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On Saturday 26 April 2003 8:44 pm, Kai Hendry scribbled: > You should never fix problems (or upgrade) by re-installing the entire > system. It's silly, but if you are coming from a Windows background Saying its always silly is as innacurate as saying its never silly. If you do a "rm -Rf /" and dont ctrl-c it for a couple of minutes, your best bet is restart from scratch (or a backup). Similar to apt-get remove libc6, which removes almost every package from your system (including apt-get, bash, sh, dpkg etc). In most cases getting a system back up and working quickly is the most important thing. If Jonathan knew how to use vi (Winning that oreilly book at the Installfest at Exeter uni 2 years ago was invaluable), and had some different experience, he might have fixed it in 5 minutes, not the 5 hours a backup/reinstall takes. I suspect that lilo was the cause, although I dont know about the background of the case. However he didnt. Backup/restore was the fastest, cheapest way of getting back up and running. OK, he doesnt learn anything, but perhaps he'll learn a little vi now, or ae, pico, nano or another CLI editor thats usually available. I try to never re-install, and I havent for years. In fact I havent recompiled my kernel for almost 2 years (2.4's been out that long! Wheres time gone!). I was pleased with myself for fixing it when my fat32 drive went root-only readable (executable). But I'm a home user, I wasnt spending £30/hour on lost buisness, so I could afford to play arround for a while. Sometimes re-install is the best option because of the speed. Perhaps you dont learn from your mistakes so next time the error comes up you dont know the easy fix, however at that time, in that situation, you want the computer working again. Remember a computer is a tool. If your drill breaks, you buy a new one instead of taking it apart and trying to figure which wire has melted. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.