Posted on 07/12/2010 5:37:35 AM PDT by ShadowAce
bump for later.
bttt
Will have to try it sometime.
By the way I didn’t mean to sidetrack your thread, sorry. Thanks, the information is pretty cool and I am going to make two bootable USB devices.
Haven’t decided which route I am going to take other than an NTFS DOS version to carry a lot of specialized low level software (wiping / repairing harddrives, resetting passwords, partitioning, old school stuff, etc...) and a virus scanner (maybe specific virus recovery programs).
The other will have a GUI, haven’t decided what Linux flavor yet (freeware web development, video processing, mp3 player, word processing, and graphics software).
bump
PFL
Sooner or later you’re going to lose your ass there. Reliability is better than it used to be, but if you can’t afford to lose it, don’t trust it to a $20 card.
(As I’ve said on here before...redundancy is your friend!)
Any suggestions?
ML/NJ
That should allow you to edit any file. Your prompt will now be a # instead of a $.
When finished, type in "exit".
ML/NJ
later !
IE had the same trouble until I did "compatability view" but I haven't been able to get Chrome to show drop downs. It's like white text on a white background but you can't mouse over to see anything.
Still struggling here.
I’ve got the sudo thing. I’ve been able to edit the hosts file. Or I think I have. After using gedit (started from terminal) to edit the file, I issue =cat hosts= and the file types out just the way I expect it to. But whenever I restart the system, which I’ve unfortunately had to do many times, the hosts file reverts to the original. (I’ve done nothing but restart and open a terminal and go =cat hosts= and my changes are always gone.) I also once put a copy of the edited file on my desktop, and it was gone after a restart. Something always seems to go wrong after I change the hosts file so I cannot even get to try to download my utilities. Usually windows start greying and then things start disappearing. It appears that something is trying to recreate the disappeared stuff, but whenever it does things are missing (like my internet connection). I thought this was going to be easy!
ML/NJ
The alternative I can think of is don't restart your system right after editing the hosts file.
Instead, restart the network service:
/etc/init.d/network restart
should do the trick in terms of getting your hosts file to behave properly. I've not heard of the file reverting upon a reboot, unless the system is re-writing it upon startup.
Oh--wait a second.
You're running Ubuntu off of your USB stick, right? The /etc directory exists solely in RAM--not on your stick. What you are editing is a temporary copy of the hosts file--not the one installed by the rescue stick.
So--I'm not an expert here, though I've done this once or twice. Look for a directory called something like "/mnt/sysimage/etc" or similar. The file you want to edit will be in there.
Type in the following:
find / -iname /etc/hosts
and see if that returns anything other than /etc/hosts.
Your comment on /etc existing solely in ram is interesting. For one I wonder how I would know that. But even if that is the case, it doesn't explain why the copy of the hosts file I put on the desktop disappeared.
I find it hard to believe that just anyone could just follow the article instructions. I actually used UNIX a bit, back in the pre WWW days; and I have quite a bit of PC and embedded experience. (In fact, I was quite familiar with all the chips IBM decided to use in the original PC.)
My intent is to start over downloading a new clean system, knowing what I have learned and see whether anything improves.
ML/NJ
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