Arek's questions

Nearly everybody knows very useful && and || operators, for example:

rm myf && echo "File is removed successfully" || echo "File is not removed"

I've got a question: how to put a block of commands after && or || operators without using the function?

For example I want to do:

rm myf && \
  echo "File is removed successfully" \
  echo "another command executed when rm was successful" || \
  echo "File is not removed" \
  echo "another command executed when rm was NOT successful"

What is the proper syntax of that script?

In my linux bash script I want to wait for one of the following events:

• DVD drive tray was closed by the user,

or

• writeable DVD was inserted to the drive.

Unfortunately all the commands to check the media in drive first close the tray and I don't want to do that - it should stay open and wait for DVD being inserted by the user.

Could you please advice me how to do that?

I have quite complex directory tree. There are many subdirectories, in those subdirectories beside other files and directories are ".svn" directories.

Now, under linux I want to delete all files and directories except the .svn directories.

I found many solutions about opposite behaviour - deleting all .svn directories in the tree. Can somebody quote me the correct answer for deleting everything except .svn?

How can I backup all settings of free VMWare ESXi 4?

I configured the host - VMs, Storage, Networking, Resource Allocation and all other settings available in vSphere Client. It consumed quite a lot of time, but works pretty well.

Now I want to backup all the settings "just in case" to easily reinstall ESXi 4 if something goes really wrong.

I don't ask "how to backup VMs" (so please don't point me to Ghetto-VCB script). I need to backup and restore just ESXi4 host's settings.