Second OS choice

[Palad1]

Hello,

I'd like to install another OS on a firewire hard drive so I can boot on my secondary drive and do a quick

root@rescue$ dd if=$MYPOWERBOOKDRIVE | bzip2 -9> $MYFIREWIREHARDDRIVE/powerbook.bz2

The thing is I can't decide which OS I should install.
Which does have better firewire support? FreeBSD, Ubuntu breezy badger, Darwin, OpenBSD?

Help (I just need a command prompt, no graphical interface whatsoever... unless it's NeXTish )

Thanks for the tips,
Palad1

 

[cb911]

just install OS X!

can i ask... why is it you only want to install only a linux-y OS? i guess you just want a quick boot time, since you'll only be using it for some bzippin'.

what does that command do by the way? restore a backup to your boot volume?

 

[Palad1]

dd makes a byte per byte copy of a device, bzip compresses, and the > just stores it to a file.

I want to make a full backup of my hard drive, because I already suffered a full system loss and it took me weeks to find all the tweaks I added to my tiger, fink and other thingamagies...

I don't plan on doing restores though... I mean, this time, my HD _will_ survive

Osx only boots in a GUI, I don't need that ... Unless there's a way to swap WindowManager for bash...

Plus, I'm a GEEK

 

[ipacmm]

I would install Mac OS X Server, you can play with all of the server tools and everything and if you ever want to change your Mac into a server you can do it quickly.

 

[Palad1]

OSX Server is a tad expensive for me...

 

[ipacmm]

OSX Server is a tad expensive for me...

Well if you want you can buy 10.3 server which has a lot of the same features as 10.4 for next to nothing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Software-Mac-OS...ryZ80258QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[Palad1]

Thanks for the link.

I think I'll try Darwin tonight, and if my Mac ever survives I'll post a walkthough (or a guide) here.

 

[cb911]

ah, i didn't see the dd in there. i posted late at night.

and fair enough, i can understand the geek thing.

you could just boot into Single User Mode in your alternate OS X install. also if you have a 2nd OS X install - you can trouble shoot OS X if you do things like tweak with the system.

 

[janey]

you could just boot into Single User Mode in your alternate OS X install. also if you have a 2nd OS X install - you can trouble shoot OS X if you do things like tweak with the system.

single user mode logs you in as root.

As for booting up without all that fancy stuff in OS X, a google search would have been useful:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030716220410216

i tried looking for that >console thing you use to login, but there's ways to not even look at the loginwindow and just boot directly to the console.

 

[cb911]

what's wrong with logging in as root? if all you want to do is 'dd' your other drive and bzip it...

i was just saying that Single User would save time, not having to fully load the OS X GUI etc. and it's always handy to have a 2nd OS X install.

 

[mduser63]

Of course the other obvious thing to do is to use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete back up. That way you don't have to boot into single user mode, or even use the command line at all.

 

[dsatterfield]

Secondary OS For backing up

Question for you...
Have you thought about using Disk Utility and the restore option? I use it all the time. Saved my hinney this week when my primary drive failed. And if you have a Sawtooth or later System you can boot from an external Firewire drive.

Step 1
Do all updates to system, antivirus, programs
Step 2
Make a partition on the drive large enough to hold everything plus 25%
Step 3
Run "Repair Disk Permissions"
Step 4
Run "Restore"
Step 5
Run "Repair Disk Permissions" on new drive
Step 6
Run "Repair Disk"
Step 7
Boot from Firewire Drive to make sure it works

Simple, Elegant

You could also create a DMG file and burn it off to a DVD.

Hope this helps
David

dd makes a byte per byte copy of a device, bzip compresses, and the > just stores it to a file.

I want to make a full backup of my hard drive, because I already suffered a full system loss and it took me weeks to find all the tweaks I added to my tiger, fink and other thingamagies...

I don't plan on doing restores though... I mean, this time, my HD _will_ survive

Osx only boots in a GUI, I don't need that ... Unless there's a way to swap WindowManager for bash...

Plus, I'm a GEEK

 

[Palad1]

I'm using this solution because I need to compress my disk image... I don't have enough space for a restore :/

Ubuntu linux gave me a strange error while "dd"ing my /dev/hda... device not active.

Maybe a power management issue... round two tomorrow