Craig White wrote:
On Sun, 2007-09-02 at 10:31 -0700, Les wrote:
On Sun, 2007-09-02 at 18:11 +0100, Ian Malone wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
Just imagine how hard that will be
now for the new user looking for the one simple command line it takes to
use dd.
Of course any sane human being would read the man page, but
apparently it's more fun just to guess what will happen.
Man pages are not useful to someone without considerable background. As
you gain experience (and the knowledge that others are willing to share
with you), they become more helpful. Most man pages are only basically
useful, which is what spurred the development of Info as I understand
it, and of course I often see even the most knowledgeable of our
compatriots here refer to wiki pages, wiki books, Fedora documentation,
and other sources, and some of these sources conflict, but if you have
some other knowledge and experience, you can sort the wheat from the
chaff (most of the time anyway), and get what you need. For someone
like Karl, who is using the machine for a task, and only learning what
he needs to get by, these sources are often less than useful. Trust me,
I remember learning on my own decades ago. That is why I try to be
clear, concise and helpful.
If you have "the gift" of technology comprehension, you are lucky.
Most folks are not.
I hope you can find the help you need in those resources, but I also
hope that I and others on this list will be helpful to you as well.
----
1 - one can curse the darkness or light a candle. If anyone feels the
man pages are inadequate, you can help to make them more accessible.
Linux software and documentation is a participatory project.
2 - the man pages exist for the purpose of providing on-line help. Most
of them are pretty good. If they are too technical, generally googling
for further expansion of the themes presented generally works pretty
well. So does asking this list.
3 - there was a time when it was expected that you read the man pages or
googled for answers prior to asking the list - it was general
courtesy/respect for the list that you made some effort to
understand/solve your issues first. Sadlly, this seems to be slipping
away from us.
4 - there was a time when it was considered reasonable to slap around
someone who failed to demonstrate an expenditure of time and effort to
resolve their issues - I'll leave this as an exercise to the list
readers to answer this on their own.
5 - often people don't know or forget that it is simple enough to open
Konqueror and read man/info pages in GUI... click in address line and
type 'man:dd' or 'info:dd'
6 - this is not directed at anyone specifically but if the shoe
fits...wear it.
Craig
I will wear it and just read info dd for about the 4th time in 5
days. The first time I read it I was not aware that dd sends Everything
including the file system. The info dd does not say this.
I tried to copy this f7 which is about 8 Gbytes to another partition
that was 10 Gbytes. The transfer failed because the 8 Gbyte f7 was from
a 40 Gbyte partition :-)
If you read everything in info dd you will not see this listed.
Google of dd gives you a lot of information but I have not seen any
example of a 40 Gbyte copy.
So it may be time to get the author of the dd info to add something
about large copies and the use of the Rescue CD.
--
Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
Linux User
#450462 http://counter.li.org.
