[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 March 2019

[aaronco36]

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote at [1]
> I tried a bunch of Flash Drives sequentially as I have previously
> mentioned I am not installing to hard drives or even SSD.  Since
> the cannot get on line prevents attempting to do any sort of
> download or online information seeking at the alleged meeting

Seems like this was a Catch-22 situation.

What's a Catch-22 situation, for the one or two people reading this who 
don't already know what a Catch-22 is or may have conveniently forgotten??

A definition of a Catch-22 from ref [2]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot 
escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. The term was coined 
by Joseph Heller, who used it in his 1961 novel Catch-22.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So in brief, the comparable Catch-22 situation here may very well be that 
Bobbie S was simply _unable_ to go online to download and seek the very 
"information" that would have allowed her to go online in the first place. 
Such is my admittedly feeble attempt to describe as a prototypical 
Catch-22 situation Bobbie S's inability to have WiFi "working" and 
subsequently getting online.

Carefully note from the posting of [3] that ....
- Bobby S "showed up at 5:35 PM and had no problems with setting up [her] 
Dell E6520"; the point being that she only had _one_ machine with her
-"Jim S. Showed up about 7 PM..."; the point being that Bobbie S was 
_completely unassisted_ with her efforts to go online for nearly an 
hour-and-a-half

Although of course by no means the _only_ way of resolving Bobbie S's 
Catch-22 situation here, one way to assist in diagnostics and 
troubleshooting is to use bootable live media on her E6520 that's almost 
_intended_ for this purpose. I favor using the Swiss Army Knife of Linux 
distro's, KNOPPIX [4]. While the current stable version is 
KNOPPIX_V8.2-2018-05-10-EN.iso 2018-05-14 18:29 4.4G (downloadable from 
the Knoppix mirrors listed at [5]), I'm getting the distinct impression 
from refs [6] and [7] that KNOPPIX 8.5.x might be available in the near 
future on these selfsame mirror sites [5].

Once the 4.4GB KNOPPIX iso is downloaded and burned to DVD, then the 
KNOPPIX DVD's 'flash-knoppix' utility can be used on a USB stick having a 
capacity of at least 8 GB to create a bootable USB stick (see ref [8].)
Then Bobbie S and others could use this KNOPPIX bootable USB stick for the 
requisite diagnostics and troubleshooting and thus avoid as much as 
possible future potential Catch-22 situations ;-D

-A

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References
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[1]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2019q1/013929.html
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)
[3]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2019q1/013925.html
[4]https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix
[5]http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
[6]http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/38676-Knoppix-8-5
[7]http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix850-en.html
[8]http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix-flash-en.html
=================================================

aaronco36 at sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org