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linux
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Posted by: qgeorge

How do I learn the basics of linux

I was able to follow directions that were forwarded to me by a good soul.

And I got extremely lucky as I had to try all variations of mounting the cdrom (I have two cdroms) and restoring the hard drive (changing the last letter in the command line

Here is what I was told to do:

>>
mfstool restore -zi /cdrom/tivo3.0.clean.bak /dev/hdb

This reads in the standard TiVo v3.0 backup and zeros out the "extra data"
and writes it to the Primary IDE Slave. Once this is complete you will have
a working 20GB TiVo. Next lets tell the TiVo to use the full drive space.

cd /mad32
./setup.sh
>>

It totally worked as I was able to boot up the tivo, although I think I have a bad modem "no dial tone"

The question is how/where do I learn linux and figure out what the heck I did to get it to work.

Posted by: Robert S

While your friend may have an excellent soul, his ability to keep current with TiVo upgrading techniques is sadly lacking. Read New Hinsdale (linked above) and consider repeating your upgrade.

DaveLessnau has an excellent 'what to check if your modem ain't working' post that you should check just to be sure, but now you've got 3.0 you can use TurboNet or an external modem instead.

Learning Linux, or at least, learning how to use the Linux command line (these days Unix is as pointy-and-clicky as Windows), I'd start with Installing Linux and Getting Started (O'Reilly will kill a tree and put a copy on it for you if you prefer).

There's enough Linux on the TiVo boot disk for you to do most of the things in the tutorial - it runs from a RAM disk, so you won't break anything.

If you want to try more, Knoppix is a full desktop Linux environment on a CD and if you get really hooked you can shrink your Windows partition and put a Red Hat (or what ever) install on your hard drive and dual-boot.

Linux can feel rather alien to start with as it does some quite fundamental things differently to Windows, but it's very logical and it encourages you to build a mental model of what the computer is doing, whereas Windows tries to hide it all.