Using the Linux Commander

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carlmart

Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2006
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I'm trying to use the Commander to move files from one HDD to the other, but I can't see the HDDs there, only the root files.

As I am not familiar with Linux commands or operations, some help would be welcome.
 
Yes, Midnight Commander.

I don't know where to find out the exact Linux flavour I'm using. I burnt a disc with PartedMagic, and it's that I'm using for boot.

AFAIK the drives have been mounted.

Which path do I go to get to my drives?
 
df shows your file system. I think the OP needs something more like
sudo blkid -o list
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but since I don't know what version of linux you are running this may or may not work.
It sounds like you are new to this and are choosing a difficult path by trying to do this from the command line. I would suggest installing a gui or starting over with a friendlier distro until you learn your way around.
 
Yes, I'm certainly new to Linux. Know nothing about it, even if some things do look interesting for doing a double boot system or something.

For now I'm booting from a CD, but I would prefer something that could save personal data, like passwords, paths, etc. Would a usb stick boot accomplish that?
 
Copper0 said:
df shows your file system. I think the OP needs something more like but since I don't know what version of linux you are running this may or may not work.
It sounds like you are new to this and are choosing a difficult path by trying to do this from the command line. I would suggest installing a gui or starting over with a friendlier distro until you learn your way around.
Click to expand...

df will show any drive that is mounted. Which in turn should make it easier to see if his drives have been mounted at all.
he should be able to gather from that via the size of the drive if the ones hes looking for have indeed been mounted or not.
 
I guess what I was getting at I don't believe that the drives are mounted. df then requires some logic to figure out what's going on. Using blkid will tell you right away with less brain work. Don't get me wrong, i use df alot especially on my file server to see how full things are, but I think that blkid offeres more assistance. That is just IMHO.

carlmart, there are ways to to use a USB stick as you describe, what you are looking for is called persistence. I can't think of any distros that come like that out of the box but many can be converted to do that. That is linux's greatest strength and downfall. You can choose to do almost anything you want with it, but sometimes all those choices get in the way.
As far as what version to go with, you still haven't mentioned what version you are using.
uname -a
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will say what you have. I would recommend PinguyOS as it prolly the most familiar to what you are using or perhaps Mint. The choice of distro, at least for me, is a very philosophical one (or is that political?) I do hope this doesn't scare you off and that you do get involved. I for one find it very enjoyable customizing things and seeing my effort pay off.
 
carlmart said:
Yes, I'm certainly new to Linux. Know nothing about it, even if some things do look interesting for doing a double boot system or something.

For now I'm booting from a CD, but I would prefer something that could save personal data, like passwords, paths, etc. Would a usb stick boot accomplish that?
Click to expand...

Puppy linux is what your'e looking for.

It boots from USB, runs 100% in ram which makes it very fast and it saves all your sessions to your USB stick so when you boot again your environment is restored.

http://bkhome.org/blog2/?viewDetailed=00346

Simplicity is a puppy based distro with a little more built in eye candy which may interest you too. http://simplicitylinux.org/
 
OK, the moment I boot Linux again I will uname to get my version.

You all mentioned three that can run off an USB stick: PinguiOS, Mint, Puppy and Simplicity. Which is the more complete one or stable?
 
carlmart said:
A dumb question probably: you just copy the Linux OS of choice to the USB stick?
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With Puppy linux you first download the image and boot up in a virtual machine or cd, then use the supplied tool to make a bootable USB stick. You can even choose to use the f2fs special file system which is designed for USB sticks.

I have no experience on PinguiOS but simplicity and the Ubuntu compatible Precise Puppy were very easy to use and didn't cause many problems. It's quite amazing how much works out of the box considering the distro size is 370mb.
 
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I found a Wikipedia list with several Linux distros, and the one I'm using, Parted Magic, seems to be based on or to be "Independent", though I don't know what that means. What does that affect?

How should I go with it to copy my files from HDD to HDD?
 
OK, my version, running uname, is linux partedmagic 3.10.18pmagic.

Running blkid showed my two HDDs: sda1 (my source) and sdb1.

I also did mount the HDDs.

So what do I do now?
 
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Well, I went ahead and googled a way to do the copy.

I opened the file manager, copy the folder from the bad HDD and then paste it on the good one.

It's taking some time, but hopefully doing less harm than if it was within Windows. Isn't that so?
 
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Sounds like you figured it out.I've never used Partedmagic myself but I do use Openbox (that is the desktop manager you see), so I understand what you are looking at. Had i realized that you were trying to recover data from a bad HDD i may have suggested you mount the drive from the command line instead of using the icon (mount-gtk)
The command line would have been
sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdb1 /media/oldhdd
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This would make the drive read only, but at this point it shouldn't make much difference.
 
Well, job done using PM's File Manager, copying and pasting.

Later I will see if the files were damaged in any way.

The question remains on what Linux version would be better to boot from USB stick, saving some info on the stick when I am using it.
 
carlmart said:
Well, job done using PM's File Manager, copying and pasting.

Later I will see if the files were damaged in any way.

The question remains on what Linux version would be better to boot from USB stick, saving some info on the stick when I am using it.
Click to expand...

You missed my comments on Puppy / Simplicity?
 
Certainly not, and it's on the top my list. But there seem to be different opinions on what best to use, particularly on using light or full systems.
 
what are you trying to do with the USB based image ? Actual usage? Or just moving files between drives?
 
Hopefully never to move files again!!! ;)

I'm interested in seeing what I can and can't do with Linux and in which situations. Booting from desktop or from laptop.

For now, the only limitation I found was that, as I was booting from a CD, I couldn't save any info on the usb stick or on the HDD. So that would be the first thing to work on.

And let's see what happens...
 
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