Friday, December 18, 2009

Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009, David Ernst wrote:

> So, my wife Priscilla makes a copy of a data CD. Some friends
> are in the psychology dept at IU, and she volunteered for an
> experiment and ended up with some kind of imaging info of her
> brain. I don't think that's important to the story, but maybe.
> Anyway, she drags a couple of extra files onto the disk in
> Windows (Vista), and it's ready to give to her friend. She
> said to me "can you put this in you computer and make sure that
> it works?" Sure. [....]

Would the psych department be doing scans using medical
imaging?

I have CDs/DVDs of some scans made at local hospitals --
MRIs and I disremember what else -- which I haven't managed to
display with Fedora. They don't harm any machine I've tried them
on, just fail to display imagery.

Anyway, I asked on Novalug some months back. Before the
discussion got way beyond any savvy I'll ever have, I discovered
that there are now some (apparently very fancy) formats
specifically for medical imagery. I did not then hear of an app
that would "just work" for a home linux user; dunno what chance
any has appeared since. But the discussions might tell youss
guyss a lot more than they did me.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, Erstwhile Historian of Tongues
Sclerotic Squirreler, Double Retiree, Linux Evangelist
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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 10:58:39AM -0500, Kirk Gleason wrote:
>Out of curiosity, was the CD finalized? or is it still open for
>writing files in Vista?

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that it wasn't finalized. She said
that she did it a different way than usual, and it didn't "burn" the
way it usually does. That made me nervous, but there is, indeed, data
on it.

>What happens if you insert it into a Windows
>machine that is not the one on which the CD was created?

Everything works fine.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 11:06:49AM -0500, Simón Ruiz wrote:
|Have you tried this CD on a different Linux machine, by any chance, to
|see if that behavior is consistent even when not on that one
|particular machine?

Nope. Sadly, there's only one easily accessible linux machine
around. I guess my retired laptop is still over there, I could try
that...

David
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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 1:11 AM, David Ernst <david.ernst@davidernst.net> wrote:
> I turn the computer back on, remove the CD, and the computer boots
> normally.  With no applications running besides the core and the GUI,
> I insert the CD again.  It spins up, and the computer powers down
> again.
>
> I'm convinced, so I won't try it again.  She takes the CD back
> to her computer, and that computer reads it just fine.
>
> David

Have you tried this CD on a different Linux machine, by any chance, to
see if that behavior is consistent even when not on that one
particular machine?

Simón

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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

Out of curiosity, was the CD finalized? or is it still open for
writing files in Vista? What happens if you insert it into a Windows
machine that is not the one on which the CD was created?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Mark Krenz <mark@slugbug.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 02:18:42PM GMT, David Ernst [david.ernst@davidernst.net] said the following:
>> curious.  Thanks for your thoughts, Mark!
>>
>
>  Don't thank my thoughts, thank your wife's. Har har.
>
> --
> Mark Krenz
> Bloomington Linux Users Group
> http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

--
Kirk Gleason

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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 02:18:42PM GMT, David Ernst [david.ernst@davidernst.net] said the following:
> curious. Thanks for your thoughts, Mark!
>

Don't thank my thoughts, thank your wife's. Har har.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 12:28:31PM +0000, Mark Krenz wrote:
> You say "powers down", you mean the computers power turns off right,
>not Ubuntu goes through the whole shutdown sequence?

Correct. Like I said, it's as if the utility power went out (with no
UPS, internal battery, etc).

> That's an interesting problem, could it be that you've hit the maximum
>power your power supply can handle? Maybe the CD was unreadable by
>Linux and it spun the drive faster drawing more power? What type of
>files are in the CD and how big are they?

The power draw question is an interesting one, but it seems unlikely.
I could easily test that with another CD. But, of course, although I
don't use the drive that often, I do use it SOMETIMES and nothing like
this has ever happened before. But, yeah, the power supply is less
than a year old, and I think it's just spinning two hard drives... I
don't have much hardware in this machine.

The files are probably large jpegs but I don't actually know that.
there were a couple of plain text files and an mp3 or two. There is
an autorun, I was wondering if Ubuntu was trying to get fancy and do
something with the autorun and that's what caused the problem.

> Searching for inserting cd shuts off computer on google yeilds a
>surprising number of results, but they are all windows problems, which
>isn't surprising.

Wow, that is surprising. I foolishly including "linux" in my search
when I did this.

*shrug* Like I said, no solution is necessary, but I found it
curious. Thanks for your thoughts, Mark!

David


>On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 06:11:29AM GMT, David Ernst [david.ernst@davidernst.net] said the following:
>> So, my wife Priscilla makes a copy of a data CD. Some friends are in
>> the psychology dept at IU, and she volunteered for an experiment and
>> ended up with some kind of imaging info of her brain. I don't think
>> that's important to the story, but maybe. Anyway, she drags a couple
>> of extra files onto the disk in Windows (Vista), and it's ready to
>> give to her friend. She said to me "can you put this in you computer
>> and make sure that it works?" Sure.
>>
>> So, we put the CD into the CD drive of my Ubuntu (Jaunty)
>> machine... it spins up, and ... my computer turns off. power off. As
>> if our power had gone out, but it hadn't.
>>
>> I turned the computer back on, it started booting, got about half way
>> through the progress meter (before the login prompt) and... same
>> thing. Power off.
>>
>> I turn the computer back on, remove the CD, and the computer boots
>> normally. With no applications running besides the core and the GUI,
>> I insert the CD again. It spins up, and the computer powers down
>> again.
>>
>> I'm convinced, so I won't try it again. She takes the CD back
>> to her computer, and that computer reads it just fine.
>>
>> We really don't need to solve this problem, but I'm curious if anyone
>> has any thoughts on what's going on here. I wouldn't know how to make
>> such a CD if I wanted that functionality.... Strange that it might
>> somehow happen inadvertantly...
>>
>> David
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>>
>
>--
>Mark Krenz
>Bloomington Linux Users Group
>http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
>_______________________________________________
>BLUG mailing list
>BLUG@linuxfan.com
>http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
_______________________________________________
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[BLUG] directories named -

I posted the hint to @climagic just now about how you can use the
command:

cd -

This will take you to the previous directory you were in. I find this
very useful as a short cut to go back and forth. I thought then what
happens if you name a directory -. It turns out, you will have a lot of
trouble on the command line changing into such a named directory.

I talked to people on the #bash channel on freenode and they were also
surprised. Normally, you could use -- to a command in order to tell it
that "hey, the options are over with, the rest of the arguments are not
options", but

So here are a list of ways that don't work for getting into the -
directory. Unless of course your previous directory was the - directory:

cd -
cd -/
cd '-'
cd "-"
cd '\-'
cd "\-"
cd \-
cd \-/
cd \\-/ (Tries to go to a directory called \- (go figure)
cd -- -
cd -- -/

The following will work:

cd /full/path/to/-
cd ./-
cd ./-/
cd ~/to/- (if its a subdir of your homedir)


Of course, I was able to delete the empty - dir by simply running

rmdir -


Lesson learned, don't name directories -


--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] power off CD?

You say "powers down", you mean the computers power turns off right,
not Ubuntu goes through the whole shutdown sequence?

That's an interesting problem, could it be that you've hit the maximum
power your power supply can handle? Maybe the CD was unreadable by
Linux and it spun the drive faster drawing more power? What type of
files are in the CD and how big are they?

Searching for inserting cd shuts off computer on google yeilds a
surprising number of results, but they are all windows problems, which
isn't surprising.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 06:11:29AM GMT, David Ernst [david.ernst@davidernst.net] said the following:
> So, my wife Priscilla makes a copy of a data CD. Some friends are in
> the psychology dept at IU, and she volunteered for an experiment and
> ended up with some kind of imaging info of her brain. I don't think
> that's important to the story, but maybe. Anyway, she drags a couple
> of extra files onto the disk in Windows (Vista), and it's ready to
> give to her friend. She said to me "can you put this in you computer
> and make sure that it works?" Sure.
>
> So, we put the CD into the CD drive of my Ubuntu (Jaunty)
> machine... it spins up, and ... my computer turns off. power off. As
> if our power had gone out, but it hadn't.
>
> I turned the computer back on, it started booting, got about half way
> through the progress meter (before the login prompt) and... same
> thing. Power off.
>
> I turn the computer back on, remove the CD, and the computer boots
> normally. With no applications running besides the core and the GUI,
> I insert the CD again. It spins up, and the computer powers down
> again.
>
> I'm convinced, so I won't try it again. She takes the CD back
> to her computer, and that computer reads it just fine.
>
> We really don't need to solve this problem, but I'm curious if anyone
> has any thoughts on what's going on here. I wouldn't know how to make
> such a CD if I wanted that functionality.... Strange that it might
> somehow happen inadvertantly...
>
> David
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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