I've used sudo rm -rf lots of times constructively.... but not this time.

At 3/9/16 01:35 AM, DJ-Ri wrote: Never type "rm -rf" unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing. For you, I'd also recommend throwing an "-i" option in there just in case.

What does that do?

I have an essay on this computer. I know the file path. Is there a way I can save it? That's my only qualm about starting fresh.

I did find / -iname "gnome"* and there's lots of shit. So gnome isn't gone.... it's just, broke.

I tried to view it in nano, but there's an ! in the name, so when I type the path (which it confirms to exist) it says !/odt: event not found. What do I dooooooooo? @Dj-Ri @Neonspider

Note, I confirmed it exists through find -inameing the non-exclamation part of its name, and it printed the full name w/ exclaimations

Also I found a red line error in my kernel journal log thing, if that helps. plymouth something failed to start up because it didn't exist. Maybe that's my gui failing to boot?

I thought this would simple to fix because it's just one directory, and I know which one it is. Can't I look up its dependencies somehow? I'm willing to compile it from source.

At 3/9/16 07:36 AM, SansNumbers wrote:

I thought you said quit using GUIs because you're so savvy you just use command line.

At 3/9/16 06:29 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote: I have an essay on this computer. I know the file path. Is there a way I can save it? That's my only qualm about starting fresh.

Sure. Just save that file to any backup medium. You could save it to a removable USB thumb drive for example.

At 3/9/16 06:32 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote: I did find / -iname "gnome"* and there's lots of shit. So gnome isn't gone.... it's just, broke.

Yeah Gnome's pretty pervasive. That's why I don't suggest trying to mess with it too much yourself. Ideally you let your Linux distro handle that when you're installing it the first time (and let it handle the updating stuff via the natural repository update mechanism). Unfortunately you went and deleted some files you need. If you knew the exact files and the exact content of those files, theoretically you could just copy them back in there, and then give them the appropriate permissions and everything should "just work", but it's anyone's guess what those files might be or what they should look like. (Maybe even specific to your exact hardware). I can tell you I don't have that directory structure on my machine, but I'm not using Gnome as my desktop environment either.

At 3/9/16 06:41 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote: I tried to view it in nano, but there's an ! in the name, so when I type the path (which it confirms to exist) it says !/odt: event not found. What do I dooooooooo? @Dj-Ri @Neonspider

Backslashes. Also, get in the habit of *not* using problematic characters in file names. Don't use ! @ # $ % and so forth.

But how you work around that is you put a backslash before it, so if your file was named ImAnExclamationMark!File.txt you would refer to it like ImAnExclamationMark\!File.txt

Also if you type part of a filename and then press Tab it'll fill it out the rest of the way, including putting in the backslashes for you. So in the previous example you could type ImAnEx (or any unique prefix) followed by Tab and it'd replace with ImAnExclamationMark\!File.txt on the command prompt. If it's not a unique prefix just press Tab twice and you'll see a list of everything it can match, so type out some more until it's unique and press Tab again.

At 3/9/16 06:52 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote: Also I found a red line error in my kernel journal log thing, if that helps. plymouth something failed to start up because it didn't exist. Maybe that's my gui failing to boot?

I have no idea but it doesn't sound good.

At 3/9/16 07:00 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote: I thought this would simple to fix because it's just one directory, and I know which one it is. Can't I look up its dependencies somehow? I'm willing to compile it from source.

You probably don't want to mess with this from source. But if you must, then uninstall everything that depends on Gnome, and uninstall all the Gnome components, figure out all the dependencies, compile in the correct order, making sure to pass any necessary command line configuration options and changing any necessary things in the makefiles or configure files and etc... Just use the repository system. Better yet, if you can't get Gnome working, I would seriously recommend just reinstall Linux and let the installation procedure set that up for you like it did the first time. It'll be far less of a hassle. But yes you *could* do it from source if you were masochistic about it.

Look, here's what I would do if I was in your shoes at the moment. I would save my files to backup media (external hard drives or thumb drives work nicely). Then I'd reinstall Linux, making sure to let it overwrite the existing installation. (Actually I'd probably zero out the drive first, but don't accidentally zero out your external hard drive or your thumb drive)

Here's how you can save a file to an external hard drive or a thumb drive. First, connect the drive.

cd /dev
ls sd*

Now you gotta figure out which of those is your thumb drive. It's probably the last one. sda is probably your internal hard drive, you may already have sdb, sdc, and so on (or may not). Let's assume you just have sda as the internal hard drive and sdb as the thumb drive (and no other devices). Numbers at the end are just the partitions on the device, so sda1 and sda2 would just mean sda has two partitions

So now you want to do something called mounting. So let's assume you want to save myfile.txt which I will assume is located ~/Desktop/myfile.txt and you want to save that to your thumb drive. So first make a directory the thumb drive can use.

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir thumbdrive

Now you'll want to mount your device file onto the directory you just created. If it complains, you might need to be root. Just keep that in mind. Also you need to know what filesystem is your thumb drive using. I will assume FAT32 (typical common Windows filesystem that thumb drives use). So now we do something like

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb thumbdrive

(If you're using an external hard drive it might use NTFS instead, in which case -t ntfs instead of -t vfat. For Ext2 or Ext3 filesystems it'd be -t ext2 or -t ext3 respectively)

And so now you just copy your file into that directory that's linked to your thumb drive. Very important to run the sync command after since it's on a different drive from your internal and you want it written out all at once now, and not Linux deciding to dilly-dally around and you maybe get a partial file or corrupted file if you remove the thumb drive too early.

cp myfile.txt thumbdrive
sync

Wait until you get the command prompt back. Now you want to unmount

umount thumbdrive

Now that it's unmounted you don't really need the directory anymore unless you just like having it there.

rmdir thumbdrive

And now you can test on some other computer and see if you copied the files correctly.

Thank you soooo much! Yes, I'm going to do just that. For some reason I thought compiling something from the source was a bit... less awful. Yeah, the exclamation point thing is what I do when I want to emphasize the file is the current version of the essay, as opposed to earlier copies. So like, it ends up looking something like. essay_final.doc essay_actual_final.doc essay_actual_for_reals.doc and then something like your esssssaaayyy!!!!!!.doc. It's silly.

Okay, since I'm reinstalling debian (for the second time), should I try out a new desktop environment? Any reccomendations?

By god, it was sdb! Neon's a prophet!

At 3/9/16 09:32 PM, Tacticat wrote: He's smarter than 99.999% of assholes on here, including you and me.

Well... ;) I am majoring in physics...
God I'm sooo frustrated. The fucking mount point!

Tacticat, I'm afraid neon has abandoned me.

clarify, I'm dual majoring in physics and chem, plan on getting the grad degree in theoretical quantum chem

And my IQ is over 3 standard deviations above the mean...

But, that's my ego talking. Or is it my superego? ;)
In all honestly I'm lost. I created the directory, confirmed it exists... but it wont fucking mount. the mount point doesn't exist.

At 3/9/16 09:41 PM, Tacticat wrote: If you want help, either you use the @ or PM directly to him. NeonSpider likes to help people so don't worry.

The only reason I get notification to this thread because I faved it, in case you need help.

I've been doing just that. He responded to like four of them, was fantastic, but I think he chose sleep over me. Selfish jerk!

I know, I was being facetious :P But yes, I'm pretty stressed.... I need this essay.

Or else I'm pretty sure I'll vomit out my intestines and strangle myself with them.

At 3/9/16 06:27 AM, MonochromeMonitor wrote:

At 3/9/16 01:35 AM, DJ-Ri wrote: Never type "rm -rf" unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing. For you, I'd also recommend throwing an "-i" option in there just in case.

What does that do?

The "-i" option tells rm to always prompt you for confirmation before deleting a file. I always recommend making an alias for rm that points to "rm -i" for novices to prevent any unwanted catastrophes.

Whenever you want to know about a command, use "man" to look up the manual page for it. For example, to learn about all the different ways you can use "rm", type "man rm". This will provide detailed information on all of your rm implementation's various options, including "-i"

At 3/11/16 07:15 AM, SansNumbers wrote: While asking questions as a newbie, it is not considered best practice to brag about your IQ score. But I suppose I'm late again, so I am the true fool here.

Nah, you're right, it was dickish.

What is a good distro to go along side Windows 10?