Bad sectors: how bad can it be
Dear list,
after an incorrect power-off of my FreeBSD system, it does not boot
any more, BTX stops even before showing the cute beastie menu.
Starting the machine by other means, I found that the hard-drive is
installed on has bad sectors. I am looking for advices on how to
recover from this, if possible.
Basically the question is: shall I discard my hard-drive with bad-
sectors, or can I continue using it?
The Linux system I use to diagnose this says:
hdb: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady
SeekComplete Error }
hdb: media error (bad sector): error=0x30 { LastFailedSense=0x03 }
...
Buffer I/O error on device hdb, logical block 1663200
etc.
Since I use computers (1992) these are my first bad sectors :) (on
hard drives, taking floppies into account is no fun!). I hence have
several questions:
-- is it possible to let these sectors?
-- to which extents a hard-drive with bad sectors is usable?
-- while the apparition of these bad sectors coincide with an
incorrect power-off, are the two events related? The machine suffered
plenty improper power-offs (or many), in the last years and did not
react so badly!
--
Thank you in advance for your advices,
Michaël___
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Re: General and specific make questions
Le 8 juin 09 à 23:20, Polytropon a écrit : On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 22:12:17 +0200, Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 11:52:17PM -0500, Lars Eighner wrote: What I need most is to find (a) make tutorial(s) that do not suppose make is being used for compling c/c++ programs. Yes, I know, that is mostly why make exists, but many tutorials plunge right into C examples with implicit C rules, while -- it seems to me -- make could be much more useful for a variety of things, and I could sure use more of the general and arbitrary examples. I use make to e.g. build complex LaTeX documents with included gnuplot graphs. Works like a charm. But that it is not conceptually different from compiling a C program. Correct. I do the same here. I also do use make to produce LaTeX documents. I even `published' my collection of makefiles at https://gna.org/projects/bsdmakepscripts/ There is some terse indications for using these makefiles in a TeX document: http://home.gna.org/bsdmakepscripts/tex.html (much more need to be written as usual). An interesting feature of these scripts is the good integration of METAPOST and BIBTEX (this is not yet exemplified). As you have guessed, make can be used for much more than C files compilation, but as it has been pointed out, these other uses are not conceptually different from the `C-case'. In fact in the typical way of using a UNIX-like workstation, data is processed through a stack of elementary treatments in order to obtain a final object (whether it is a program, a PostScript file or a full web site). This is why make can be viewed as the central part of the work with a UNIX-like workstation (sharing its place with an editor of your choice). -- All the best, Michaël ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: PDF inventory software
Le 8 juin 09 à 23:17, Daniel Underwood a écrit : I'm looking for a way to manage my personal collection of research articles. Ideally I'd like some way to keep records on authors, keywords, journals, and publication years of articles (PDF files) downloaded onto my local drive. Hi Daniel, I am also a researcher, and although I did not find any tool suited to the management of my article's collection, I elaborated a methodology I am rather happy with. Let me detail this methodology: The atom in the organization of my collection of articles is the directory, this is handy because in a directory you can store many additional information along with the main file (the file containing the article). Each of these folders is stored in a vault. I choose the name vault because, IIRC, the place a dragon uses to store its treasures is called the «dragon vault» in the relevant literature. We, gathering all these articles we do not have time to read, are pretty much like these dragons sleeping on their pile. Here is the procedure to add an article to the collection: 1. I cd to the `vault' 2. I create a new folder to hold the article, usually with a rather cryptic name (without accents nor spaces) obtained 3. I cd to this new folder 4. I copy the article under the name `paper.pdf' or `paper.djvu' 5. I create a text file called INDEX, looking much like an email envelope, detailing the name of the authors and the article's title During the life of the article in my collection, I will usually add a `mathscinet.bib' for the bibliography entry (when it is taken from mathscinet), I may add reviews of the article and text dumps (all of this with standardized names). With this organization, it is pretty easy to dig the collection with combinations of `find', `awk', and `grep'. Moreover, putting a document in its folder makes the collection very flexible. I have even written a program producing a big `index.html' file from all of this, but of course it is currently broken and I have no time to fix it (I shall soon defend by phD!). There is much more to do, to have the good tools managing this collection! BTW, `djvu' is an alternative format to store articles digitally, it has many qualities, among them djvu files are usually much smaller than the corresponding PDF files (for retrodigitized papers). See djvu.org! -- All the best, Michaël ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Installing latest version of LaTeX
Le 7 juin 09 à 06:48, Daniel Underwood a écrit : Installed texlive from ISO, and it all works perfectly now. Thanks folks! However, you may realize that ports installing LaTeX style files (or other things) usually do it in a directory that TeXlive is not aware of. You have to play a bit with `texmf.cnf' to fix this. If you do not need the most fancy things in the TeX world (like LuaTeX), you can go with teTeX and add TeXlive's texmf tree in /usr/ local/share/texmf/texmf-local, and replace teTeX updmap.conf files with TeXlive's. This works well and plays nicely with ports depending of LaTeX. -- Cheers, Michaël ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Cooking LLVM in FreeBSD 8
On Ivoras'FreeBSD page, ``What's cooking for FreeBSD 8'' http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd8.html one can read about the possible substitution of GCC by LLVM (among other candidates). Under the assumption that LLVM is selected, would this mean that FreeBSD will somehow integrate the OCaml compiler? Of course OCaml is already in the ports, but if it is somehow integrated in the base system, there is serious opportunities to write system tools with this language. -- Cheers, Michaël ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: backup files from editor
Hi prad, Le 5 mars 09 à 09:15, prad a écrit : editors can produce backup files - eg emacs adds a ~ to the backup file. the backup file keeps getting changed as you make changes to the original so you i'm wondering what the point of them is. Please refer to the Emacs manual (info m Emacs) to learn about the precise rule governing backup files. Just like you, I do not like to have all of these backup files springing off everywhere in my filesystem. Instead of turning backup off, I tell emacs to put them in the `.emacs.d/backup' I created for this purpose: (setq backup-directory-alist '((.* . ~/.emacs.d/backup))) You can get a finer control on backup location, read documentation for the bariable `backup-directory-alist' to discover how. Note that this setup tends to produce super long file named in `~/.emacs.d/backup' which may break some fragile systems (e.g. I encountered problems when preparing ISO filesystems not supporting these long names). i turn off backups (so my directory doesn't fill up with ~ files), but then i also don't space things properly and occasionally use cryptic names when programming (from what my son tells me), so i figure i should change some of these bad habits. how do people make use of the backup feature when they program? Note that basic functionalities of RCS systems are well integrated in Emacs (see the Tools menu), and I systematically use SVN (in the ports) as a sophisticated backup system when I edit files that count. Note that the FreeBSD wiki features an intereting comparison of the various RCS systems available, so if you are interested with this approach, you can look for this comparison and make your choice. You can also use RCS without the (moderate) hassle to set up a repository, Emacs has support for an `immediate' RCS system, doubling the files you want to keep track of with a `,v' companion file, containing revision history. (IIRC, this RCS system is the ancestor of CVS, but I cannot find again the name, sorry about this.) -- All the best, Michaël ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
