[Nottingham] Linux InstallFest / Awareness Day 1st November

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Philip Scott wrote:

> Greetings

> >PROBLEM: Backing up their data.
> Matt Walster has one of those USB harddrive adapter things, perhaps if someone
> were to donate a sizable disk for the day, we could put important stuff from
> various computers onto it, and then burn it to cd for them or something?
>
Some of us have um'd and ah'd about this one and it came down to:
It is difficult to pre-empt the sort of computers we will be asked to install on.
ie.  Will they have floppy|cdrom|cdrw|usb|firewire|toaster... none of which are
guarenteed.

For install:
	If a machine has floppy|cdrom|network card we can probably install.
	Slackware for floppy only, SuSe|Redhat|Mandrake for the rest.

	We can also use a CD distro like Knoppix for people to 'try without
	commitment'.

	I have to admit to last having tried  RedHat(tm) @ v7.2, SuSe @ v6.?
	and Mandrake before that but have been lead to believe they are
	reasonalby 'novices' friendly ;)

For backups:
	We depend on a machine having a sensible data outlet for the amount
	of data to be backed up.

	120GB disks are not uncommon these days with 200GB+ becoming more so.
	I don't fancy waiting while 100GB of data is copied to a USB disk
	let alone over the serial port.
	I feel even backing up 20GB via cdrw is silly.  Via dvd-rw maybe.

	Some people may even have machines sold with a "dare to open the case and you
	void this warranty" and so it may not be practical to open machines, pop in a
	card (usb|network|...)

For restores:
	Do we ask them to bring along their favourite other OS + all driver disks
	(and phone number for MS XP activation keys....)
	or do we backup and restore whole devices
	(necessary in fact unles you want to sit with someone asking
	"which of these files would you really hate to loose)
	which means more data.

Hence my preference for people doing their own backups.

Have fun,
Duncan

-- 
Duncan John Fyfe          X-ray Astronomy Group,
                          Dept. of Physics & Astronomy,
Phone +44 116 252 3635    University of Leicester,
E-mail djf@star.le.ac.uk  University Road,
                          Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K.