another Arch/Pacman success story.

Cyrusm · 2010-07-15 15:07:15

So I've always been impressed with Arch Linux and Pacman, however I've never been more impressed with the stability and general awesomeness of it than I am today. a couple of weeks ago my motherboard burned out and needed to be replaced. As I live in the middle of no-where Montana and I'm on a limited budget, it's taken some time for the new hardware to arrive. I've been worried this entire time that I was going to have to do a complete reinstall and spend the next 3 years getting everything back the way I had it prior to the explosion, thereby losing all of my non-backed up data and configurations etc.

well, the new mobo came last night, I got it installed, hit the 'go' button, and surprisingly my machine booted up perfectly as if I had just turned it off yesterday!
Mind you that this is with new graphics hardware, new networking hardware, a few different kernel modules etc. This far and above exceeded my expectations! So then I decided to perform an update (from testing), which hadn't been done in over a month at this point. and the update, although enormous, went absolutely flawlessly!

I just want to say "Well Done!" to all of the Arch/pacman contributors and maintainers etc. for making such an awesomely impressive, smooth, fast, operating system. Thanks

Last edited by Cyrusm (2010-07-15 15:10:17)

karol · 2010-07-15 15:31:35

> losing all of my non-backed up data and configurations
Something that's not properly backed-up I consider already lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozeman,_Montana - Record high °F (°C) for July: 105 (40.6)
You said your mobo burned out?

Cyrusm · 2010-07-15 15:36:36

karol wrote:

> losing all of my non-backed up data and configurations
Something that's not properly backed-up I consider already lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozeman,_Montana - Record high °F (°C) for July: 105 (40.6)
You said your mobo burned out?

ha, indeed. I need to remember to update my backup script to backup some of the changes I've made recently, plus I always have to choose, because I don't have enough hard-drive to back up everything sadly. I've been procrastinating on it, and now I've learned my lesson. and my motherboard burning out had nothing to do with the external temperature, it was purely a hardware failure (probably due to using substandard components more than anything)

karol · 2010-07-15 15:41:34

You can use gmail to backup some data - if you're not afraid of the BigBrother that is. I'm sure Archers can recommend some free online storage system. Maybe you have some blank DVDs lying around ...

hokasch · 2010-07-15 15:52:33

I found dropbox exceptional for backing up my documents directory - only 2 gigs (although you can increase that with the help of a vm), but a total no-brainer, plus you can access some "old versions" of files. And you automatically have direct access to them away from home through the web interface. I backup my other stuff as well, but the real important things are additionally linked into Dropbox.

Fun fact: dropbox somehow hashes the files to check if they are already in the cloud, so if you want to share that new Futurama episode with a friend it takes only a couple of seconds to "upload" (because someone else surely uploaded it already). Works great with a lot of stuff.

Last edited by hokasch (2010-07-15 15:56:24)

Barrucadu · 2010-07-15 16:35:49

I had a similar experience earlier this year. The mobo in my laptop died, so I built a new computer and put the laptop HDD in. Arch worked perfectly, despite a complete and utter change in hardware.

dcc24 · 2010-07-15 17:09:22

Similar story here. I used to have 2 ThinkPad T61p's, one of which died due to the notorious faulty Quadro FX570M GPUs from nVidia. I've then moved the HDD to a Dell Inspiron 1564 (which was 3 years younger than the ThinkPad) and voila! Everything worked! Of course, I needed to replace some drivers, but nothing serious.

Last edited by dcc24 (2010-07-15 17:09:40)

karol · 2010-07-15 17:11:32

Would that be possible w/ Windows? IIRC I couldn't get WinXp to work in a similar situation.

Cyrusm · 2010-07-15 18:45:06

karol wrote:

Would that be possible w/ Windows? IIRC I couldn't get WinXp to work in a similar situation.

I know that with windows XP at least, you need to have the original product disk in the drive and perform a repair from the Recovery Console.
you also need the product key because in essence you are doing a re-install of the operating system.
you shouldn't lose any data or settings in this process, but you will lose any installed service packs. and it's generally not as pleasant as my experience with Arch.

l'pc · 2010-07-15 20:08:03

I do that all the time :
I don't have a computer, only an external (usb/eSata) hard drive that I plug into any computer I find to have my system running !
If you don't mind about 3D, with the free video drivers for ati, nvidia, and intel graphic chipset installed, you can have a fully featured system with X that works on 95% of the computers with no user input thanks to the X server autodetecting (hal also worked.)

Ps: Sorry for my poor English...

dcc24 · 2010-07-15 21:26:30

karol wrote:

Would that be possible w/ Windows? IIRC I couldn't get WinXp to work in a similar situation.

The harddisk that I've mentioned in my original post also contained Vista. I have to say it cause me even less trouble than Arch. It worked out-of-the-box. With Arch, however, I needed to manually adjust some drivers.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-07-15 15:07:15

another Arch/Pacman success story.

#2 2010-07-15 15:31:35

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#3 2010-07-15 15:36:36

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#4 2010-07-15 15:41:34

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#5 2010-07-15 15:52:33

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#6 2010-07-15 16:35:49

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#7 2010-07-15 17:09:22

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#8 2010-07-15 17:11:32

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#9 2010-07-15 18:45:06

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#10 2010-07-15 20:08:03

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

#11 2010-07-15 21:26:30

Re: another Arch/Pacman success story.

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