Hi Rick ----- Original Message -----
Quoting Arjen Lentz (arjen@lentz.com.au):
*sigh*
I have a true story though - had an issue with a Shuttle mainboard LAN port not working properly. [...]
One way to discourage this sort of nonsense in advance:
# dd if=/dev/sda of=bootsector.img bs=512 count=1 # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
Store a copy of bootsector.img somewhere safe. Bring unit in for warranty service. If they try to boot it, say 'I've wiped the hard drive, as it has sensitive data that I am not allowed to disclose.'
WIth reasonable luck, they will not insist on installing an OS for some wacky reason. (If they do, you have backups, right?)
Assuming they don't reinstall the hard drive, when you take the unit back, you can just dd bootsector.img back, reboot, and you're back in business. The shop doesn't even know Linux was there all along.
It's a useful trick, but wouldn't have avoided the mishap from the case I described. Their standard testing tool didn't catch the problem on the LAN port. The problem was the testing tool/approach, not the OS. A regular ping on Linux worked as well, and a long packet on Windows would fail as well. It's just that their tool didn't check with long packets. That was what needed to be rectified in their testing process. Regards, Arjen. -- Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MariaDB/MySQL services Sane business strategy explorations at http://upstarta.com.au Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/