Sven,

Thank you for your response. I was quite sure that after I "went off" a bit that I would be ostracized from the bbs.

Yeah, after I read about the 'z' parameter in the post by genixia and your subsequent "Well, why exactly you using the 'z' command line option there?", and of course after I "went off", I figured out that I don't really need a script and that TAR can handle the whole thing (unless its bz2).

Well, if you replace "copy" with "rcp" (for Remote CoPy), you basically get to that function. "scp" (for Secure (shell) Copy) from the ssh package would be better though, at least when you are doing it through an untrusted network.

You mean something like "rcp -pr /mnt1 /mnt2"? And you still contend that "(cd /mnt1 && tar cpzf - .) | (rsh somehost '(cd /mnt2 && tar -xvpzf -)')" isn't cryptic in comparison? I'm not even trying to say that pipes are not wonderful and powerful or that I can't follow what's going on there, its just that one of those looks simple and easy to follow, the other takes a bit of looking at.

I generally think of obfuscation as another term for someone's "job security" or just cheap vindictiveness. I picked up a contract completing an application where the programmer quit for a better job. The wanker left perfectly compilable code, but he stripped out every single comment, removed most of the linefeeds, all of the formatting and changed every variable into things like "dfg5yh65nb86sdf4". It took about 2 weeks just to make it readable again, before I could even give a good estimate of the time to complete the job. What a pain.

(but I don't use Mark's cross-compiler, but a previous version which had different executable names for the tools).

A previous version of Mark's cross-compiler?

Anyway, thanks for beep.c. I'll try it tonight. My plan seemed like a simple one:
1. Install the "precompiled toolchain"
2. try some simple thing to prove that it works.
3. try to compile a straight up kernel
4. figure out the .zImage thing
5. upon success to this point, attempt to obtain all of the pieces and build the toolchain myself
6. try some simple thing to prove it works
7. try to compile a kernel with my toolchain
8. try out some of my own kernel hacks
9. conquer the world. End violence, disease, hunger
10. figure out what to do about over-crowding

It's a good thing I'm out of work just now, as I plan to complete the list by the end of the week!

Thanks,

Steve