[SLL] All my 64bit Ubuntu's stopped booting...so far my 32bit UbuntuME still goes

[Chuck Wolber]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Robert Woodcock wrote:

> * Those circumstances may or may not include the versions of other programs
>   the software interfaces with, the configuration the software is using, the
>   way the user is doing a particular task, etc.

Corollary (and to re-iterate a point Francois Caen first made): Given the 
general solidity of Linux and OSS software, a re-install will in all 
likelihood simply replicate the problem. Maybe not right away, but you'll 
get back to the problem eventually. I like to think of it as trying to run 
away from your problems. You can drop everything and move to a new town, 
but your problems will eventually catch back up with you. Might as well 
suck it up and face them the first time.



> By choosing to reinstall, you're saying to yourself one of two things:
> 
> * I so totally botched my config files/registry/whatever that reconfiguring
>   it over from scratch *has* to result in something my software can make
>   better sense of than any manual fix I could make.

Which is why you always make a backup copy of a config file *BEFORE* you 
edit it. I like to do the following before I edit a config file:

cp foo.conf foo.conf.`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`

If you're *REALLY* squared away you'll have all of your config files 
checked into an SVN repository. I'm not that squared away.



> * My hardware is unstable, and if I blindly overwrite something that's
>   corrupted with a known good copy, maybe it'll stay uncorrupted until the
>   right person reads my resume.

At QLL we have another name for that: New Customer ;)

..Chuck..


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