Undeletable file. I'm stumped.

[Char Jackson]

In

No way! Any halfwit can figure it out. It isn't that hard.

Since *you* didn't figure it out, does that make you less than a
halfwit?

Run Linux and Windows gets trashed.

Except that it *doesn't* happen to anyone but you. Ergo, the problem
is at your end, in the form of either user error or system problems.

Saying anything other than Linux is doing it
wouldn't make any sense. This isn't rocket science you know.

It's not Linux, it's you.

It doesn't matter what OS is on the drive. The claim is that Linux Live
won't touch it. And I know for a fact that is wrong!

I continue to doubt you.

I haven't used any Linux Live on any Windows system since that day
except I started today. And I tried 8.04, 9.10, and 12.04.1 so far of
Ubuntu Live and every one of them were accessing the Windows drive a
number of times while Linux was booting.

So you trashed your Windows system at least 3 times today? Maybe the
image you're restoring from is AFU.

Philo says that doesn't happen.
Yet I bet it happens for everybody on any system. Why? What is Linux
doing with the Windows drive?

I don't know Philo, but I know you. Of the two of you, I'll trust
Philo every time. (As I'm sure you know, you've blown your credibility
over and over and over again, multiple times, so there isn't much
reason for me to believe these latest claims.)

 

[BillW50]

In Char Jackson typed:

Since *you* didn't figure it out, does that make you less than a
halfwit?

I figured it out years ago. I am waiting for the rest to catch up.

Except that it *doesn't* happen to anyone but you. Ergo, the problem
is at your end, in the form of either user error or system problems.


It's not Linux, it's you.

Then why does your hard drive light flicker when you load Ubuntu Live?
Are you being untruthful?

I continue to doubt you.

That is ok, I would trust the devil before I would trust you.

So you trashed your Windows system at least 3 times today? Maybe the
image you're restoring from is AFU.

Nope, I didn't trash it once today. But you always get things wrong.
Nothing new there.

I don't know Philo, but I know you. Of the two of you, I'll trust
Philo every time. (As I'm sure you know, you've blown your credibility
over and over and over again, multiple times, so there isn't much
reason for me to believe these latest claims.)

That is because you believe yourself while you get everything wrong. So
no surprise there either.

Let's see, in this post alone you got nothing right yet. That isn't a
surprise either. Even the devil has a far better batting
average than that.

 

[Char Jackson]

In Char Jackson typed:

I figured it out years ago. I am waiting for the rest to catch up.


Then why does your hard drive light flicker when you load Ubuntu Live?
Are you being untruthful?


That is ok, I would trust the devil before I would trust you.


Nope, I didn't trash it once today. But you always get things wrong.
Nothing new there.

So your claim that booting from your live CD would trash your system
was bogus? No surprise there, but thanks for confirming.

You know, they say the hardest part about lying is remembering the
lies. Looks like you forgot part of your story.

 

[BillW50]

In Char Jackson typed:

So your claim that booting from your live CD would trash your system
was bogus? No surprise there, but thanks for confirming.

You know, they say the hardest part about lying is remembering the
lies. Looks like you forgot part of your story.

Nope, I never lie, Char! Nor do I have a reason to. Plus I've seen some
of my very old posts in the archives and they are still true today as
they were back then. Check it out yourself. Also like I said earlier
today, which you clipped out: "I haven't got the same conditions that I
did back in 2009 yet. That will take some time to setup yet. I even
still have backups from back then too."

Then again you can't seem to get anything right.
That is too bad. Tsk-tsk.

 

[glee]

I haven't used any Linux Live on any Windows system since that day
except I started today. And I tried 8.04, 9.10, and 12.04.1 so far of
Ubuntu Live and every one of them were accessing the Windows drive a
number of times while Linux was booting. Philo says that doesn't
happen.
Yet I bet it happens for everybody on any system. Why? What is Linux
doing with the Windows drive?

I tried the same with BartPE. And BartPE booted completely and the
Windows drive light never lit up even once. So there is no way anybody
is going to tell me that Linux Live doesn't touch your Windows drive.
As
the drive's access light is saying otherwise.
snip

While loading, a Linux Live CD checks if any hard drives are attached to
the system, so it can list them in the Linux GUI if the user wants to
mount them later. That's why the hard drive light flashes.... it has
nothing to do with "accessing" or writing to the hard drive, or
executing anything on the hard drive.

 

[glee]

In

You can't be serious? It is documented for one. It is documented when
you compile the source. And how do you explain it is my system? You
can't come up with one single working theory how it can be my system!
This isn't rocket science. Any five year old can figure this out. But
you can't? Why is that?

You apparently don't understand the meaning of "documented" in this
dialog. It has nothing to do with compiling, that statement doesn't
make sense. I stated no one else has reproduced your issue, it is not
documented as being an issue anywhere I have seen other than in your
posts about it.

I already gave you a working theory... it's some issue with your system.
How can I explain what, when I am not on your system? As you seem to be
the only person in the world reporting this, on one computer, that
points pretty clearly to it being that system's issue, not the Linux
Live CD boot. I say once again, we will have to agree to disagree on
this. Casting aspersions on those who doubt your conclusion is just
silly.... your disparaging comments about "any five year old", "not
rocket science" and so forth, are just examples of using insults when
evidence is not available. It's a very sorry way to discuss something.

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

While loading, a Linux Live CD checks if any hard drives are attached
to the system, so it can list them in the Linux GUI if the user wants
to mount them later. That's why the hard drive light flashes.... it
has nothing to do with "accessing" or writing to the hard drive, or
executing anything on the hard drive.

I could understand a small amount of drive light flicker, but have you
actually watched it? As there is a huge amount of drive flicker as
Ubuntu Live boots. BartPE also checks what is attached to the system and
I never see the drive lights even flash once. No Ubuntu Live is doing a
lot more than that. And also didn't you read Paul's post? He too has
noticed it is doing a lot more to the drive.

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

You apparently don't understand the meaning of "documented" in this
dialog. It has nothing to do with compiling, that statement doesn't
make sense. I stated no one else has reproduced your issue, it is not
documented as being an issue anywhere I have seen other than in your
posts about it.

The people who you claim has never seen my issue, also has never
compiled Linux either. People who has compiled Linux before knows
exactly what I am talking about. You can compile it many different ways.
If it can use the Windows swapfile or not, how much RAM can it use,
whether it uses a swapfile at all, etc.

I already gave you a working theory... it's some issue with your
system. How can I explain what, when I am not on your system? As you
seem to be the only person in the world reporting this, on one
computer, that points pretty clearly to it being that system's issue,
not the Linux Live CD boot. I say once again, we will have to agree
to disagree on this.

Look Glen. I get that a lot, that it is just your system and nobody else
sees it. But what always happen later? Here is one. While running OS/2,
I noticed that OS/2 was locking up about twice a week. I reported it on
the newsgroups. Yes I got it's just your system, you are the only one
that sees it, etc. Being an engineer, I know my system was just fine.
But nobody believed me still.

Two years later IBM stumbled on the bug. Not only did it affect systems
like mine, but all machines. It had to do with pasting between OS/2
applications and DOS applications. And the bug would leave the whole OS
in an unstable condition and the whole thing could lockup at any time.
So did anybody apologize for harassing me for two years? Nope. Did
anybody mention that I found it two years earlier? Nope! It doesn't
matter, just so it got fixed is all I cared about.

I've been investigating computer problems since the 70's. And I know the
difference between user error, hardware fault, and something much bigger
than either. And I am usually right every time. And there is something
big here going on that needs to be investigated. We can do this as a
group or I can do it solo and report my findings. It really doesn't
matter to me.

Casting aspersions on those who doubt your conclusion is just
silly.... your disparaging comments about "any five year old", "not
rocket science" and so forth, are just examples of using insults when
evidence is not available. It's a very sorry way to discuss something.

You bet! And so is the harassment I often receive that it is just you
and nobody else, it's just your machine, etc. when I know far better
than that. People rather harass others instead of doing the logical and
right thing.

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." ~
Albert Einstein

 

[glee]

In glee typed:

I could understand a small amount of drive light flicker, but have you
actually watched it? As there is a huge amount of drive flicker as
Ubuntu Live boots. BartPE also checks what is attached to the system
and I never see the drive lights even flash once. No Ubuntu Live is
doing a lot more than that. And also didn't you read Paul's post? He
too has noticed it is doing a lot more to the drive.

"huge amount of drive light flicker" is a subjective and unscientific
criteria and is not concrete evidence that anything is being done other
than checking the drive. Live CD enumerates the partitions so they can
be displayed for mounting. Bart's may do it differently or not at all
at boot. Irrelevant.

I already read and responded to the comment you related being made by
Paul.... he was referring in that comment to modified specialized Live
CDs like Kaspersky's rescue CD, which as I already stated is NOT a
standard Linux Live CD.

I note that while you give a quote you say is from Paul, I have not
found that post online... do you have a link to his actual full post in
an archive such as Google Groups? I also note that the last time you
posted about this "issue" a few months ago in this group, Paul's only
contribution to the conversation did not corroborate what you were
saying then.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

In Char Jackson typed:

Nope you both are wrong

Without corroborated evidence to the contrary, I'd say it is you that
are wrong, not the thousands of other users who have had none of the
issues you do with Ubuntu (or other) Live CDs.

and owe us an apology.

If you are ever able to produce any evidence that an Ubuntu Live CD has
trashed any system other than yours by using a Windows swap file when
it wasn't manually configured to do so, I will. Otherwise, my
assertion and characterization stands.

--
Zaphod

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's
something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the
universe gets that.

 

[glee]

In glee typed:

The people who you claim has never seen my issue, also has never
compiled Linux either. People who has compiled Linux before knows
exactly what I am talking about. You can compile it many different
ways.
If it can use the Windows swapfile or not, how much RAM can it use,
whether it uses a swapfile at all, etc.
snip

There you go with "compiling" again.
If you made your Ubuntu Live CD from the downloaded ISO they made
available, it is already compiled, you didn't compile it..... and it
does not by default use the swap file or mount the hard drive when the
CD is made from the ISO available from Ubuntu's site.

If you compiled it yourself from source, then it is no longer the
standard Live CD, you modified it.

You claim you used the standard ISO, so you didn't compile it. If you
compiled it, you didn't use the standard ISO. So which is it?

 

[philo]

There you go with "compiling" again.
If you made your Ubuntu Live CD from the downloaded ISO they made
available, it is already compiled, you didn't compile it..... and it
does not by default use the swap file or mount the hard drive when the
CD is made from the ISO available from Ubuntu's site.

If you compiled it yourself from source, then it is no longer the
standard Live CD, you modified it.

You claim you used the standard ISO, so you didn't compile it. If you
compiled it, you didn't use the standard ISO. So which is it?

Pretty sure Bill is a troll
I had to killfile him

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

"huge amount of drive light flicker" is a subjective and unscientific
criteria and is not concrete evidence that anything is being done
other than checking the drive. Live CD enumerates the partitions so
they can be displayed for mounting. Bart's may do it differently or
not at all at boot. Irrelevant.

Subjective and unscientific. yes sort of. I could run some more tests,
but the amount of light flicker was on the order of what I would expect
is something was reading 200MB or more of information. And just checking
volumes for mounting I wouldn't expect more than just a quick flash or
two. BartPE also checks what drives are available and it never flashes
the hard drive light while it is booting. There is a huge
difference here.

I just booted up Puppy Live. And only when the screen showed loading
drive drivers and the Windows drive flashed for about 0.2 second and
that is all. That too is perfectly normal. Although Ubuntu hits the
Windows drive very aggressively. Totally not normal!

I already read and responded to the comment you related being made by
Paul.... he was referring in that comment to modified specialized Live
CDs like Kaspersky's rescue CD, which as I already stated is NOT a
standard Linux Live CD.

Paul did talk about that. But he also talked about this from the get-go:

[Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:48 PM]
The only practice I don't approve on, from the Linux community,
is "scanning" of drives as part of the startup sequence. Some
LiveCD distros, are known to "search" for a copy of the image
you're booting from. Presumably the purpose, is to do a
loopback mount of the image, as a replacement for accessing the
CD itself. But I still don't approve of monkey-business. A
LiveCD should just mind its own business. ~ Paul

I note that while you give a quote you say is from Paul, I have not
found that post online... do you have a link to his actual full post
in an archive such as Google Groups?

I have the actual post in my archive complete with headers and all. My
personal reference for that post is:

C:\My Documents\Posts Backup\Microsoft\
Ubuntu Live Re_ Windows not load 001.nws

Under Google News, it led me here. It's the second from the end.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/windows-not-load-t4036245p2.html

I also note that the last time you posted about this "issue" a few
months ago in this group, Paul's only contribution to the conversation
did not corroborate what you were saying then.

Well I don't know which one that you are referring too. Can you give me
part of the post, or date or something to go by so I can see what you
are referring too?

 

[BillW50]

In glee typed:

There you go with "compiling" again.
If you made your Ubuntu Live CD from the downloaded ISO they made
available, it is already compiled, you didn't compile it.....

Yes I used the same ISO and no I didn't compile it myself. But somebody
else did it for us. Presumably someone from Ubuntu.

and it does not by default use the swap file or mount the hard drive
when the CD is made from the ISO available from Ubuntu's site.

If you say so. But I have my doubts about that. As you don't know what
the person who compiled it actually did. Or do you?

If you compiled it yourself from source, then it is no longer the
standard Live CD, you modified it.

Yes, and those I don't have a single problem with. As I tell Linux to
leave Windows alone and it does.

You claim you used the standard ISO, so you didn't compile it. If you
compiled it, you didn't use the standard ISO. So which is it?

I only compiled Xandros. I never compiled any Ubuntu ones and those are
the one that I have had problems with.

 

[BillW50]

In Zaphod Beeblebrox typed:

Without corroborated evidence to the contrary, I'd say it is you that
are wrong, not the thousands of other users who have had none of the
issues you do with Ubuntu (or other) Live CDs.


If you are ever able to produce any evidence that an Ubuntu Live CD
has trashed any system other than yours by using a Windows swap file
when it wasn't manually configured to do so, I will. Otherwise, my
assertion and characterization stands.

Yeah I get that a lot. But I am always proved to be right in the end
even if it takes years. Like that OS/2 fiasco. For two years I was
complaining to IBM and on the newsgroups that OS/2 Warp had a stability
problem. As I was getting the OS freeze up about twice per week. I was
losing tons of work because I couldn't save anything.

And all I heard was it was just me, it's your hardware, OS/2 is rock
stable, and blah, blah, blah. Even though I knew everybody was wrong.
Then two years later IBM actually ran into it. And it affected all
machines and users. What set it off was copying and pasting back and
forth between DOS and OS/2. IBM claimed it left the OS in an unstable
state and it was just a matter of time before it would crash. Did
anybody say sorry Bill or anything? Nope! Very typical in my experience.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second,
it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer -- German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

 

[BillW50]

In philo typed:

Pretty sure Bill is a troll
I had to killfile him

No, I am definitely not a troll. I just know there is a problem and you
can help or you can run and hide. But your hit and run tactics is highly
suspicious I must say.

 

[glee]

In glee typed:

snip
I already read and responded to the comment you related being made by
Paul.... he was referring in that comment to modified specialized
Live
CDs like Kaspersky's rescue CD, which as I already stated is NOT a
standard Linux Live CD.

Paul did talk about that. But he also talked about this from the
get-go:

[Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:48 PM]
The only practice I don't approve on, from the Linux community,
is "scanning" of drives as part of the startup sequence. Some
LiveCD distros, are known to "search" for a copy of the image
you're booting from. Presumably the purpose, is to do a
loopback mount of the image, as a replacement for accessing the
CD itself. But I still don't approve of monkey-business. A
LiveCD should just mind its own business. ~ Paul

I note that while you give a quote you say is from Paul, I have not
found that post online... do you have a link to his actual full post
in an archive such as Google Groups?

Under Google News, it led me here. It's the second from the end.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/windows-not-load-t4036245p2.html
snip

Other than the one assertion apparently made by Paul, I have found no
documented evidence that any *standard* Linux Live CD tries to run from
the ISO image if found on the hard drive. Ping Paul and ask him to
provide evidence of this.

Yes, that link shows the quote you've been using. Again, there is no
evidence given. Paul is a very smart guy, but his claim that by using
the Linux 'top' command he is somehow showing that the Windows page file
is being used by the Live CD is an incorrect assumption on his part.
The 'top' command shows CPU processes, kind of like a task manager.
Paul stated he used 'top' to see how much swap was evident (it does NOT
show where the swap file is), and compared it in size to the existing
page file(s) on the Windows and other partitions.... and found similar
sizes. That is in no way evidence that the Linux Live CD is using the
Windows page file. It shows that the Linux Live CD, running on a system
with X amount of RAM, will allocate a certain swap size, similar in size
to what Windows allocates on the same system.

The fact is, a Live CD allocates a virtual swap file in RAM.... that is
what he is seeing with the 'top' command. The Live CD boot divides the
RAM into segments, and creates a virtual swap file in RAM from one
segment. The another segment created from RAM is used as "storage" like
a virtual hard drive, the remaining RAM is used like standard RAM for
loading programs, etc. Those Live CDs (Gentoo included) use squashfs to
accomplish this.

 

[glee]

....and just to be clear, as a P.S. to my other reply, if you have an
actual Linux installation on the hard drive, in addition to Windows or
instead of Windows, some distros of LIve CD *may* use the existing swap
partiton of the installed Linux system. This is not the same as using
the Windows page file, which the Live CDs do *not* do.

In this discussion, we're not talking about a computer that has a Linux
installation on the hard dirve, though.... we are talking about systems
with Windows only. The hard drive is not mounted without specific input
from the user, when using the defaults of the Live CD.

 

[Char Jackson]

...and just to be clear, as a P.S. to my other reply, if you have an
actual Linux installation on the hard drive, in addition to Windows or
instead of Windows, some distros of LIve CD *may* use the existing swap
partiton of the installed Linux system. This is not the same as using
the Windows page file, which the Live CDs do *not* do.

In this discussion, we're not talking about a computer that has a Linux
installation on the hard dirve, though.... we are talking about systems
with Windows only. The hard drive is not mounted without specific input
from the user, when using the defaults of the Live CD.

IMHO, Bill's pretty much pi**ing into the wind with his claims until
he steps up and provides some actual technical information. A blinking
HD activity LED doesn't tell a convincing story.

How about something like, a complete set of file CRCs from before and
after running the live CD. Compare the CRCs to see which, if any,
files have changed. A second step could be a DIFF to see how the
affected file(s), if any, have changed.

I suggest doing this by booting a live CD twice, with CRC snapshots
taken before, after, and after, since booting Windows will absolutely
cause changes that will skew the test results. We could discuss the
finer points until everyone's satisfied that it's a valid test, but in
the meantime we've basically got the resident nut job making a claim
and not being able to back it up. It's a stalemate until someone steps
up and does some *actual* testing, rather than watching a flickering
LED.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

In Zaphod Beeblebrox typed:

Yeah I get that a lot. But I am always proved to be right in the end
even if it takes years. Like that OS/2 fiasco. For two years I was
complaining to IBM and on the newsgroups that OS/2 Warp had a stability
problem. As I was getting the OS freeze up about twice per week. I was
losing tons of work because I couldn't save anything.

And all I heard was it was just me, it's your hardware, OS/2 is rock
stable, and blah, blah, blah. Even though I knew everybody was wrong.
Then two years later IBM actually ran into it. And it affected all
machines and users. What set it off was copying and pasting back and
forth between DOS and OS/2. IBM claimed it left the OS in an unstable
state and it was just a matter of time before it would crash. Did
anybody say sorry Bill or anything? Nope! Very typical in my experience.

IBM rightly ignored your vague declaration that "omg something is
wrong" and again rightly did not give you any credit because you didn't
actually contribute anything that would help identify the problem or
provide a solution.

Among other things, I've done software quality assurance testing and
what you are doing doesn't qualify. Documentation, debug logs, screen
captures, before and after disk images / file CRCs, etc., verification
on multiple systems, systematic elimination of other variables to
determine the actual cause of a problem that was observed - those are
(some of) the things that prove a problem. Until and unless you
provide a repeatable set of steps to duplicate the issue, you are just
waving your hands and proclaiming that the sky is falling. Pick up the
acorn, Henny Penny, and recognize it for what it is. In this case, it
is a consequence of your own actions, not a flaw in the system.