[Techtalk] simple date question

[Akkana Peck]

mgmonza at sdf.lonestar.org writes:
> I've been using an outdated but favorite version of Ubuntu as a live
> CD that I start up each session, ever since my totally tricked out,
> dialed in and sorted Linux T60 laptop died about a month ago.  I have
[ ... ]
> So anything that requires writing to the hard drive won't do it.

One tip: it is possible to install Ubuntu (or other distros) to a
USB stick or external USB drive. I haven't done such an install
myself so I don't know the tricks, but I would guess the most
important part is the bootloader -- you need to make sure grub
is on the USB stick and not on your hard drive, so you'll probably
have to run in "expert mode" or some such that will let you skip
the automatic update-grub stage. It might be easiest to skip the
installer entirely and use debootstrap
(http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/install/debootstrap.html) to
install a minimal Linux onto the stick, then hand-install a
bootloader, grub or extlinux or whatever, to the stick.

It's extra work, of course, but it might leave you with a laptop
that's a lot more fun to use and more customized than a "live distro
plus data" configuration like you have now.

> translation of their blithe "you can use Date to set the time zone"
> note in the intro (or words to that effect, don't have Linux up at the
> moment), into the incontrovertible "No you can't". It's saved me at

It's pretty crazy how difficult it is to change the time zone on
Linux, and how it's different on every version of every distro.
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata used to do it, but the last time I tried
I ended up needing to uninstall and reinstall a few packages,
and unfortunately didn't write down the details. I also had to edit
/etc/adjtime to switch the system clock to UTC.

	...Akkana