Files from my laptop to my flash drive from the bash? debian won't start, and so I can only work from the bash looking screen when my laptop tries to load the os.
I have a general idea of what I have to do, but I don't know the commands. I know where the file is, its on my desktop, and its my journal. I want to save that onto my flash drive.
Anybody want to help? I'd greatly appreciate it,
Animal crackers are in my soup

Provided the laptop's hard drive isn't totally shot, you might well be able to retrieve your document from the non-booting system by using a Linux Live CD/DVD. My favorite, full-featured distribution for this is Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html), but even a recent Ubuntu install CD should get you to a GUI (just don't select to install!!!) where you can easily verify whether or not the laptop's hard drive and its data are accessible at all.

Boot the system from a Live CD/DVD, see if you can find the hard drive listed and, if so, insert your USB thumbdrive and try to copy your file over to it.

Yes, there's also the option of trying to do this from a command line, but it sounds like your laptop's Debian install isn't booting at all. I really would recommend the Live CD/DVD GUI route, as it should prove to be much easier.

Hopefully the hard drive is only partially damaged and not completely inoperable.

Good luck!

I cant get a hold of one, so right now my only option is to use the command line, at least that's all I can think of. Maybe I can download a small one gig os onto my phones memory card and use that on my laptop? I just don't know if that's possible.

Can't you just
- insert the USB stick,
- run to see if it gets automagically mounted,
- else run to get the device name and mount it manually with, for example - copy the file and umount the stick and be done with it?

Probably depends on how minimal the shell environment is. But even if all that works, how confident can one be that the target file is valid ?. Before or after the copy operation ?.
I tend to be pessimistic in such situations, and presume nothing can be trusted as good.

Go restore from a backup, even if it's old.

First problem, when I type in,It says
Another thing is I don't know, in command line language where my journal is. I've tried
and it a list from Desktop to something called tor-browser_en-US.
and I don't know how to view anything that's on the desktop to know what the file name is exactly.
Plus how would I restore from a backup?

Depending on what's mounted and how it's mounted root may be read-only leaving nothing else. If there's no file system errors you may (or may not) be able to
else see if you have any mount points that are writable:
else try and force using another mount point:
else you'll better use a Live CD

BTW what are your problems? What is the reason you're not being able to boot your installation properly?


Then try to explain in steps and as detailed as possible how you would access your journal.

Ok, I think I want to go the route where I use my phones micro sd card to host a mini linux os and insert that into my sd slot on my laptop, boot up with that and try to back up my files on the sd card. The thing is is I would have to download the os directly onto the card on my phone. Is that possible? I tried finding that on my own and it seems that websites only mention inserting the sd card into my laptop and downloading the os onto my sd card from the laptop.
To answer your question on how I normally access my journal, I just go to my desktop and click on it. Use never used a shell to access it before. But I believe the file name for it is simply journal.odt, not sure about the.odt part though, but I use open office if that helps.

Sorry but unless you have the kind of phone that would allow you to download an image and write that to the "raw" sdcard device with 'dd' that's not possible.

Does your problem mean you can't even boot the machine into runlevel 1? Else why can't you just buy a Linux magazine that comes with a bootable CDROM or use your installer CDROM?

The reason being I don't have any money right now. We just moved. Plus in moving I wasn't careful with the cd i installed the os on my laptop with and is now ruined.

OK, clear. Are you sure you can't even boot into runlevel 1?

Not really sure, what is run level one?

"Run Level 1 is known as 'single user' mode. A more apt description would be 'rescue', or 'trouble-shooting' mode. In run level 1, no daemons (services) are started. Hopefully single user mode will allow you to fix whatever made the transition to rescue mode necessary. You can boot into single user mode typically by using your boot loader, lilo or grub, to add the word 'single' to the end of the kernel command line."
When you boot your laptop, after the BIOS diagnostic screen or vendor logo disappears, press any key. This should get you into the GRUB menu. If there's instructions follow them, else try to select a kernel to boot and press key "e" to edit, select the kernel line, press "e" again to edit, move to the end of that line and add a space and then the word "single" without quotes, then press ESC once to exit the edit line and press "b" to boot. Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Ok, I ran into a fellow Linux friend and he gave me a distro to work with, and I have my important files backed up. Thank you guys for your help, I'm going to try to fix my hard drive, or to find out if I can't, if I have trouble with that and can't find someone with the solution already in a thread I'll come back to you guys! Thanks again