[sf-lug] (forw) Re: (forw) Re: SF-LUG meeting notes for Sunday 02022020

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 2/3/20 9:22 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Bobbie wrote:
>
>> Actually CentOS rather than Fedora whcih is generally Live.
> Whatever. That's really rather beside the point (but no, Fedora is not
> 'generally live'; it's merely distro policy to provide both install and
> live images).
>
>> Experiences differ between users as do objectives and daily
>> life.  Mine have been that VB requires
>> fairly regular updates.
> ...which for the Linux host-OS version arrive as distro packages.
     Actually on PCLinux the updates are done by VirtualBox Manager 
which is likely a script run
from the menu.
>
>> Each is rather large.
> So? Are you paying for Internet access by the byte and having your
> files delivered to you by modem? If so, you're going to _hate_
> LibreOffice.
>
>
>> I simply do not know what is going wrong.
> Without objection, I specifically did _not_ ask what is going wrong --
> which in my experience just invites the user to speculate (usually badly
> and misleadingly), which IMO you do rather too much of at the best of
> times, making helping you inherently difficult.
>
> Rather, I asked what the _symptom_ is. That's entirely different.
>
>> I take hours to install a file, shut down the file, shut down VB and
>> restart the next day or week and find that my time had been ill spent
>> as the Virtual Box when it restarts cannot see or load the file
>> previously installed.
> I'm put in a familiar position, here, where it's difficult to help you
> because you're being vague, because you obviously took _no_
> contemporaneous notes no matter how many times I and others have
> stressed how important that is to troubleshooting, and because I have a
> troubled (and familiar) realisation that you might be mis-citing key
> facts and sending any aspiring helpers down a lengthy wild goose-chase.
>
> I mentioned in my prior post that it's a really bad sign when I am
> obliged to guess what you mean, and we're at that point again. You say
> 'install a file': Does that mean create a VM, mount a distro ISO file
> as a virtual optical drive, and then attempt to boot the virtual drive
> and install a guest OS from it?
>
> If you mean that, was installation initially successful in the sense
> that you had the guest Linux OS running in a VM that could be rebooted
> like a real machine?
>
> If you don't mean that, what the gehenna does 'install a file' and 'shut
> down the file' mean? (On reflection, it's also pretty obvious that 'file'
> cannot mean the same thing in both consecutive mentions in that
> sentence. Maybe the first 'file' refers to an ISO file, and the second
> refers to a VM. It's difficult to tell.)
>
>
> Here's a kind of gestalt-ish wild guess about what you're encountering:
>
> After getting VirtualBox (or any similar hypervisor) going, whenever you
> crete a VM, initially that's just back-end stored in some small internal
> housekeeping files. Upon actually booting something in the VM
> environment and installing a guest OS there, obviously a much larger
> amount of data needs to get written to one of the hypervisor's diretory
> trees, in the form of one or more large virtual disk file.
>
> By convention, such files when used by VirtualBox have filename
> extension .vdi or .vmdk, depending on details, as described here:
> https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetails
>
> What I'm thinking about is this slightly vague (in a critical place)
> clause of yours:
>
> the Virtual Box when it restarts cannot see or load the file
> previously installed
>
> Sadly, I'm probably going to be sabotaged, here, by the fact that you're
> tending to use the word 'file' to mean everything and nothing. But,
> with that ominous warning: Maybe, just maybe, you mean this:
>
> You install VirtualBox (the hypervisor package). It works. You create
> a VM. Inside that VM, you install a Linux distro to serve as a guest
> OS. Initially, this appears to work. After a while, you shut various
> things down. On a later occasion, you restart VirtualBox. The VM you
> created is still listed as something supposedly known to VirtualBox,
> but, then when you attempt to boot the VM, VirtualBox reports failure
> because it can no longer find the virtual disk file required for the
> guest OS.
     Aside from the VB being able to find the file created from the 
original iso file that is more
or less an accurate restatement of what I intended to say.
>
> Maybe you mean that. Maybe you mean something else.
>
> If you _do_ mean that, then stop deleting or moving VirtualBox's virtual
> disk files, and you'll have a lot better luck.
>
>
> As usual, trying to help you with a technical problem is starting to
> look like an exercise in frustration and wasted time, with awesomely
> large opportunities for multiple wild goose-chases, and frankly I need
> to do more-productive things.
     Then perhaps you should let my lapses from your standard go and let 
my problems
go as well.  I frequently have to let my problems go and must settle for 
finishing
the needful rather than the desirable.
     As an example you are working hard to keep the mail flowing.  I am 
indulging
in downloading distributions which are either useful to some of the 
membership or
completely irrelevant.  The results of my previous little survey 
revealed that almost
no individual member is interested in learning about new distributions 
or in changing
the distribution that they use.  Even the live utilities such as 
GPartEd, Clonzilla or
  Rescatux are largely ignored.   If it was not that the few attendees 
and some
problem solvers who show up at the meetings do show up I would look to
online forums and Usenet to deal with my problems.

     Perhaps Linux and FOSS have gotten past the sort of meeting we used to
have at Java Cat where I got so much help and some hindrance with getting
my old laptop running under Mandriva.  We see fewer totally new users these
days.  Perhaps the tablets, phablets and smart phones are enough for the
masses and for the people who might move to Linux or even start with it.
I am sure I do not know but will continue to do as I have been doing.

>
>> It should indeed but many distributions these days are designed
>> for a single language use.
> If so, irrelevant, since I already provided a link with screenshots
> proving that this is not the case for Kaisen Linux.
>
> (I really am boggled to imagine what on God's green earth you would be
> doing with an obscure system rescue distro, but that's your affair.)

     Actually I am looking at it (when I solve the language problem) to 
see what it offers.
I find most of the these rescue systems to be incomplete in one way or 
another and
always hope for improvement.

     Bobbie Sellers