Category: Linux

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For several months I’ve been providing installable RPM packages for the Dillo web browser. Since many different distributions use RPM packages, I’ve been getting requests to add various Linux distributions. I started out just installing to extra partitions, but then I started building virtual systems with User-Mode Linux.

Well, people have been requesting RPMs for Conectiva, a distribution from Brazil and partner in UnitedLinux. I built a UML virtual system, but was never able to get Dillo to compile or to get the imitation network driver working. So, tonight I decided to install an actual copy.

With most Linux installers, you can choose where to create a new partition, and set it up to add existing ones to the system. This has worked fine with every version of Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE I have installed. The installer will create the new partition, leave the others alone, and mark them to be visible in the system you’ve installed.

Conectiva didn’t leave the existing partitions alone. Each partition I had marked was gone: my main OS partition (currently Red Hat 9), my home directory, and all my download and media files. Fortunately I had backups of the most critical files from last Saturday, and I was able to recover my entire home directory with Tomsrtbt and Parted‘s rescue function. And I don’t mind losing my main OS, since it’s not that hard to re-install it – all I need is the configuration, and I’ve got that backed up.

That leaves my entire download and media archive. I always figured, “I can just re-download all of this, right?” And most of it I can. Much of the rest either isn’t important, or hasn’t changed since the last backup (which I’ll admit was a long time ago), or can be recovered from CD, or can be re-scanned. The few photos that hadn’t made it into last week’s backup turned out to still be in a temporary folder on my website. Still, there are things that will be hard to find again, and probably some that will be impossible.

Just in case, I’ve got a recovery tool scanning the lost partitions in hopes that it will come up with something.

I’m not touching Conectiva again – or any other distribution I’m not already familiar with – until I get a spare system set up, or maybe spring for something like VMWare. And I’m seriously considering picking up some sort of backup solution that will hold more than a CD-RW, so I’ll be more inclined to save everything instead of picking and choosing what to put on a few discs.

Update 7:45am: I got the download/media partition back. The tool I ran overnight didn’t seem to find anything, but when I ran parted again this morning (after remembering that it was on PAUD, the Parted And Utilities Disk, not Tomsrtbt) it was able to find the partition.

So now all that’s missing is the primary OS (I’m running off of one of the “extra” installations right now), and I can reinstall that easily.

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Several months ago, Scummy Computer Operations sued IBM claiming that IBM had copied code from UNIX into Linux. They refused to say what code had been copied. Already this sounds fishy. In their initial filing, they insulted the ethics and competence of the entire Open Source community. Eventually they started making wilder and wilder claims. They called into question the entire open source development model. They started threatening Linux users, and made noise about how they were going to start issuing license terms for Linux, without having proven that they actually own anything in Linux. The only specifics anyone’s managed to get out of them involve code IBM wrote itself and contributed to both OSes.

All they had to do was say “This code here is in violation of our copyright.” At which point the Linux kernel developers could look at it, say, “Hmm, that was contributed by so-and-so on such-and-such a date.” (The entire development process is open to the public – SCO could do this themselves.) An investigation could then be made, and the code could be either shown to be not in violation or removed and replaced with something else. Instead, they’ve remained (deliberately?) vague, such that over the course of four months, with the entire source code for Linux available to the entire world, no one has managed to find anything and say, “this must be what they’re complaining about.”

Yesterday Red Hat got fed up and sued SCO, saying the accusations were a load of bull and accusing them of anti-competetive practices.

Now, not only is SCO claiming that Red Hat’s suit proves that SCO is right (they deny it, therefore it must be true!), their licensing terms for Linux would make it more expensive than Windows.

And you know what really makes me sick? SCO’s stock price just went up. These people are deceptive scumbags. They’re making claims that they refuse to back up. They’re setting prices and threatening to go after people for money, but they refuse to prove that they own what they’re selling. Even in the unlikely event that they’re telling the truth and there is UNIX code in Linux, they’ve acted unethically by not giving anyone a chance to correct the issue.

See also: TWikiWeThey: SCO vs. IBM [archive.org] and OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint