relevant location on my disc. It worked quite well but I have to admit I did feel like a bit of a cheat. I keep banging on about this but I would really like to see a switch for memdisk that enabled diskemu style image reading. So, instead of loading the whole floppy image in ram it just reads the contents of it from the disc. I believe this will solve a lot of problems with some images not booting.

Nevermind I think I get it now. You know reading is useful . I have one question then I'll drop this line of inquiry or make a new thread (I feel I may be quite responsible for taking this thread of on different tangents, sorry). Have I got this right: Download your ntfs-3g archive (killbill in this case) Update the fuse + ntfs-3g drivers in said archive with new .mo's you have on the Slax site. Then just over write /boot and /modules from modded archive. I know I'm probably asking stupid questions, but I don't want to just go ahead thinking I've got it and end up nuking someones Windows install. Thanks.

I did wonder, since you signed yourself off as Jet. I forgot to mention that bit in my last post. I have one question about your update, why exactly do you need to update the kernel. Remember I am a Linux n00b although I am trying.

Here are some Python eBooks. The Python tutorial that comes w/ the Python pkg (@ python.org) is pretty good and you can get Dive Into Python from the 1st site. Finally, ActiveState has an all-in-one Python pkg w/ lotsa docs and a nice little IDE for creating/testing Python code. I like it bec you can make a module, then switch to a code (the Intermediate) window and try what you just typed instantly. Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python will let you look at Python w/o downloading or installing anything. I grok Slax. What do you want to do ? Jet Thanks for the links buddy, I'll def take a look now. Grok , a little lost in translation I think. I'm really looking for a cross between Killbill and server with a more up-to-date ver or ntfs-3g. I just want something else to play with really as well as a replacement for Knoppix. Don't get me wrong, Knoppix is great but I never use everything it provides so something slimmer and customisable is really starting to appeal. Edit: I just noticed a glitch with one of your links in the first post for 'adding an XP installer' It reads: http://http//www.msfn.org/board/index.php?...st&p=636838 Thought you'd want to know!

You'll need to go back and read the Unattended XP site again for your $OEM$ paths i.e. which $ folder equates to which system folder. I'd do it for you but it'll probably do you good to read the whole thing. %SYSTEMDRIVE% is the variable for the root of the drive you have Windows installed on, commonly C: . If you fire up command prompt and type set it'll show you all the current variables. The batch I showed you set's a variable for your CD\DVD drive and installs all your programs from there instead of messing about with $OEM$ folders. Again all this is on the Unattended XP site, but it's totally up to you how you want to do it. Happy reading and good luck

May be I should. I'm no programmer but if there's a decent help file I can usually muddle my way through. Hay, may be then I really could be a snob . All laughs aside, how good are you at modding Slax? Catch ya later.

Now we're really cooking

To be honest I very rarely use a batch file for anything these days, with the exception of these DOS tools of course. Anything I do with Windows is usually performed via an inf or WPI if I'm installing apps. Then of course if an app itself is playing up I'll either write an installer using Inno or an AutoIt script. Saying that, if something looks like I may have to resort to a batch file I write an AutoIt script instead. Granted it's probably nowhere near Python (I don't know) but it does the job. I'm starting to sound like a bit of a snob, sorry . :: EOF

I use inf's now for all this but the principle is still the same. Create a batch that runs at T-12 via cmdlines.txt that just adds one RunOnceEx command which executes your main install batch. cmdlines.txt batch: @echo off cmdow @ /HID FOR %%i IN (D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO IF EXIST %%i:\DVD.ICO SET CDROM=%%i: SET KEY=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx REG ADD %KEY% /V TITLE /D "Windows Update" /f REG ADD %KEY%10 /VE /D "Installing Software" /f REG ADD %KEY%10 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Install.cmd" /f Then your main batch file, Install.cmd in my example, would consist of something like I showed you earlier. I have an old topic around here somewhere that explains this whole lot better, I'll try to find it. Edit: Found it here.

For a minute there I thought I was in the wrong forum. Then I realised... we've been stickied To be honest, my batch is just a copy of the techniques people have used for RunOnceEx and batch file software installations. I just went with what I knew!

Thats because it's the same image just not compressed! Thats because you need a tag file, in my case it's autorun.inf at the root of the disc. Once DOS has searched all drives and found the one with autorun.inf in it, it will set that drive as %bootdrv%. Here it is again: for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%i:\autorun.inf set bootdrv=%%i: I've set autorun.inf in bold so you can see where to add your tag file. If you just want to use the existing, bloated UBCD image then make a file called ubcd.ico at the root of your disc, it'll work then.

I'm going back a bit here but here's a snip from an old RunOnceEx process I used to use. Basically, I set everything up the most common way via cmdlines.txt but the only RunOnceEx command I had was to launch a second batch at boot time this batch sort of read like this: @echo off cmdow @ /HID FOR %%i IN (D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO IF EXIST %%i:\DVD.ICO SET CDROM=%%i: SET KEY=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx REG ADD %KEY% /V TITLE /D "System Updates" /f REG ADD %KEY%10 /VE /D ".NET Framework 1.1 SP1" /f REG ADD %KEY%10 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\System\DotNetFramwork11.exe" /f REG ADD %KEY%15 /VE /D ".NET Framework 2.0" /f REG ADD %KEY%15 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\System\DotNetFramwork20.exe" /f REG ADD %KEY%20 /VE /D "Java Runtimes 5.0 Update 6" /f REG ADD %KEY%20 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\System\JavaRuntimes50u6.exe" /f rundll32.exe iernonce.dll,RunOnceExProcess REG ADD %KEY%25 /VE /D "UPX Shell 3.2.1.2007" /f REG ADD %KEY%25 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\Compression\UPXShell_321_2007.exe /SILENT /SP-" /f REG ADD %KEY%30 /VE /D "WinRAR 3.51" /f REG ADD %KEY%30 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\Compression\WinRAR351_Setup.exe /s" /f REG ADD %KEY%30 /V 2 /D "regedt32 /s %CDROM%\Software\Compression\WinRAR351_Settings.reg" /f rundll32.exe iernonce.dll,RunOnceExProcess ... Whats happening here is, the reg entries are being written to the registry then executed using this command: rundll32.exe iernonce.dll,RunOnceExProcess Every time it's executed your batch has to pause until it's time to add the next set of reg entries then it starts all over again. This includes creating a new RunOnceEx window. This is exactly the same process used by WPI in the old days when you specified how many apps you wanted displayed per RunOnceEx window. Hope this helps.

If you follow the 'All Downloads' link from the main page then go to 'beta', you end up here. You want fdubcd.img .