Read-Only Harddrive?Forum: Other Help Topics Topic: Read-Only Harddrive? started by: cmanb Posted by cmanb on April 18 2006,15:29
I'm reluctant to ask this because I know I'm doing something silly, but...What I'm trying to do: I work on several computers between home and work. I would like to boot up a DSL cd, load my customizations, and then save backup.tar.gz and my extensions on hda1 so that in the future, I can have each computer just ready and waiting to give me my custom work or home environment with a "dsl mydsl=hda1 restore=hda1". The trouble I'm having: I can't mount hda1 as read/write! On my home computer or on my work computers. What I've tried: * Booting simply from CD. * Booting from my flashdrive with a "dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1" * Within both of these environments, I've tried the automount desktop app in fluxbox. * I've tried "sudo mount -rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1" in bash. Like I said, I'm sure it's something very simple that I'm missing. Can anybody see it? Posted by loupdesteppes on April 18 2006,16:15
if your partitions are NTfs on winXP you can mount them read only. But they are read protected and unlockable with usual stufs.
Posted by cmanb on April 18 2006,16:19
It is WinXP partitions that I'm trying to mount. I should have said that. They are mounting read-only and that's what I want to work around. What are the "usual stufs"? Posted by green on April 18 2006,17:56
Have you considered using a USB memeory stick of some kind? That way you will not have backups, favorites, etc. spead out all over the place (been there, done that). By saving your backup to a USB memory stick thingy, you'll always have the most current backup with you and no one will have access to it. You can have all your files, etc. on it as well. You can avoid storing it on a hard drive where others may have the potential to accidentaly delete it, etc. Also, if some of those PC's belong to your employer, they may not appreciate you storing DSL stuff on it. Also, they may have some kind of software inventory or other programs that could destroy your data, or just make notes that you are using non-company issued software. ...... Yes, sometimes I'm paranoid.
Posted by cmanb on April 18 2006,18:19
Okay, I've heard mikshaw mention something similar. How, then, exactly do you set up different "profiles" on your USB DSL system? Set up different folders like "work" and "play" that each contains a separate backup.tar.gz? And then enter a "dsl restore=sda1/work" kind of deal? Posted by mikshaw on April 18 2006,21:04
I don't think you can do that with backup/restore. I believe a backup needs a specific name (backup.tar.gz) and needs to be placed in the root of a partition. You can, however, rename a backup and put it in a subdirectory on the pendrive for profile-specific loading (mydsl=sda1/work). The problem with doing this is that mydsl packages are not dynamic like backups are...you would be loading the same files each time you boot.As with everything else in Linux, there is at least one work-around, if you have the desire to tweak your shutdown script a few times. If you added a piece of code to the end of it (after the part where the backup is run) which moves and renames your backup to the appropriate location, you could have your backups being dynamically converted to mydsl extensions so they can be up to date and restored from a specific location. In order for this to work you would need to create a unique shutdown.sh (i think that's the name of the script...i'm not certain at the moment) for each profile. This means you'll initially need to edit the script, run the script, edit the script for the next profile, run it, etc., until you have a unique backup for each desired backup. You will also need to make sure that the shutdown script is included in .filetool.lst. If done correctly, the backup/restore will be sent to and retreived from subdirectories after that. Another option is to create additional partitions on your pendrive, one for each backup. |