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Article #59095

Re: How do I get screen dumps from a Linux install?

#59095
From: John Saunders
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 00:00
38 lines
2500 bytes
In article <4it44a$hgi@grissom.powerup.com.au>,
	cirvine@powerup.com.au (Craig Irvine) writes:
>I have an assignment where I need to be able to get screen dumps from a 
>Linux installation (from the creation of the boot/root disks to rebooting 
>after the end of the installation).

I know that RedHat starts another login on the second virtual console.
You can use the /dev/vcs* device to capture the screen of the first
virtual console after you have switched to the second. Note that the last
Slackware I saw didn't have /dev/vcs* devices installed, and it didn't have
the man page. However I 'cat /proc/devices' will soon tell if character
device 7 (vcs) is installed. There are 2 types of /dev/vcs* files, one
provide a plain ASCII file, the other includes colour attributes.

>Since the ramdisk is rather volatile, is it possible to mount a DOS 
>partition to save the screen captures to?

You bet! mount -t msdos /dev/??? /msdos

>Does Red Hat provide a better installation interface than the Slackware 
>color144 interface for beginners?

Looks about the same, however I have found RedHat 2.1 has a problem when
creating the swap partition, it gets the size wrong and the mkswap bombs
out. This only seems to happen for large swap partitions though. Apart
from that annoying problem, which can be gotten around, I think it's easier
than Slackware.

How to get around it? WHen the problem occurs, swap to the second VC and
run the mkswap command by hand, then run swapon -a. Switch back and continue
the installation as if nothing happened.

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From: johns@rd.scitec.com.au (John Saunders)
Subject: Re: How do I get screen dumps from a Linux install?
Date: 1996/03/22
Message-ID: <4itbib$pr5@mailhub.scitec.com.au>
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references: <4it40a$hgi@grissom.powerup.com.au>
organization: SCITEC LIMITED, Sydney, Australia.
newsgroups: aus.computers.linux