Help restoring messed up settings

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 09:06:06AM -0500, Net Llama! wrote:
> >
> > Can I add a plea for more helpful error messages here, a message which
> > says "Cannot create file" should *always* say what file it cannot
> > create.  If the message had done this I would have taken about ten
> > seconds to fix the problem rather than several hours.
> 
> Huh?  Had you attempted to poke around to look for a reason why it
> couldn't create the file, you would have determined the problem.  In
> almost every case i've ever seen, a "cannot create file" error means
> either that the dir that its trying to write the file to doesn't exist, or
> that dir has permissions which preventing writing to it.
> 
I did 'poke around' but since I hadn't a clue what file or directory
it needed to write my poking around was rather undirected.  If it had
simply said in the error message *what* file it couldn't write (full
path needed of course) then I'd have known immediately what was wrong.

> > > Um, I'm typically of the opinion that all error messages matter.
> >
> > Yes, our coding standards at work say this, there should be *no*
> > compiler warnings etc. when building production code.
> 
> THose aren't compiler warnings.
> 
Er, yes, strangely enough I had realised that!  What I was indicating
was that I agreed with the comment that "all error messages matter"
and that one should try and eliminate them rather than ignore them.
It matters not whether they are compiler warnings or X startup errors.


> > > As root:
> > >
> > > # chmod 666 /dev/dsp
> > >
> > I wonder why it doesn't get installed this way?
> 
> What makes you so sure it doesn't?  I think the problem is your backups.
> 
If you'd read my original message you would have noted that the disk
I lost was the /home disk.  /dev/dsp is most definitely not on /home.

It may well be that it's always been this way as I don't have sound
implemented on my linux box as it's a "server" tucked away in the
corner of the room and I access it via an X server on my windows
desktop.

-- 
Chris Green (chris at areti.co.uk)