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From: Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: How do home users of linux protect themselves against ill-advised changes?
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 15:06:44 +0000
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On 04/01/15 14:29, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Sun, 04 Jan 2015 14:00:29 +0000 Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 04/01/15 13:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 04/01/15 12:16, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>>> Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap007@wingsandbeaks.org.uk>
>>>> writes:
>>>>> How do home users of linux protect themselves against ill-advised
>>>>> changes?
>>>>>
>>>>> What I mean is, if they install patches or some package whose
>>>>> configuration screws things up, and they then can't boot - what then?
>>>>
>>>> Restore from backup.
>>>>
>>> The question is pretty carzy to start with.
>>>
>>> Packages -  unless they mess with the kernel/drivers - don't stop the
>>> thing booting.
>>
>> Buggering up libc?
>>
>> Or as I had with ubuntu + ZFS, deciding the hostid was broken (it was
>> null) and refusing to mount any ZFS volumes.
>
> Well, ZFS is not the default file system.  Most naive users will be using
> someting safe like ext4 and are unlikely to bugger up libc.  See my other post
> about 'developers and gurus' possibly messing with non-standard or bleeding
> edge packages.

True about ZFS - it is an option.

However, the original statement was:

"Packages -  unless they mess with the kernel/drivers - don't stop the
thing booting."


Which I trivially refuted with:

"Buggering up libc?".

It's unlikely a good distro running with STABLE repos will bugger up 
libc but it remains a possibility.

Feck all use booting a kernel if you can't get userland off the ground...