Howto boot the Damn Small Linux ISO from hard disk with Grub

Just this evening I wanted to install Damn Small Linux on one of my computers. But I had no more blank CDs left, so I searched for a way to boot the ISO from hard disk with GRUB, as Xubuntu was already installed on the machine. Well I found a lot of crap and nothing worked for me. I really think that there is no quick and easy solution. I tried a few things out and came out with the following way:

• At first, you need some extra space on your hard disk. If you want to install DSL it would be better to boot off an other partition, too. I used my 512MB swap partition for that purpose, but I think that also a little more than 50MB are already enough for DSL.

• Boot into some Linux system of your choice, this could even be Knoppix from CD. Then, execute carefully (!!) the following steps:

1. Make sure that your swap partition isn't in use. (swapon -s, swapoff /dev/hdXX)
2. Change the type of the swap partition to 0x83 with fdisk.
3. Use mkfs.ext2 to create a new file system on your old swap partition. (mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdXX)
4. Mount your new ext2 partition (mount /dev/hdXX /somefolder)
5. Mount the DSL ISO to some folder. (mount dsl.iso /someotherfolder -o loop)
6. Copy the contents of the ISO to your new ext2 partition. (cp -R /someotherfolder/* /somefolder)

Maybe this works also without the need for another partition, but I preferred to go the safe way.

• Now you'll need Grub. Reboot. I had to press 'ESC' to get into the Grub menu when starting Xubuntu. Go into Command Mode with 'c', then execute the following commands:

1. root (hd0,2) # hd0,2 was my old swap partition; that is /dev/hda3
2. kernel /boot/isolinux/kernel24 # So / would be the root of the DSL ISO
   
3. initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz
4. boot

Now, if you're lucky you'll see the DSL ASCII logo after you hit return. I think that this would work also pretty good for Knoppix, haven't tested it though. Hope this helps a bit!

Ancient photos of Mahajanga, Madagascar - Part One

During the last 2 weeks, I had been working voluntary for a little aid organisation. When I was about to leave Mahajanga as everything was done, I was waiting for my "Taxi Brousse" in an Internet Café from one of my friends. Whilst being bored and "surfing" trough the public folders of other clients, who have downloaded stuff some day from the net and leaved it on the computer I was sitting on, I stumbled upon an indubitable interesting collection of very old photographs of the district of Mahajanga. If you want to see some pictures of today, you may visit my deviantArt gallery or simply Google for "Mahajanga" or "Majunga".

Of course I copied all files onto my MP3 player. For me, it was beyond question that I would simply leave this treasure on my personal computer, waiting for the next HDD crash to come. So at the beginning I thought that it would probably the best thing to upload them all to the "Wikimedia Commons". But, although the authors of these photographs are defintively dead since a long time, I wasn't still 100% sure about the copyright issue. It is impossible for me to mention the author of some of these photos.

I simply found them on a public computer. For some of them I don't know who made them, I don't even know who has scanned them. Probably most of them would get quickly deleted at Wikimedia, therefore I decided to put them into my blog, with the notice that I would delete them immediately as soon as somebody claims and proves his personal rights on these photos - apart from that I don't see any reason at all why I should detain them. The only modification I've done to the original files was to remove some annoying white borders.

Here we go:




As there isn't anything written down on these photos, the file names are the only description which is left for me. Neither is there any date mentioned. I guess they've been all made in the 50's, because the second photo was made in 1956 (inauguration of the secondary school "Philbert Tsiranana").

Continued:



Now these are a bit more interesting. Some of these photos must have been made between 1890 and 1910 or earlier. Funny to see that the "Tribunal" and the "Bazary Be" are still exactly the same buildings today in 2009, with the tiny exception that they're heavily damaged and shabby. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the "Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris" is now a little nightclub in the ground floor, and a bar for prostitutes and strangers in the first floor. The street on the picture "Les nouveaux quais" looks still almost exactly the same, too. In march 2004, Cyclone Gafilo destroyed the lovely promenade on the photo "Corniche 1962", which then had been completely replaced by the European Union with a new one which is even more beautiful and very robust.

Putting all these photos on-line is a real bunch of work (especially with my current internet connection), that's why I'll take a little break now and upload more photos in a few days.

Encryption

Privatsphäre in Deutschland wird mit jeden Tag ein wenig mehr dezimiert; im Austausch dafür gibt es mehr Zensur und Kontrolle. Deshalb bitte ich jeden der das liest: Verschlüsselt Eure Kommunikationswege. Umso mehr davon, desto besser. Denn alles was mühsam entschlüsselt werden muss (wenn sie überhaupt dazu fähig sind, was ich sehr stark bezweifle) erschwert ihnen die Suche nach wirklich relevanten Informationen. Ich habe bisher mindestens drei Leute erfolgreich überzeugen können, wenigstens einen Teil ihrer Online-Kommunikation zu chiffrieren. Vergesst nicht, dass heutzutage nicht nur nichts gelöscht wird, sondern, dass fast immer noch alles unverschlüsselt übertragen wird; insbesondere der Messengerkram. Bei der derzeitigen, politischen Lage ist es nur eine Frage der Zeit bis in unserem Überwachungsstaat Deutschland der Traffic ganz und gar über das Netz des BKA geroutet wird.

"Hütet Euch vor denen, die Euch den Informationszugang verweigern, denn in ihren Herzen träumen sie davon, Euch zu beherrschen."