I normally use machine A, and I make backups of A onto a fileserver B. Sooner or later, I will lose machine A for one reason or another. Its hard drive wears out, or it gets hit by lightening, or some salesperson convinces me that it's an embarrassing piece of obsolete junk, or an overclocking experiment goes horribly wrong, or it suffers a "glitter-related event", etc. Let's assume that computer C is totally different from computer A -- different mass storage interface, processor from a different company, different screen resolution, etc. Is there an easy way to make a list of all the software currently installed on A before disaster strikes, in a way that makes it easy to install the same software on the blank hard drives of computer C? Or better yet, makes it easy to install the latest versions of each piece of software, and the specific sub-version optimized for this particular machine C? If I have plenty of space on B, it seems easiest copy *everything* from A to B. If I do that, what is a good way of dividing the files I want to copy from B to C from the files I don't? I don't want to copy binary files I can easily re-download (and possibly re-compile) as needed, and probably wouldn't work on machine C anyway. Or is it better in the long run to try to avoid backing up such easily-obtained machine-specific binary files onto B in the first place? Is there a better way to reduce the chances that viruses and trojans get passed on to C and re-activated? When I customize software or write fresh new software, what is a good way to make sure the tweaks I have made get backed up and transferred to the new machine and installed? Such as cron and anacron tasks? What I can I do to make my transition to some new computer C safe and smooth? (This question expands on a sub-question of "Incremental system backup and restore w/ rsync or rdiff-backup issues" that I thought was particularly important).

The answers provided to this question doesn't help. I'ved tried yum install ncdu But I'm getting No package ncdu available

If I install OpenBSD from CD-ROM: http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html with install48.iso then is it patched? 1. All 10 patches from here are in the ISO file? 2. If those are not included, how can I apply these patches? Is there a one-liner command (like under Fedora: yum upgrade or Debian based, apt-get upgrade) or do I have to download and apply all 10 patches one by one?

I am trying to install Scientific Linux 6.1 (which is literally RedHat Enterprise Linux without the branding) by booting its installer from my USB drive. The installer starts fine, but two things happened: 1. My USB drive appears as /dev/sda while my internal hard disk (the one I want to install the OS onto) is /dev/sdb. However, I would like my hard disk to be /dev/sda so that when I remove my USB drive after installation, my system can boot OK. How can I change this? 2. Even though the installer starts, once I start the actual installation I get an error saying the installer can't find the "ISO 9001" install image. Might these two issues be related? I would appreciate any suggestions... Thanks.

I am using Fedora 13, and it was my friend who did the installation for me. I have used Ubuntu also and I found it more easy to install than fedora. Ubuntu uses a WUBI installer (if I am correct) and its more easy for the users to install and remove Ubuntu. For a person who knows how to install and remove an application in Windows, can they install/remove Ubuntu also. Why is it that its not the same with Fedora. Are there any steps being taken for making it more user-friendly.

On Ubuntu Desktop 10.04.1, I have just run apt-get install to install a package. Amongst the list of suggested packages is ssh. I'm confused, because I am sure that I already have ssh installed: # ssh --version usage: ssh [-1246AaCfgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port] [-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-i identity_file] [-L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport] [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec] [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-p port] [-R [bind_address:]port:host:hostport] [-S ctl_path] [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] [user@]hostname [command] So... When apt-get install suggests packages, does it take my existing set-up into consideration before making the suggestion? If so, why does it suggest something that I already have?

Is there any existing step by step guide instructing how to install 2 different Linux OSs (say, Red Hat and SUSE), and Windows OS on the same machine? (When tried it I entangled with the partitions configuration, and I've heard from others that the secondary Linux has to be installed without its boot loader).

I want to install CentOS 5.5 on two systems. I have a kickstart file. I would like to install CentOS on a system using this kickstart file. I'm reading the instructions provided by fedoraproject.org and RedHat.com , but they suggest using a DHCP server. I don't want to set up a DHCP server right now, and I can't have DHCP traffic on this LAN. How can I make this kickstart available over the network without using DHCP to assign an IP and point to the file I know that it is possible to make the Kickstart file available over HTTP, FTP or NFS. How can I configure the RedHat installer to have an IP address on the network and grab the kickstart file from a remote server?

I am feeling stupid. I have been searching for 3 hours with no success. I installed Fedora 14 and tried to do yum install firestarter but the package was not found. I also tried from a GUI and found nothing. It is at fedoras repository? Maybe I should configure the repository, but all I found are dated. Any help? Thank you.

I've been having a problem all day. It all started when I tried to partition my HD to install Ubuntu with bootcamp on my mac. The install froze and when I restarted the Apple logo was replaced with a "do not enter" sign (circle with slash). I've been searching forums for a solution and even tried to run a LiveCD but that failed. I think I need to remove GRUB from my MBR. Anyone have some suggestions/help? Much appreciated.

I'm using a G4 1.5ghz PPC 32bit Powerbook I followed the instructions on this site. But could never get my powerbook to boot up from the usb drive. I can not use a CD because my DVD drive is busted. Thus the need for USB. Also most of the usb partitioning and install instructions are for people using linux already. I need to create the disk in mac osx only.

I have been trying to install Debian Lenny on my new machine, alongside Windows 7 64-bit. When I get to the part where it detects my disks, it can't find any. I have a 1GB FAT32 flash drive that it detects if it is in, but it doesn't see my Hitachi drive or my USB Seagate. I partitioned a 100GB partition on the internal Hitachi drive as FAT32. Does anyone have any ideas? MOBO: Asus X58 Sabertooth HDD: Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 SCSI Disk Drive

I need to install another kernel (2.6.34) into my fedora machine (x86) and i need to show the old and new boot up options in the boot menu (both new and old kernel) I have downloaded the new kernel and i need to compile it and need to build it. can you explain me the steps for doing that? I got the correct steps from this discussion and am having doubts in the steps 6 and 7 in the below link which explains the installation of new kernel. http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/compiling-linux-kernel-26.html Also can you explain the effective configuration of 'menuconfig' and its what it actually aims?

I used dd if=archlinux-2010.05-core-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb to create an installation image on a USB stick and I'm getting a blank screen soon after boot-up. The last message I saw is: Waiting for UDev UEvents to be processed... What am I to do? [**note**] Am using a TravelMate 6592: Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz processor.

I'm trying to create a custom CD using my own minimal debian installed setup. I just simply typed build-simple-cdd. The process was successful, but when I tested it on my virtualbox and disabling the network, it looks for the kernel. Did I miss anything on my setup?

While trying to install Amahi and Fedora 14 from 5 discs, I get this error: It says: > A fatal error occurred when installing the module-init-tools package. This could indicate errors when reading installation media. Installation cannot continue. When prompted, I opted to install the Fedora repository, the Fedora Updates repo, and added an Amahi repo. I didn't select the Fedora Test Updates repo. The checksums of the downloaded files are correct, and the media test approved all 5 of my CDs. What else could be the problem?

I need a command to run on Linux to install mplayer. I'm not finding the command anywhere, and when I try to use the zypper command to install mplayer it tells me I am not a sudoer. What should I do?

I get an error while install xbrightness. > xbrightness-0.3-3.1.x86_64` > requires libXaw8.so.8()(64bit) How can I install it?

[This page](http://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap) describes how you can use the debootstrap utility to install a base Debian unstable/sid system on an existing Linux machine. The new install is accessible using chroot. When doing this, what security issues should be kept in mind? For example, what needs to be done to stop background/startup processes from starting in the new chroot or otherwise interfering with the main system?

***Backstory:*** Recently, it was explained to me that to upgrade any package via terminal on a linux machine, I will need to use the distributions package management system to install or upgrade the package. Since I use CentOS, which is a RHEL variant, the rpm command will need to be executed in terminal to accomplish this (I believe so). Therefore if I need to upgrade or install a package I will first use the wget command to download the package and then the rpm command to install it. The process is clear till here! ***The actual question:*** However, to use the wget command to download the package, I will need a url that points to the package. How should I find this url? My personal research has shown that there are sites like rpm.pbone.net (the only one I know off) to search for these packages. A search for 'firefox' (selecting search for rpms by name) as the keyword has given results for a whole lot of distributions. CentOS 5 is listed on page 3 but the latest version seems to be 3.6.18. Given that version 5.0.2 is available for Fedora (another RHEL variant), where is the latest version of firefox for CentOS? I am unsure which package should I download to upgrade firefox. ***Plea:*** It'll be great if someone can point out how should I go about searching for packages to install on CentOS. Is there an official site for CentOS packages similar to rpm.pbone.net (which I believe is unofficial). I am currently, just for practice, searching for the mozilla firefox and vlc's latest releases.