[plug] transfer some files between NT4 machines and linux

[Craig Ringer]

On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 12:18, Bill Kenworthy wrote:
> NT needs to be up - its equipment controllers and you cant shut them
> down to transfer alignment or image files in the middle of a run.  Plus
> this needs to user level stuff - I dont want to have to be here to do
> it.

My usual solutions to windows/linux data transfers, where one or both
machines don't want to talk to the USB key:

	- smbfs / ftp / scp / HTTP over Ethernet
	- CD-RW

I assume none of these are practical in your environment (no network? no
CD-RW?), so I'd probably have to fall back on the nasty 'ol floppy disk,
or bite the bullet and buy a USB driver for NT4. Naturally, networking
would be ideal because of the potential for automation with scripting.

Another approach would be to use an ATA->CF adapter. I don't know how
well NT would handle those being added and removed from a live machine,
but it bears investigation. 

I'm always impressed with NT's support for hot-pluggable hardware. I
dual-boot Win2k (gaming) and Linux (everything else) at home, and I
often have Win2k hibernated (ACPI S4) for long periods of time. On one
occasion, I booted it up only to have it inform me that it wasn't
impressed that I'd removed a hard disk while it was using it - but it'd
successfully disabled it, so all was well. It then proceeded to detect
and set up the replacement disk, and proceed about its business as if
nothing had happened. This, when resuming from a suspend state, is
mighty impressive.

If only hardware manufacturers would write ACPI BIOSes, not WinACPI(tm)
BIOSes ("it works with windows, so it's good enough"), perhaps Linux
might be able to have vaguely OK power management. I doubt it'll be
matching that any time soon, though - not unless driver authors start
actually supporting the PM interfaces in the kernel.

Craig Ringer