General precautions

(The Don'ts -- what to avoid)
(The Don'ts -- what to avoid)
Line 15: Line 15:
*Gaining root access (see article [[Root access]])
*Gaining root access (see article [[Root access]])
*Copy-pasting commands from internet to command line
*Copy-pasting commands from internet to command line
 +
*Installing untrusted .debs
Application manager:
Application manager:

Revision as of 11:49, 15 February 2010

The point of this article is to give guidelines how to avoid tablet "reflashing" (see definition below). Yes, Maemo has command line access and everybody can gain superuser priviledges easily. With great power comes great responsibility. The base system can of course be installed again, aka "reflashed". If you are interested in reflashing and want to know more, please read article Updating the tablet firmware


Contents

How to stay safe

Staying in the safe side is rather easy. Install only signed software with software installer, and don't open command line application (xterm). The latter can be ignored if you don't know how to use the command line. You can find more info about xterm in article Terminal

Take backups

Always keep valuable data in at least two places! This can't be emphasized enough!

The Don'ts -- what to avoid

Xterm:

  • Gaining root access (see article Root access)
  • Copy-pasting commands from internet to command line
  • Installing untrusted .debs

Application manager:

  • Enabling the extras-testing repository. (see Extras#Extras-testing)
  • Enabling the extras-devel repository. (see Extras#Extras-devel)
  • Installing non-optified applications. (This issue is temporary but still valid)

If something has already occurred

You should start with article Troubleshooting and see how the situation can be saved.

I want to do something anyway

Then you should see Installing unstable applications -article.