[H]omer <u...@ftc.com>

I've been mercilessly !#/bashing away at this linux box now for nearly two
years.

In that time I've destroyed the bootblock, corrupted the ext2 filesystem,
wiped and reinstalled the partition during an unfortunate foray into
ReiserFS, mistakenly downgraded components, thoughtlessly screwed with file
dependencies, messed up hundreds of symlinks, totally screwed file
permissions, altered the entire contents of the /etc directory to an extent
that can only be described as "mind buggering", config'ed installs with the
wrong prefix (and ended up having multiple orphaned copies of different
versions of the same packages), recompiled the kernel on a seemingly hourly
basis ... and after all that ...

It's still standing !!!

Ok, so it's moved from one disk to another then back, but it's still the
same installation of RH.

And it's not just "getting by" either.

It's got a highly adaptive self correction facility ... but unlike the
bollox that comes with Win2K this facility has two legs and a hairy chest
... me. 5 minutes reading a FAQ, HOW-TO or man page and a few of seconds of
vi'ing/sh'ing scripts and the system is back to normal. Oh, with the help of
some very expensive backup software of course ... namely - this one line
script: "time nice -n 19 find / -mount -depth -print | nice -n 19 cpio -ovaH
crc | nice -n 19 bzip2 | nice -n 19 pgp -fes u...@ftc.com u...@ftc.com >
/mnt/roswell/linux-backup-19.10.2001.cpio.bz2.pgp" and two others - one for
verifying and one for restoring. God knows I've maliciously tried to destroy
this beast, but its not having it, I give up. Its invincible.

I've learned more about ... well ... everything, in the past two years using
linux, than the rest of my adult life put together, the point is that you
can screw linux up, like you can with anything else, but unlike certain M$
products, you never need to reach the stage where "a new clean install is
necessary because there is actually no way to fix the problem" - everything
is "fixable" under linux.

I find it ironic that nobody anywhere - including M$ support and the whole
M$ ng community can explain to me why I get ...

'The configuration information of the performance library
"D:\WINNT\System32\w3ctrs.dll" for the "W3SVC" service does not match the
trusted performance library information stored in the registry. The
functions in this library will not be treated as trusted.'

... type errors (not just that library - but about 20 others - not all
related to IIS) scattered throughout my Win2k event viewer, nor how to fix
them. There's a single document on M$ support that basically explains one
circumstance under which this situation can arise, but gives no true
explanation and no permanent solution. The circumstance doesn't match mine
and the "workaround" .. well .. doesn't. Anyway with Apache on the linux
box, why the hell would I want IIS ( presumably standing for too (two)
shit ) infesting my system. IIS Sux ... it's official - we have photos.

[H]omer
A member of "Script Kiddies R Us" since 1792

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