I deleted "my disk" and typed "home" in the window, hit enter, and nothing happened.

I found "home" in the "Go" menu item, clicked on it, and nothing happened. It gave an additional route there as alt, home on the keyboard. I did that and nothing happened.

I noted that the very top line of the computer screen--I forget what it's called--says "home - File Manager" when I have displayed "my disk".

I am thinking that if everyone looking at this thread is at a loss here, I should start a thread just to deal with backup.

I would just use a terminal, it's much easier. To find out what the name of the flash drive is, run:

before and after plugging in the drive, and post the output here. Also, to find out the path to your home directory, post the output of this:

Here's my problem at this point:

One of the bugs I have with my computer is that when I hit alt/F2, a one-line window appears, with the title "run program". I then type in "gnome - terminal" click run, and get what at first looks like a real terminal, except that the one-character block at top left doesn't blink, and nothing appears in the window when I type.

I'm starting to feel backed into a corner again. I'll try to relax.

There shouldn't be spaces around the "-". It's part of the program's name.

Another question:

When I looked on the unetbootin site at the list of programs it will download, under mint it only goes as far as mint 10. I understand 11 is the latest version and people have been telling me to go with it.

Will the actual running of unetbootin be more complete than the advertised list? If not, is there a way to get 11 somehow?

Running the window with no spaces I still get an unblinking block.

I don't know. You can find out once you install UNetbootin. Or you can download mint via this link:

32-bit: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=81
64-bit: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=82

You can check the md5sum if you want to, but again, I personally never bothered with it and haven't had any problems.

Try "xterm" instead of "gnome-terminal".

In xterm, the only way to copy and paste is select to copy and middle-click (sometimes can be emulated by pressing left and right at once) to paste (no key shortcuts or context menus). This will also have to be done this way in the applcation from which you want to paste to/copy from xterm, too.

1 members found this post helpful.

I used xterm, got a terminal, pasted
ls -l /dev/disk/by-id

into it, hit enter, inserted the stick, safely removed it, pasted

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id

again, hit enter, and waited.

nothing happened.

There was also a window called

user@localhost:~

that appeared right after the xterm appeared. It has no menu and a large window where the name of the window appears. This window accepts type.

Good.

Where did I say that you should remove it?!?!?

Did the prompt reappear after each "ls" command with no output before it?

Anyway, could you try that again, but with "ls /dev/sd*" instead of "ls -l /dev/disk/by-id"?

You mean a window other than the xterm itself?

Also, what does "accepts type" and "large window where the name of the window appears" mean? Could you try to write more clearly?

Oh, sorry. My mistake.

I tried it again in this order:

copy code ls -l /dev/disk/by-id
open xterm
paste code
enter
insert stick
paste code
enter

no output.

Yeah, I am not very clear I guess. Will see what I can do to be more clear. Some of the problem is my small understanding due to there being no documentation for linpus. If you don't mind me being more wordy I will try to get it precisely down.

I will try again with "ls /dev/sd*"

Before I go ahead with "ls /dev/sd*" let me say that no output preceded the prompt, both times.

Also--

yes, the second window was other than the xterm.

And--

by "accepts type" I mean that when I hit random keys they appear in this second window. I was just checking it first before I checked the xterm. The xterm also shows what I type.

Since gnome-terminal was not displaying anything I typed I wanted to check first to see if that problem was solved.

by "large window where the name of the window appears" I mean that this pop-up has a large multi-line window, and the first line is occupied by some text, specifically the same text that appears in the very top bar of the pop-up. This text is

user@localhost:~

Also, right when xterm opens the very first line is occupied by this text:

"Warning: Cannot convert string "ni12" to type FontStruct"

The prompt is flush left just under this text.

Using "ls /dev/sd" instead of the other, I repeated as you instructed. Nothing preceded the prompt either time after I hit enter.

Each time I paste your code and hit enter the prompt reappears in the next line, flush left, no text preceding it.