Linux: Basic sort of things guide.

S

(Shovel)

Guest
After Easter and when my coursework is done I'm going to try and get Linux reinstalled on my system and poke about with it again. Last time I got bored though cause I could never find a simple base for "how to do stuff".

Things like:
Adding new hardware, and finding out where different bits of hardware were assigned.

The sort of basic commands that you need to just get around, sure I see some of them mentioned on these boards but I've never been able to find a simple reference for "getting around" commands.

And "where you are 'supposed' to put stuff". I mean, with windows the first thing I do is rearrange the user files and get most things off my C: into separate partitions, but with Linux I don't know where to start. What is "supposed" to go where?

I could probably babble with vague questions like these for pages, but I wont because I know it's not hitting the point exactly. I really hope that someone has some idea of where I'm coming from.

As far as running Linux goes I can do that, so far as installing SuSE and getting booted into it goes. But I'm trying to learn how to "use" the beast and there seems to be a chasm for starting out.

I guess I'm looking for books, web guides, anything that can provide answers to these kind of questions. I could come back to this forum every time I needed to do something really "simple", but while I'll do that sometimes (you know me...) I don't want to be posting ten times a day and getting under everyone's skin for doing so.

Thanks, and sorry for babbling.
 
W

Will

Guest
I can try to recommend FreeBSD to you, which has some very good documentation, as well as quite a few forum users who run it in one form or another. I've found I have a better idea what is going on with it than I had with linux, because of the handbook on the website, as well as some beginners BSD books I have.

I'll get the names of the books for you once I get home.
 
O

old.LeitMotif

Guest
Misc Links :-
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/
http://dbstreams.ca/mirrors/linux-newbie/

Linux Doc Project:-
http://www.tldp.org/

Official Redhat Manuals -
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/
http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/ldp.html

Linux Standards Base:-
Always good for curing even the most hardened insomniac, but that may provide you with an idea of how files should start to get organised on linux.. (i dont agree entirely with them though :) )

http://www.linuxbase.org/

might give some hints and tips
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Fantastic, I had a little poke in some of those links and I'm very impressed.

Thanks very much.
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
W00tages

Erm, well, here I am. SuSE 8.2 came out for download, so going with what i know (or at least, what I know better than anything else I guess) I downloaded the entire 6 gig mirror and installed. I love 10Mbit Academic Networks.

Now, I'm in, it's working. The fonts look quite nice. In fact, I've just managed to install Mozilla without breaking anything. Well, I was impressed.

But now come the problems. I've been poking around those website you gave me above, but I'm not doing very well.

I want to fine tune my user permissions. I'm well aware of keeping things reasonably secure - I'm not about to make myself a root-equiv. However, some simple things, like, say, being able to mount drives, would be appreciated.

I don't know where to look really. I've poked around the tutorials, I had a look at the /etc/passwd file to see what that had to offer, but I've not come up against much.

Now, rather than ask you to give me a step by step (though I wouldn't say "no"), I was wondering, when you first start off a new *nix system, what do you do to get things running smoothly? What settings do you alter to make things a little smoother - with for instance mounting/unmounting. Are there things that you *always* have to change?

I'm no doubt going to wander my way around the thing, but I would bet there's plenty of things to do that I don't realise exist...

Thanks,

Ben

(PS. Mouse Wheel is borked... quick fix?)
 
T

Testin da Cable

Guest
to fix the mouse scroll wheel you'lll have to edit the XF86Config file located somewhere in /etc or in /usr/X/etc or some other place depending on your configuration. you have to add a line like ZAxisMapping "4 5" in your pointers section.
read more here

as to mounting stuff like a cdrom as a non-root user...well, I usually pop open a terminal and su to root quickly. some people install an automount daemon (iirc there's one called mountd).
I suppose it may be possible to run mount setuid, but that would be cheating.
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Oooh, I like the su thing. Thank you :)

Typically it's not gone to plan. I thought I'd worked it out ok - but no such luck. I have all my documents on a separate partition on my second hard drive. It's the second (extended) partition on the drive. I guessed that it would correspond to /dev/hdb1 (b being second hard drive, 1 being the second partition).
Anyway, it mounted the first partition instead. I tried /dev/hdb2 instead and it said it didn't exist.

I'm confuzzled. I don't know, maybe it's something to do with it hiding on the extended partition? Typically I told SuSE not to mount my vfat partitions automatically in install cause I didn't want them under /windows. In retrospect I should just have edited that afterwards.

My plan is to hunt out a disk manager someone in the SuSE install and see what that throws back at me.

TDC - I had a hunt around in the mouse setup section of that file and it *claims* to be set already. It is, of course, lying. It might just be that the MX700 uses different button numbering for the wheel. I'll just poke it and see what happens. The logitech driver in XP gives all the buttons a number - though whether this corresponds to responses in Linux I really don't know.

Thanks very much for the pointers though!

... I think I'm going to hold off trying to get the Keyboard scroll wheel working...

Ben
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Ok.....

I rebooted into Linux to have a play and the wheel now works... and the scroll buttons too.

Can't complain :D
 
T

Testin da Cable

Guest
you'll be a guru in no time Ben :)

as to the partitions, Linux knows about 4 primary and several extended partitions, but counts extended partitions from 5. that's why you couldn't find it :)

example: first harddrive on primary controller with two primary partitions and two extended partitions:

/dev/hda1 - primary
/dev/hda2 - primary
/dev/hda5 - extended
/dev/hda6 - extended
etc.
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Ahh, that expalins it then.

I managed to come across it sort of by accident, since I went into YaST to check my RPMs, and try to install a disk manager (couldn't find one, I'm sure I saw it during installation though...). Anyway, it asked me for the installation source. It had originally installed from my FILES partition - I've sinced move it - and it asked me where it was. I'm a learning I must say. I've got my three windows partitions mounted now, which is nice. Found my bookmarks folder for Mozilla and imported that etc.

YaST is now buggered though. Having moved the FTP mirror to a different partition it refuses to find the source. Following the format that it prompts me with I translated the new location and it went "Raaaargh". So I might just have to hunt out modules I need as I go along now!

Thanks for the tips TdC... no doubt I will be back for more in good time (read: 10 to 15 seconds)
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Does the keyboard setup work in a similar way to the mouse? e.g. same parameters?

I've just found a site that has got the keyreponses for the various bits of the keyboard, but doesn't tell me anything about what to do with them....

Would mapping buttons like "Mail" and "Web" and volume be a matter of getting a driver module or special software, or can it be done just in the X configuration?

I do seem to have something nicely usable at the moment, I've not needed to go back into Windows all afternoon. I mean, I'll go back to get my email cause I want to keep things organised in that respect at the moment. However, I likie :) and I got Java installed with no hiccups. Which is nice. I might try running a piece of my software in a sec to see what happens... hehe...
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
OK - this thread should really be known as "Shovel learns to walk", but anyway.

RPMs. I've found what I wanted: (kshowmail).

So:
su to root.
rpm -i kshowmail-3.0.3-371.i586.rpm

No reponse - which I understand to be the best possible reaction. Unix only speaks when you tell it to, or when something goes wrong.

Erm... so, the problem I have next is that... erm... where is it then? I tried typing "kshowmail" and it said it couldn't find it.

I tried running rpm again, this time with the -vv switch as well to see if it would tell me, but it didn't mention it once. Only that it was already installed.

I tried uninstalling it. using -u. It tells me to use -e instead. I do so, and it says that it ISN'T installed... so I install again.. it's already installed...

*small nervous squeek*

Is there a knack to this?
 
T

Testin da Cable

Guest
yes: the knack is called don't use rpms because they suck


I believe you can 'force' an rpm to install with an option on the commandline. something like rpm -ivh --force rpmname.rpm
something like that.
 
S

(Shovel)

Guest
Ahhh... fair enough :D

On an aside - I don't think that "kshowmail" was what I wanted...
 
T

Testin da Cable

Guest
there are several software portals about where you can search for all kinds of things. www.freshmeat.net is my favourite for all things linux (and other unixen). give it a shot; they let you search by keyword too :)
 
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