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Linux Questions and Answers

1. a Type p and press Enter to see the current partitions Check the number shown under the End column for the last cylinder listed If it is less than the number of cylinders from Step 2 above there is room for another partition It is only necessary to create another partition on the same drive if your Linux distribution doesn t allow swap partitions larger than 128MB and you want additional swap partitions The difference between the two numbers determines how much space is available for use b If there is already an existing swap partition but it is not large enough use the a delete command to remove it then create a new larger one Enter n to create a new partition d If you are creating a Primary partition 1 Enter p to create the partition When prompted for the partition number use the next higher number than the highest existing partition number In other words if the last device description on the left shows dev hda1 use 2 as the new partition number Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Type in the number suggested for the first cylinder which should be one higher than the ending cylinder for the preceding partition or press Enter to take the default Enter the partition size in megabytes such as 128 M Be sure to include both the and the M or you will get a Value out of range error Enter p again to verify that the new partition was created It should show an ld type of 83 and
2. user mark garbage files ThisIsMyVeryLongFilename txt only the 28 characters bolded following the final comprise the actual filename including the dot before txt Q The directory listing is too long and scrolls off the page Is there a way to view a page at a time 32 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Yes There are programs called pagers to do this Just as in DOS Windows where you could use dir c more to list the contents of the root directory in Linux you can type ls a more Or using an alternative utility ls a less Using less press the Spacebar to move ahead a page at a time to back up use the B key When you are done press Q to quit Q Is there a way to find files from a command shell Just as Windows has a Find feature Linux has the locate command It will find data files programs directories and other objects whose names match your search argument For example locate myfile will find myfile txt myfile and other matches For more on locate including search parameters use man locate Locate searches a database called slocate db on your hard drive used for this purpose which is updated overnight If you are searching for a new file that locate is unable to find or you regularly shut the system down overnight so the database doesn t get updated often you can force a manual database update To do this use the su command to temporarily login as root then from t
3. Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q My copy of Linux came with KDE and Gnome Why do need both 0 0 ee eeeeeeeeeeees 19 Q have both KDE and Gnome installed How do switch between them 19 Q Can add more desktop themes to use with Gnome and KDE ccccccccsseeeeessteeeeeeseeeeeeaes 19 Q How can add programs to the Panel cccccecececeeeeceeeeeeeaeceeeeeceaeeesaaeseeeeeseeeescaeeesaaeeeeeeeeaas 20 Q What is a virtual desktop keinen iadaa iiaa aa daikin 20 Q You said could have eight virtual desktops but see only four Where are the rest 20 Q Is it possible to share a program across multiple virtual d SKtOPS cseceeesseeeeeeesteeeeeeaes 21 Q How can I change my desktop background color ssssssssesssirssirssrrssirssinssrnssinssrnesrnssrnnsrnnsnnn 21 Q Is there a faster way to copy cut amp paste text than to use the pull down menu 00ce0 21 eola ae Aaea a E E E E E A A 21 Q If I want to issue a command how do open a command prompt ssssessesssseessrsesrserreesreerre 21 Q What are the Linux equivalents to DOS Windows COMMANAS cceccccesseeeessteeeeesseeeeeeaes 22 Q How do get help for command parameters sssesssesiesrssirssiissiresrnsstnestnnstinstnnsrnnsnnntnnn ennen 23 Q How do repeat a command ceeececececeeeeeeeeeeeeneeceeeeecaaeeeeaaeseeeeesaeeeseaeeseeeeeseaeeesaeseeaeessieeeaes 23 Q What can do if don t rememb
4. Another type of link is the hard link This is similar in function to a symbolic or soft link except that renaming deleting or moving the original file won t break the link because it actually links to the physical file on disk not just the file pathname in the disk directory structure Hard links apply only to data files or programs though not to directories All files have at least one hard link the actual filename in the directory listing Adding another hard link increments the hard link count which you can display using the 1s il command For example 619880 rw rw rw 145389 rw rw r 268394 rw rw rw 619880 rw rw rw 2 ownerid groupid 428 Apr 14 19 42 myfile txt 1 ownerid groupid 7285 Sep 30 10 17 coffee txt 1 ownerid groupid 8912 Nov 4 19 42 tea txt 2 ownerid groupid 428 Apr 14 19 42 person txt The i parameter says to display the inode number explained below and the argument tells Linux to show the directory list in long form including the permissions owner and group Ids file sizes and creation date and times There are four different filenames listed but notice some key similarities between two of them the files myfile txt and person txt have exactly the same date time file size and properties In addition they both show 2 for the number of hard links but all of these similarities could just be a coincidence after all two unrelated files of the same size and type could have be
5. HTML file same as htm tgz Archive file compressed with gzip o Program object file xpm Image file pl Perl script file Z Z Older gzip file 37 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow If you encounter a file type you do not recognize such as one with no file extension you can use the file command to find out more about it for example file smith xyz or file smith if there is no file extension Q Should I back up my entire system That is not as easy a question to answer as it may sound A fully configured system with operating system many large applications data files and perhaps a library of multimedia files music video photographs etc can amount to many gigabytes of information Unless you have a high capacity high speed backup option such as a 4mm 8mm or DLT tape drive or an lomega Jaz removable disk cartridge for example it just is not practical to back up everything On the other hand because you probably installed all your software from a few CDs it is not absolutely necessary to back up the operating system and applications If you back up only your data files setup files account files and others that have been created or modified since installation you can always reinstall the software from CD then restore the backed up user files Of course the disadvantage to this in the event of catastrophic disk failure is the time and effort needed to install all that software individually
6. depending on the type of hard drives you are using When you are done enter q to exit fdisk For more on disk drive naming conventions in Linux see question Wait a minute Are you saying that there are no drive letters in Linux Note To see the complete list of partition types available for your Linux distribution at the Command m for help prompt enter 1 for list partition types For performance reasons if you have more than one hard disk drive your first choice should be to create multiple swap partitions rather than multiple partitions on the same drive or one swap partition and a swap file in a data partition However if you have a shortage of available Primary partitions or there is no more unallocated disk space from which to create new partitions you can create swap files in existing data partitions To do this see the question How do I create a swap file in an existing Linux data partition below Q How do create a swap file in an existing Linux data partition If for some reason you can t or do not wish to create Linux swap partitions or if you have no more available disk space to use for a new swap partition it is possible to create swap files within partitions that currently hold programs and or data files However your first choice should be for one or more Linux swap partitions Important Note There are two disadvantages to locating swap files outside of dedicated swap partitions 1
7. trying to correct be sure to Quit immediately with the Q option GUI Desktop The following questions involve window manager desktop and other graphical user interface questions Q My copy of Linux came with KDE and Gnome Why do I need both Technically speaking you probably do not need both However both desktop environments are popular so this gives you the option to decide which you like better Also some programs will work only with one or the other allowing you to use both types of programs switching between the two desktops as needed Q have both KDE and Gnome installed How do switch between them From the graphical interface simply log out Then at the Log in screen type your login ID and password and choose which desktop you wish to load Session Type This choice will remain your default until you change it to something else Q Can add more desktop themes to use with Gnome and KDE Yes One source for more Gnome themes is http gtk themes org To install a new theme in Gnome after downloading it start the Gnome Control Center by clicking on the toolbox icon on the Panel Then click on Theme Selector under Desktop in the panel on the left Press the Install new theme button in the center of the right hand panel and when the dialog box opens scroll down to the name of the file you downloaded called something like new_theme tar gz and most likely in your login directory Click on the nam
8. IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates IBM reserves the right to change specifications or other product information without notice IBM the IBM logo AIX ThinkPad and TrackPoint are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and or other countries Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds Microsoft Windows Windows NT and the Windows logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through X Open Company Limited All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners THIS PUBLICATION MAY INCLUDE TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES AND MAY BE CHANGED OR WITHDRAWN AT ANY TIME THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW DISCLAIMER OF EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES IN CERTAIN TRANSACTIONS THEREFORE THIS DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU This publication may contain links to third party sites that are not under the control of or maintained by IBM Access to any such third party site is at the user s own risk and IBM is not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any information data opinions advice or statements made on these sites IBM provide
9. Later you were prompted for a user account name and password The root account is equivalent to the system level access you are given under Windows with the ability to delete create and format partitions create delete directories and files or do anything else your heart desires Linux operates like a network client server system The root account is like a system administrator able to control what access authority the various clients users have There can be many different user accounts set up on the same Linux system each with its own set of permissions configuration options choice of user interface and so on This is very useful in a business environment where multiple people share the same system as each user account can be tailored for each individual user On the other hand it can be a 40 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow nuisance when there is only one user because there are some system functions that can be performed only by the root account necessitating that the user log out of the user account and log in to the root account long enough to perform the needed operation then log out of the root account and back into the user account Fortunately there is a shortcut you can use in some situations as an alternative See the description of the su command in the earlier question Sometimes instructions say that must be root What does this mean As compensation however doing things this way makes it much less likel
10. backup The advantage is that often very little has changed since the last time making for very quick backups The disadvantage is that you must keep copies of all the intervening backups since the last complete archive Losing even one partial backup along the way can result in the loss of important information Thus even with a policy of incremental backups it is a good idea to do full backups periodically Q What backup software should I use There are a large number of commercial and free programs available for use some primarily for tape drives and others for more general usage magnetic and optical disks network drives etc Many of these have graphical interfaces to make them easier to use It is a good idea to try out a few different programs to see what you like best There are too many available tools to try to describe them all here But there are a few common commands and utilities likely to ship with your Linux distribution that you can start with tar tar was the earliest and most common packaging tool for Unix Linux it does the unpacking of files as well there is no untar command The far command creates a file that contains all the other files and directories optionally in a compressed state using gzip or bzip2 to save space If you have used Zip unzip or PKzip with DOS Windows then you are already familiar with the concept Files packaged with tar typically end with a tar extension If also comp
11. click on Desktop then Windows Manager and finally Workspaces Select the desired number of virtual columns or desktops and press OK to close the panel Q Is it possible to share a program across multiple virtual desktops Yes In the upper left hand corner of a program window there is an icon that looks like a pushpin Pressing this button will pin that application in place making it appear in all virtual desktops in the same position onscreen To remove it from other virtual desktops press the button again and it will remain on only the virtual desktop from which it was unpinned Q How can I change my desktop background color KDE users can click on the KDE icon on the Panel and select Settings then Desktop and finally Background From the Display Settings dialog box you can pick which desktop from among the virtual desktops to modify then choose one or two colors and or wallpaper to use To test out your choice press the Apply button When you are finished press OK to save your changes or Default to go back to the original system default colors Cancel will not abort the changes once you press Apply it will only close the panel Q Is there a faster way to copy cut amp paste text than to use the pull down menu Yes There is a quick way to copy text with the mouse If you are using a three button mouse first position the cursor where you wish to place the text then select highlight the text as you normally wo
12. do I add users There are a number of tools available for doing this For instance Red Hat Linux 6 2 includes the graphical Red Hat Disk Management tool inuxconf For occasions where you are not running a graphical interface or prefer a command line tool a couple of text mode programs that are often included with Linux are adduser and useradd Despite the similarity of their names and purpose adduser is the more functional of the two To use linuxconf 1 Run 1inuxconf from a command line under either KDE or Gnome Linuxconf is not located on a menu anywhere In order to use Linuxconf and similar system level tools you will need to first be logged in as root To do this use the su command and enter the root password when prompted 2 Once the inuxconf panel opens scroll down to the heading called Users accounts Immediately below there is a subheading called Normal and beneath it User accounts Double click on User accounts to open a panel that lists all existing accounts To create a new account click on the Add button at the bottom of the panel You will see a subpanel with four tabs Base info Params Mail settings and Privileges 5 When you are done filling in the necessary information press the Accept button to save your changes or Cancel to reject the changes and not create a new account S 41 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Users of other distributions besides Red Hat have other graphical user admi
13. fd0 or dev floppy or mnt floppy in Linux as explained above B drive dev fd1 see note below IDE EIDE disk drives C drive boot drive first primary drive on the first disk controller dev hda D drive second slave drive on the first disk controller dev hdb E drive first primary physical drive on the second controller dev hdc F drive second slave physical drive on the second controller dev hdd CD ROM drives will often be attached as the primary drive on the second controller or dev hdc IDE ATA Zip drives will generally take the next available drive letter after the hard drives and or CD ROM drives SCSI disk drives C drive boot drive lowest numbered drive on the primary controller dev sda D drive second lowest numbered drive on the primary controller dev sdb E drive third lowest numbered drive on the primary controller dev sdc And so on There can be many SCSI drives on one or more controllers The mount point designations just keep incrementing up through dev sdz If there are more than 26 physical drives they will be incrementally labeled from dev sdaa up through dev sdzz Note Unlike the primary floppy drive dev fd0 Linux doesn t automatically map a second diskette drive dev fd1 to something like dev floppy or mnt floppy However if desired you can set up your own alias such as mnt floppy2 The mapping entries that are used for this are located in the ete dire
14. from the same sources as this Q amp A paper Q How can add programs to the Panel KDE users can click on the KDE icon select Panel then Add Application and then choose the desired program from the various menus shown Once the application has been added to the panel you can rearrange the order of the icons by right clicking on an icon and selecting Move then dragging the icon to wherever you want it Gnome users must first log in as root then click on the Gnome menu icon then Programs and Settings then select Menu editor When the popup menu appears you can create a submenu or add to an existing menu Q What is a virtual desktop When running a number of programs concurrently the screen sometimes becomes cluttered with several windows open at once covering each other up One solution of course is to minimize some of the windows until they are needed However this entails minimizing and restoring those windows repeatedly as different windows are accessed This can be tedious over the course of a day An alternative is to use a program that creates virtual desktops Each desktop is a clean slate where you can open one or more programs Rather than minimizing restoring all those programs as needed you can simply shuffle between virtual desktops with programs intact in each one If this doesn t seem like much of an improvement consider that with eight open programs a user might have to minimize and restore each of thos
15. has already passed such as usermod e 01 01 92 mary See below for an explanation of shadow passwords As an alternative experienced users can edit the etc passwd file To disable the account find the line for the appropriate user and insert an asterisk in front of the encrypted password The password is located between the first and second colon separators following the user name For example mary Ms 2jbeTWmUYi 500 Mary Jones home mary bin bash Warning This alternative approach should be used only as a last resort by a proficient Linux user because manually editing this file can cause major problems if not done correctly Q How do l add or change personal information in an account If you wish to add name address and telephone number information to your account or change information already there there is the chfn Change Finger Name command You will be prompted for your password then shown the data fields for the information above To change other user accounts login as root Then specify which user you wish to change the information for such as chfn fred and make the additions or changes If you prefer a graphical tool Red Hat Linux 6 2 users running KDE can click on the KDE menu the big K on the Panel and select the Red Hat option then System and finally About Myself This will bring up a panel with entry fields for all the information accepted by the chfn command am not aware of any such graphi
16. indelible Blue Atto www indelibleblue com e Linux Mall Attp Avww linuxmall com e The Linux Store http www thelinuxstore com 47 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow In Australia Linux users can go to e Everything Linux hitto Awww everythinglinux com au Beyond merely software these sites also carry Linux books and hardware devices known to be Linux friendly should you need to add to or upgrade your system Some of them even offer such things as caps mugs neckties and other Linux paraphernalia If you are looking for an extensive list of Linux books try O Reilly amp Associates http linux oreilly com Q Where can I go for assistance on Linux There are a great number of Internet sources for Linux assistance including vendor Web sites independent Web sites and Usenet newsgroups Some informational Web sites include e Caldera Linux support page htto www caldera com support e Debian Linux support page http www valinux com services support session_hash 7d7ccc8f28c0f42cddc98da037d7875a e Gnome Web site htto www gnome org Home of the Gnome desktop environment e KDE Web site htto Avww kde org Home of the KDE desktop environment e Linux at IBM htto Awww 4 ibm com software is mp linux The IBM Linux home page containing news software downloads and support options e Linux Documentation Project hAtto Avww linuxdoc org A collection of Frequently Asked Questions FAQs how
17. link More likely you would create it in another directory so that you could access the file from either place or several places if you make multiple links For example In myfile txt user mark myfile2 txt would put the new link in the user mark directory Linux itself makes use of hard links In many cases Linux continues to use programs and files that were first used in earlier versions of Linux which can sometimes cause problems For example if the X Window System was first provided in a directory called usr X11R4 Linux software which used X Windows would look for those files in that directory But when a newer version of Linux comes out that uses a later version of X Windows the files might be stored in usr X11R5 or usr X11R7 or usr X11R10 So how to keep from breaking all those programs that are expecting the files to be stored in usr X11R4 Simple Put hard links from one directory into the other This way whichever directory the application software looks in for those files it will find what it needs 36 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow As an alternative to the command line interface some graphical file managers such as GNU Midnight Commander offer options to create either or both types of links by right clicking on a file icon Q Can you summarize the differences between symbolic and hard links and differentiate between using links and simply duplicating a file Sure If you merely copy a file from one directory
18. nice command will do the job for you Linux supports priority levels from 19 lowest to 20 highest with the default being 0 To change the priority to a negative number increasing the priority you must first log in as root Then to start a program called Myprog with a high priority level of 10 use the command nice n 10 myprog If you wish to increase the priority of an already running program use the renice command identifying the program by its PID renice 10 506 the n argument is not used Conversely if you have a long running program that is a low priority job and it is slowing the entire system down while the program is running you can lower its priority using the same techniques by providing positive numbers such as 8 rather than negative numbers By default nice will reduce the priority by 10 In other words the command nice myprog is the same as nice n 10 myprog It may take some experimenting for you to find the right priority levels to assign to specific programs Too high a priority may bring the rest of the system to its knees too low and the job may take forever to complete As a rule of thumb unless you have a reason to be changing priorities leave them alone The default setting is best most of the time Q Is there a spelling checker that I can use outside of a word processor Yes Linux includes a program called ispell which will read any text file highlight questionable words offer alternativ
19. of cd home mark netscape cache which says starting from the root travel down these directories to get there or you could simply use the shorter relative path of cd cache to get to the same place A relative path means starting from where we are now go to the next level directory called cache Had there also been a directory below cache called etc we could get there from the StarOffice51 directory with the command cd cache etc Remember preceding the pathname with a forward slash tells Linux to start from the root directory Therefore a command of cd cache etc would fail in the preceding example unless you also happen to have a cache directory branching off from the root with its own etc subdirectory Why Because it is looking for the cache directory starting from the root rather than from the StarOffice51 directory Reversing our direction if you use the cd command from within a directory it will step you back up a directory level such as from home mark StarOffice51 to home mark You can repeat this command as often as necessary to return to the root directory Alternatively to jump directly to the root use the cd command This is equivalent to cd or cd in DOS Windows Q There are a number of directories don t recognize in the root directory What are they These directories store essential system files and programs For example the etc et cetera directory contains confi
20. rather than just starting a restore program inserting a tape or Jaz cartridge and walking away But if you do not have a high capacity backup solution at your fingertips a partial backup is the most effective method for all but a complete system rebuild Each application will have its own set of configuration files that should be backed up as well as data files but you will have to find out what they are from the software documentation or the vendors From a Linux standpoint the directories you should be sure to back up include e etc e home e opt e usr lib e usr local e usr src linux if you have modified any of the kernel programming e usr X11R6 lib X11 if you are using X Windows Case is important in this folder name e var spool mail Of course you should also back up any directories containing important user data files If you lack large capacity storage you can always back up each application s files to its own set of floppies using an archiving compression utility such as tar gzip bzip2 or zip These and other tools can span more than one disk or tape to store all the data in one related archive This method may not be as quick or efficient as a tape drive but at least you will have a copy of your essential files It is not necessary to back up the program files themselves as you can always just reinstall the applications from scratch but you might want to back up the files that contain the user setup infor
21. to another you have doubled the disk space used by the file and editing one file doesn t affect the other because they are in no way connected to one another This is fine if it is what you intended so that you can keep a pristine original while modifying another copy or if you made a backup copy for safekeeping If you copy a directory instead of a file you also copy the entire directory s contents which can result in a lot of disk space used A file or directory copy can be put anywhere on any disk either directly attached to the system or on a network or Internet Intranet drive somewhere else entirely Because the original and the copy are unconnected deleting one has no effect on the other On the other hand if you create a symbolic link it takes only a few bytes of space and can be located on any mounted device that you can type in a path for If you delete rename or move the original you break the link although recreating the original in the same place will restore the link Using the link to access the file or directory any changes you make to the file or to the directory contents will affect the original files directories because those are what you are actually touching Alternatively if you create a hard link instead no additional disk space is used however the link can only be created on the same physical hard disk but multiple partitions on that disk not on other local or remote devices Moving or renaming the orig
22. to the file owner usually its creator The next trio describes the permissions granted to any authorized groups of users and the final three characters denote any access available to unspecified other users Each triad of positions reveals whether the user has Read r Write w i e create modify delete or Execute run x permission or no permission to perform one of those actions Using the first example from the question rw rw r tells us that the object is a file because the first character is The first rw indicates that the owner has read write access to the file but not execute so it can t be a program otherwise the owner would be able to run it Likewise any groups that have been granted access to the file can Read and Write to it the second rw However any other users those not expressly added to the authorized group have only Read access to the file as evidenced by the r at the end If the permissions were drw rw r instead the only difference would be that the object is a folder directory rather than a file In the other example from the question Irnwxrwxrwx means that the object is a link to a file or folder and all three groups have read write and execute permission to access that object Execute permission means that if it is a program script or other executable file an authorized user in this case anyone can run it and if it is a folder then the user can read the contents Q The 1s com
23. would be called dev hda1 dev hda2 dev hda5 and dev hda6 Q Wow that s confusing Isn t there a simpler way to access drives Yes Most Linux distributions provide desktop icons for some devices such as floppy and CD ROM drives that can be clicked on for direct access If you install software for accessing an lomega Zip drive it should also provide an icon to use And of course the graphical file managers such as the K File Manager and Gnome File Manager allow you to access files on various drives without worrying about drive letters When you open KFM look for an icon called mnt When you single click on it KFM will display all the devices that are ready for use Click on the icon called cdrom to display the contents of the currently inserted CD or click on the one called floppy to see what is on the inserted diskette Q Is there an easy way to see what devices such as drives have been mounted Yes Red Hat users running KDE can click on the KDE menu and select Red Hat then System and finally Disk Management This will bring up a panel that shows the devices mounted and provides Mount and or Unmount buttons so that you can take a device offline then remount it The Mount Unmount buttons will toggle back and forth between the two options being used There are also buttons provided to let you format the drives Gnome users of any distribution can select File manager from the Gnome icon on the Panel the Linux
24. 9 Q already have a large swap file in my Windows partition Is there a way for Linux to use that swap space instead of creating another file eeeeeeeeceeeeeeneeceeeeeceaeeeeeaeeeeaeeeeeeeseaeeesaaeeseneeseeeeess 10 Q If I install Linux on an IBM ThinkPad with a TrackPoint II or III pointer what kind of mouse should SCISCE scrcas aneo E ENNEA EE E T AE T EEE AE EREET NEES aires 11 Migration from WiINdOWS 2 225 322 2scchscce tadtectticedecee Scahcase ccucdsucccaedessecccudtedcccdencececedsastccecdsideddecsaneseaccucdes 11 Q How do get Netscape for Linux to recognize my Netscape for Windows bookmark file 11 Q Are there any Linux programs that will read and write Microsoft Office files ceceeeee 12 Configuration amp Setup ssccccseccescceesesesesneeeeseeeenseseseeenseeeeneeesesaaeensnaeeeeeeeseaeesaseaeeeeessseaesaseeesseeenseaeees 12 Q How do get my winmodem to work with LINUX ccceeeeeeeeeeeeeceeeeeeeaeeeeeeeseeeeesaeeeeeaeeeeneeees 12 Q How can tell how much memory Linux iS USING cceeeeeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeaeeseeeesaeeteaeeeeneeeeas 13 Q If Linux is not using all the memory have installed how do make it use the rest 13 Q have a printer attached to the parallel port What is this port called in Linux eee 13 Q have a device attached to a serial port What is this port called in Linux c ceeeeseeees 13 Q What is my floppy d
25. Aea Eaa E aaaea aa iaaa EEan aa e aeaaea aaan aE Sai 45 Q How do set up my system for dial up Internet ACCESS cc cc ceccceceeseeceeesseeeeeeessteeeeesteeeeeees 45 MISCOITAMGCOUS bai cee os acs caer A EEEO AA ENOTA 46 Q What is the difference between Linux and UNIX cceccceeececeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeaeeseeeeesaeeeeaeeeeeeeeaas 46 Q Why does Linux seem So haphazard c ccccecceeececeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceaeeesaaeeseneeseeeeseaeeseaeeeeeeeeaas 47 Q Where can download or buy Linux software 00 ceeececeeeeeeeeceeeeeceeeeeeaaeeeeaeeseeeesaeeteaaeseeeeeeaas 47 Q Where can I go for assistance ON LINUX ccecececeeeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceaeeeeaaeeeeaeeseeeeeseaeeesaaeseeneeeaas 48 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Installation These questions all deal with some aspect of installing the operating system Q During installation Linux creates a swap space partition Why do I need this and how is it different from a Windows swap file Like Windows Linux uses a certain amount of space for holding programs temporarily when there is not enough available RAM random access memory to hold all the programs that are running concurrently Generally the least recently used program or part of a program is copied from memory to a file on your hard drive until it is needed again at which time the current least recently used program is swapped out in its place and the first program is loaded back into memory This is an over si
26. ILENAME TAR on another occasion you will get different results because x and X v and V f and F are all valid yet different parameters for the tar command In fact because commands are case sensitive as well you could have two completely different commands called tar and TAR with different syntax and parameters on the same system Q Long pathnames are a pain to type in Is there any sort of shortcut I can use Yes in some cases If you are using the Bash shell or other shell with similar capabilities you can take advantage of a feature called filename expansion by using the Tab key You can type the first part of a directory name then press Tab and it will complete the name for you as long as there are no other names starting with the same letters For example if you want to list the home johnson projects 2000 directory you could type ls ho Tab jo Tab pr Tab 2 and the shell will expand the pathname for you But what happens if you have two directories under home johnson called projects and previews If you know this ahead of time you could just change ho jo pr 2 to ho jo pro 2 to eliminate the conflict Alternatively if pressing the Tab key after pr doesn t provide the pathname expansion pressing Tab a second time will bring up a list of all names that start with pr In other words s ho Tab jo Tab pr Tab Tab Then simply use the keyboard up arrow key to repeat the previous command and
27. KDE will try to find a translation for the menus dialog boxes and messages in the first language If it fails it will try the second choice and if necessary the third If all three fail or if you do not select three languages it will use whatever was the original default language specified during installation 3 Press OK to save your changes and exit Apply will save your changes but not exit The Default button will return all three language settings to the original Default language choice 4 Log out and then log in again to see your changes Note This procedure only affects certain system utilities help files error messages and the like Your applications may or may not be affected depending on what support for other languages are programmed into them Therefore you may end up with a mix of two or more languages depending on the various programs you are running at any one time You may be able to set up language choices within specific applications as well If after logging out in you discover to your horror that you somehow selected the wrong language and you can t read most icons menus and other system functions try to follow the instructions above If you can manage to return to the language settings panel but can t read the language names the little flag icons should allow you to find the language you want or you can press the Default button at the bottom the second one from the left if you can t read it I
28. Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow l LAI i Linux Questions and Answers A Linux White Paper Preface For someone new and even not so new to Linux there are hundreds of questions problems and concerns that arise during the learning process especially for someone coming from the world of Microsoft Windows Other Linux white papers deal with individual topics often in lengthy fashion This paper addresses a number of miscellaneous questions both frequently and rarely asked grouped by topic The focus will be on helping Windows users make the transition to Linux but those converting from other operating systems should find useful information here as well Note Because of the differences between Linux distributions from various vendors some of the information below may apply to one distribution but not another This will be pointed out where known however with all the available distributions it is impossible to identify all such situations here If the problem is that a command or program described doesn t exist in a given distribution it is generally possible to download a copy of that program from a Web site if needed On the other hand there may be a functionally similar utility already provided with that distribution To find out consult the user s manual or contact the distribution vendor If all else fails there is a list of Web sites in the Miscellaneous section below that may be of assistance For gene
29. The performance of swap files that are located in data partitions is slower than that of swap files in swap partitions due to file system overhead and noncontiguous data blocks and 2 It is also possible that if the swap file is ever damaged it could corrupt the filesystem for that partition resulting in lost data For these reasons it is strongly recommended that you use swap partitions whenever possible leaving swap files in data partitions as a last resort Swap files might be appropriate if you temporarily need some extra swap space You can create as many as eight swap files if necessary Linux will apportion the swapped data between these files as appropriate To create a swap file in a data partition use a command similar to the following dd if dev zero of lt swap path gt bs lt size gt count lt size gt For example dd if dev zero of Swapdir Swapfile bs 1024 count 65536 Note If Swapdir does not yet exist it must be created before running the dd command For example mkdir Swapdir ormkdir home Swapdir In order to create the directory you must be running as the root operator The dd command sometimes called data duplicator although the original meaning of the dd acronym is lost in the mists of time is used to create the swap file The if parameter identifies the input file source for creating the swap file device zero of is where you specify the path to the output swap file you want
30. a System type of Linux Enter t to change the partition type then enter the partition number you used in Step 1 above Finally when prompted for the Hex code enter the swap partition type code 82 If everything worked correctly you should see a message like Changed system type of partition x to 82 Linux swap where x is the partition number from Step 1 e If you are creating an Extended partition 1 Enter e to create the partition When prompted for the partition number use the next higher number than the highest existing partition number In other words if the last Device description on the left shows dev hda1 use 2 as the new partition number Type in the number suggested for the first cylinder which should be one higher than the ending cylinder for the preceding partition or press Enter to take the default Press Enter to reserve all the available space Enter p again to verify that the new Extended partition was created It should show an ld type of 5 and a System type of Extended Enter t to change the partition type then enter the partition number you used in Step 1 above Then when prompted for the Hex code enter the Linux Extended partition type code 85 If everything worked correctly you should see a message like Changed system type of partition x to 85 Linux extended where x is the partition number from Step 2 Note This step is not strictly necessary You c
31. ache usr Jetc The indicates the root or base directory nome is a directory off the root and home mark and home susan are directories branching off from home These subdirectories hold account related files for user IDs mark and susan Within home mark there are directories called netscape and StarOffice51 which in turn have directories branching off from them Susan has a similar directory structure for her Netscape data files Outside of the home directory structure there is also a directory called usr branching directly off the root To change analogies for a moment if mark and its subdirectories and susan and its subdirectories are each children and grandchildren of the home directory then usr is a sibling or peer directory of home Both are direct offshoots of the root This whole naming convention is referred to as the file namespace From the root directory to delve deeper into directories and subdirectories use the cd change directory command For example cd mark StarOffice51 would immediately 29 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow move you down the directory path from the root to the contents of the subdirectory StarOffice51 Using the command 1s a at that point would show you the files and subdirectories stored in StarOffice51 If you then wanted to change to the cache directory inside of StarOffice 51 you have two ways of doing so You could type the absolute path
32. ackage 46 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow consists of various utilities device drivers applications a user interface and other tools that generally can be compiled and run on other UNIX based operating systems as well Q Why does Linux seem so haphazard You may have heard the old saw that a camel is a horse designed by committee illustrating the difficulty of getting a number of people to agree on the design of anything and the results of compromise If anything Linux illustrates a horse designed by complete anarchy with a healthy helping of Darwinian natural selection thrown in for good measure Thousands of programmers over the years have written applications utilities games device drivers user interfaces and other software for Linux In the absence of a central authority to dictate a mandatory look and feel each programmer had his or her idea of what was the best design for software and developed the programs accordingly Over time certain software became more popular than others which in turn spawned work alikes and near clones taking features of the previous products and adding to them or offering slightly different variations Eventually companies such as Red Hat Caldera TurboLinux and SuSE took the Linux kernel and added what they considered the best available utilities user interfaces etc to form a distribution or packaged deliverable Because each distribution chose from among this prog
33. al word searches with grep such aS history grep m to find the mformat mdel and other commands starting with m that were executed previously or even wildcard searches history grep m y If none of these methods finds the command you are looking for then most likely it was executed more than 500 commands ago and has fallen out of the bash_history file Q What can I do if don t remember the name of a command I need You can page through a manual looking for the command you want but a quicker way is with the apropos command It allows you to search a database of available commands using keywords For example if you want to operate a floppy drive but do not remember what command you used the last time or perhaps this is your first time and you do not know where to start type apropos floppy You should see a result like fd 4 floppy disk device fdformat 8 Low level formats a floppy disk mbadblocks 1 tests a floppy disk and marks the bad blocks in the FAT mformat 1 add an MSDOS filesystem to a low level formatted floppy disk mkbootdisk 8 creates a stand alone boot floppy for the running system setfdprm 8 sets user provided floppy disk parameters The numbers in parentheses indicate the section in the man pages where this information can be found such as man mformat to look at section 1 the default in the man pages for the mformat command or man 8 mkbootdisk to go directly to sect
34. ample let us look at the differences between changing the date and time in Linux versus Windows 22 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow In Windows at a command prompt you would type date 12 31 2000 to change the date to December 31 2000 Then to change the time to 2 00 p m you would use time 14 00 00 or simply time 14 00 In Linux on the other hand first you would have to be logged in as the Superuser or use the command su to temporarily grant yourself that authority then you would use the command date 123114002000 Notice that the 14 00 is embedded in the date string between the day and the year This is the way Linux wants it You can t specify seconds using this command just hours and minutes However if you want to change only the time but not the date use the following command instead date s 1400 or if you want to specify seconds date s 14 00 35 The colons are required when specifying seconds In both examples the s parameter tells Linux that you wish to set the time For more on the su command see the Root User Accounts Groups and Permissions section below Q How do I get help for command parameters There are several options available First many common commands will have short manual pages built into Linux You can access them by typing man followed by the command name such as man mv to see the parameters for the mv move command Some utilities provide more detailed
35. an create Linux swap partitions in a regular extended partition but changing the partition type to Linux Extended takes only a few seconds and it clarifies the partition structure for future fdisk users on this system Enter n to create a new partition When prompted for the first cylinder number press Enter Enter the desired swap partition size in megabytes such as 128 Enter p again to verify that a type 83 partition was created with the same starting block as the Linux extended partition you created in Step 1 Enter t to change the partition type then enter the number for the Linux extended partition you just created When prompted for the Hex code enter the swap partition type code 82 If everything worked correctly you should see the message Changed system type of partition x to 82 Linux swap If you did not use up all of the available partition space in Step 6 create one or more additional partitions to hold data but this time do not change the partition default type of 83 f To write your changes to the hard disk and exit the program type w and press Enter When you are returned to the Hard Disk Selection panel select No further hard disk changes and press Enter Repeat steps 2 4 for each additional hard drive that you wish to add a swap partition to changing the fdisk command from fdisk dev hda to fdisk dev hdb or from Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow fdisk dev sda to fdisk dev sdb
36. and sometimes newer command help using the info tool for example info mv If these tools do not produce results try following the command with help or h as the only parameter as in mount h or mv help Some commands such as mformat will display the list of available arguments whenever the command is used without parameters or with invalid parameters When in doubt try them all until you find the one that works To learn how to use the info command type info info the tool uses itself to display the tutorial To learn more about man use man man and or info man The tutorials are different so it is not a bad idea to consult both When you are finished reading the help displayed by man or info press the Q key to quit and return to the command shell Q How do I repeat a command If you tend to use the same commands over and over or recently typed in a rather lengthy set of parameters you wish to use again there are a number of ways you can repeat a command without having to retype it Linux stores the last 500 commands in a file called bash_history for quick retrieval The simplest way to find a recent command is to use the up and down arrow keys to scroll back and forth through the list until you find the one you want If you wish to change a command you used recently use the up down arrow keys until you find the command you want then use the left right arrow keys to go to the part you wish to change Type in anything you
37. are software and configurations 48 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow e comp os linux setup How to install and configure Linux and add on products e comp os linux x Installing configuring and using the X Window System under Linux There are other Linux newsgroups provided for other topics such as vendor specific questions alt os linux caldera linux debian user or redhat rom general for example and those for programmers For current news about Linux and article archives visit e CNET Linux Center htto inux cnet com tag st ne ni refer 1491268 A Linux specific news site It not only has news but also links to popular Linux downloads product reviews Linux events Linux company stock quotes and other resources e ICE News http www nikos com icenews linux html e Linux Planet Atto www linuxplanet com linuxplanet e Linux Today hito linuxtoday com index html e Linux Weekly News htto www wn net e Linux World htto Avww linuxworld com e Zdnet Linux Homepage http www zdnet com enterprise filters resources 0 10227 2186824 00 html Mark T Chapman IBM Server Group July 7 2000 49 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow ill Copyright IBM Corporation 2000 IBM Server Group 3039 Cornwallis Road Dept LO6A Research Triangle Park NC 27709 Produced in the USA 12 00 All rights reserved References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that
38. art command 25 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Warning Like many powerful tools command stacking can be a double edged sword It can hurt you as easily as help if you are not careful As an illustration of what can happen if you are careless years ago was using the OS 2 operating system to write a book about OS 2 which also supports command stacking although without requiring the semi colon between commands decided to delete the existing files from an old diskette so that could back up my book chapters one file per chapter to it intended to type in the following command del a which would have deleted all files from the root directory of the a drive Unfortunately what actually typed was del a a space where the backslash should have been OS 2 interpreted that as delete all files from a del a and then delete all files from the current directory del all my original files realized what was happening about halfway through the files on the hard drive and was able to cancel the job before the rest were deleted Fortunately had a backup from the night before so lost only a few hours work but it could have been much more serious The moral of this story is be very careful with command stacking or script files because a lot can happen when you run programs unattended If you were to issue a command to first copy a file to a floppy and then delete the original and the floppy copy was u
39. between a wildcard search using or and a search for those particular characters you merely need to insert a backslash before the wildcard character For example S hello txt or 1s myfile c or 1s mc 127 h would find the files hello txt myfile c and mc 127 h respectively You can also combine these regular expressions with wildcards in searches such aS 1s hello t t which would list hello txt and hello tst or 1s mc 127 which would list mc 127 h and mc 127 c for example Q How do I create or rename a file with special characters in the name As with the previous question you merely need to insert a backslash before the special character For example touch hello txt would produce an empty file called hello txt touch myfile c would result in myfile c and touch mc 127 h would create mc 127 h Similarly mv hello txt hello txt would add a to the filename immediately before the dot To use multiple special characters simply insert a before each one for instance touch myfile txt would produce myfile txt The procedure is the same for any other special character If you are not sure which characters require the treatment simply try the command without it first If you receive a sh syntax error near unexpected token yourfilename message where yourfilename is the name you tried to create then you need the backslash Important Note Although you can include many spe
40. browse through a text file from the command line Yes Perhaps the best way is to open the file with a text editor such as Pico Emacs Vi or others and scroll or page through the file However if you are trying to do the browsing from the command line without opening the file first you can use the head and tail utilities or the more or less commands For example head myfile txt would display the first 10 lines of the file onscreen by default The command head 40 myfile txt would show the first 40 lines You can substitute larger or smaller numbers for 40 Similarly tail displays the last 10 lines of a file as in tail myfile txt If the file is short but you are not sure how many lines long you could use the cat command short for concatenate to display the entire file on the screen such as cat myfile txt 33 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Obviously this is fine if you know approximately how close to the beginning or end of a file the text string is but not if it is somewhere in the middle of a large file In that situation more or less would be more productive See the question The directory listing is too long and scrolls off the page Is there a way to view a page at a time in this section for information on those commands Q Is there a command to search text files for a specific character string Yes Naturally you can open a file with a text editor and use its search function However if you prefer t
41. cal tools for desktop environments other than KDE so if you are not using KDE you will have to use the chfn command line option Q How do l add groups Default groups are automatically created when you add users Should you need to add groups manually you can do so with the groupadd command Normally group IDs GIDs are automatically supplied by adding 1 to the last number used when a group is created However because you are creating a group manually you will need to specify a group ID yourself The maximum GID number is 65536 so you might want to specify something very large say 50000 or higher to keep from possibly running into one already assigned by the system To create a group called mygroup with a GID of 50000 type groupadd g 50000 mygroup Q How do add delete users in a group To add users use the passwd program with the a add parameter For example to add user mary to group mygroup type gpasswd a mary mygroup To delete users simply replace the a parameter with the d delete parameter such as gpasswd d mary mygroup Q How do I change a password To change your own account password Red Hat 6 2 users running KDE can click on the KDE menu and select Red Hat then System and finally Change Password This will bring up a panel prompting you for the current password for the logged in user If the correct password 43 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow is supplied you
42. change pr to pro or whatever else is needed to create a unique match then finish the command with the 2 at the end Q Is there a way to use one command to start more than one program at a time Yes The command shell allows you to stack commands on one command line to be executed in order For example if you type ls 1 cd 1s a Linux will list the current directory contents in long form 1s 1 then change directory to the parent of the current directory ca and finally list all files in that directory 1s a The semicolon space separating the individual commands is how Linux knows where one command ends and the next begins If you wanted to copy a file from one directory to another and then to a floppy while changing its name and then display the contents of the floppy you could type cp dirl myfile dat dir2 cp dirl myfile dat dev fd0 myfile2 dat ls a dev fd0 Stacking commands can be an efficient way of starting several programs that must run sequentially without having to stand around waiting for each to finish in turn Simply type in the stacked commands and walk away until the last one is done Of course if you need to perform several tasks end to end on a recurring basis it makes more sense to create a script file like a batch file for you DOS Windows users containing those same statements Then you just have to type in the name of the script file instead of a long multi p
43. cial characters in this manner using some special characters including the asterisk question mark hyphen vertical bar piping symbol circumflex or caret apostrophe and ampersand amp in a file name is generally not a good idea because they may be confused with wildcard parameter argument and other symbols by various commands In addition using a space in a filename such as my file txt may cause some commands to treat the name as two filenames or a parameter and a filename To avoid this problem enclose the name in quotes as in my file txt Any of these conditions will cause unintended results At the very least these special symbols can make filenames more difficult to read Unless you have a good reason for doing so it is probably best not to use them Q How long can a filename be A filename can be up to 255 characters long including numbers letters and special symbols as well as a combination of upper and lower case which are treated as different characters by Linux Unix However for the sake of readability and to make it easier to type from the command line much shorter names are preferable This 255 character limit does not include the full path In other words if a file called ThislsMyVeryLongFilename txt is in the user mark garbage files directory the filename alone can be up to 255 characters excluding the characters in the pathname To illustrate out of the following path
44. counts Groups and Permissions section below Then from a command line you can type ps process status to see what programs are running To the right of the process name will be a Process ID PID number such as 506 This is what you will use to kill the program From the command prompt type kill pid for example kill 506 This tells the program to either shape up respond normally or ship out close itself This will usually solve the problem but occasionally stronger measures are required Preceding the PID with 9 Such as kill 9 506 will kill 17 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow the program This is sometimes called signal 9 not to be confused with Plan 9 from Outer Space a cheesy B movie An alternative for killing a background process or daemon is to use the HUP hangup parameter as in kill HUP 506 It essentially signals the program to close itself then restart and reread its configuration file Again if the kill command doesn t work the first time you may have to resort to the 9 parameter rather than HUP Q Is there a way to increase the priority of a program to make it run faster Yes If you have a program that normally takes quite a while to run and you really really need it to complete faster you can boost its job priority level so that it uses more processor cycles Of course this means that all other currently executing programs will run slower But if this is what you want the
45. ction of DOS commands Here are some common DOS commands with their Linux counterparts Command Purpose DOS Command Linux Command Change to the parent directory cd or cd Short for change directory cd Change to the root directory cd or cd cd note the forward slash Clear the screen cls clear Close a command prompt window exit exit Compare the contents of two files fc file compare diff difference Copy a file copy cp copy Create a directory mMkalr Orne ake mkdir directory Delete files del or erase rm remove Delete directories rmdir or rd remove dir rmdir Display file contents a screen at ward more urless atime Display the amount of available RAM mem free Display change the date date date Display change the time time date Echo output to the screen echo echo Find a file by filename dir or attrib locate Find a file by date or other file attributes dir not by date find Find a text string in a file find grep Format a floppy format mke2fs or mformat for a DOS Windows floppy List files in directory dir directory Is list or dir Move files move mv move Rename a file ren short for rename mv Show the current filepath cd pwd print working directory Even though some of the commands are the same the parameters for these commands may differ between DOS Windows and Linux For ex
46. ctory in a file called fstab To add an alias for fd1 use an editor to open etc fstab and look for the entry for fd0 which should look something like dev f d0 mnt floppy auto noauto owner 0 o0 This line maps dev fdO to the directory mnt floppy To create an alias for fd1 create a subdirectory in the mnt directory called floppy2 Then add a new entry using whatever alias you wish to the fstab file in order to map the second floppy drive to a mounting point such as 14 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow dev fdl mnt floppy2 auto noauto owner 0 0 Save the file and close the editor Now when you use the Mount command it should include something like dev fd1 on mnt floppy2 type vfat rw nosuid nodev user username Q What about disk drive partitions Don t they have drive letters either Nope Linux just tacks numbers onto the end of the drive identifier For example if the first IDE hard drive had three primary partitions they would be named numbered dev hda1 dev hda2 and dev hda3 If a second hard drive had two primary partitions they would be called dev hdb1 and dev hdb2 Likewise a SCSI hard drive with three primary partitions would be labeled dev sda1 dev sda2 and dev sda3 That is just for primary partitions If you also have extended partitions they begin numbering at 5 and continue from there If for instance you had one IDE drive with two primary and two extended partitions the partitions
47. d soebuedeeecedvessevucedelenvedesees 28 Q What is the root directory ecceeeseceecceceneeeeeaeeeeneeeeeeeeeeaaeseaeecaaeeecaaeseeaaesgaeeesaeeesaaesteneesneeeeaes 28 Q Can you explain more how the directory structure of LINUX works ccccceeeesteeeeeesteeeeeeaaes 29 Q There are a number of directories don t recognize in the root directory What are they 30 Q Is there a command line shortcut to the login directory ceeececeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceeeeeseaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeas 30 Q Some filenames are preceded by a dot What does this mean cecececeseeeeeesteeeesneeeeeeaes 30 Q When look at a list of files and directories the names are followed by something like rw rw r or Irwxrwxrwx What does this mean cccccccesssccecessneceeesneeeeeeaeeeeesaeeeessaeeeessaeeeeessaeeeeseseeeenes 31 Q The 1s command doesn t show everything in the directory What s wrong sess 31 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q Can use wildcard searches with the 1s command as can with Dir in DOS Windows 31 Q want to do a wildcard search on files with or in the names How do do that 32 Q How do create or rename a file with special characters in the NAME ceceeeeeesteeeeeees 32 Q How long can a filename De sirieni eataa aeaaee eaaa a a aana anaana aia aait 32 Q Is there a way to find files from a command Shell cccceceeceeeeeceteeeeeaeeeeaeeseeeeeseaeeeeaees
48. decide that it is not large enough for your needs you can delete the original one and replace it with a larger swap partition if you have the contiguous space to do so in other words if there is no other partition immediately following the original swap partition If there is insufficient space to create the larger swap partition you can still create a second partition elsewhere on that drive They do not have to be back to back Or you can use a disk partitioning program such as Partition Magic to reallocate partition space on the fly between existing partitions without losing data Linux supports up to eight swap partitions Alternatively if you have multiple physical disk drives splitting your swap space between the disk drives may improve system performance because both drives can be used concurrently for swapping This performance increase is more apparent on a system with SCSI drives because SCSI devices run in parallel at the same time while standard IDE devices run in serial they alternate Even so on a system with multiple IDE drives it can be faster to switch back and forth between physical drives an electronic operation than to shuttle the read write heads of one drive all over the disk dividing their time between partitions on the same drive Also drives added to the system later may be faster than the original drive that came with the system Using these newer drives will give you faster disk read writes when swappin
49. e to grant Read Write access for the file myfile txt to Groups and Others use the command chmod gotrw myfile txt To remove Write and eXecute access from all accounts use chmod ugo wx myfile txt Or chmod a wx myfile txt Note that a for All is a convenient shortcut for ugo 44 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Communications These questions relate to configuring or using communications features of Linux Q How do set up my system for dial up Internet access This is a multipart process Before you begin you should contact your Internet Service Provider ISP There is some information you will need to provide to Linux that only your ISP can provide A technician who is conversant with Linux can probably step you through the entire process but because you may not find a Linux expert at your ISP here are the steps necessary to do it yourself e Ifyou are using KDE use the Kppp utility to start the configuration process gt Log in as the root operator then use your favorite text editor to open the etc ppp options file If you see a statement with the option lock you will need to comment it out to disable it Kppp handles locking the connection and the hardware so Lock is redundant To disable the lock option insert a symbol in front of it such as lock Save the file and exit the editor Log out as root and log back in as yourself To start Kppp go to the KDE Application Starter menu the big K ico
50. e eight programs multiple times in turn With eight virtual desktops each program could stay open at all times needing only one click to change to the next instead of two Virtual desktops can help reduce desktop clutter There are several programs of this type available for Microsoft Windows users to buy or download but Linux users do not even have to look for such a program Both KDE and Gnome include virtual desktop support by default and users can specify how many desktops they want to use or disable them entirely To switch between desktops click on the buttons on the Panel for One Two Three etc start one or more programs then select another virtual desktop start more programs and so on To cycle through all the desktops in turn use Ctrl Tab Q You said could have eight virtual desktops but see only four Where are the rest The default setting is four but you can easily change the number in increments of two i e 2 4 6 or 8 To do this in KDE click on the KDE icon on the Panel then select Panel and Configure This will display the KPanel Configuration window Use the Visible slider to change the number of virtual desktops The Width slider lets you control how big the icons are on the Panel 20 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow If you are using the Gnome environment from the Gnome icon on the Panel go to Program and select Setting then Gnome Control Center When the Gnome Control Center panel appears
51. e of the theme you downloaded and press the OK button When the theme appears in the Available Themes box you can press the Preview button if Auto Preview isn t already selected to see how it looks before applying it If you think you might like it press the Try button to conditionally apply it to your desktop If you approve of the results press OK to save the changes If you decide you do not like it after all use the Revert button to back out the theme and return to your previous theme KDE themes can be found at http kde themes org To install a new KDE theme start the KDE Control Center from the home icon it looks like a little house in front of a manila folder on the Panel Then click on Theme Manager under Desktop in the panel on the left Press 19 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow the Add button in the upper right part of the right hand panel When the dialog box opens find the name of the theme file you downloaded Double click on the name to install it Then click on the theme name in the Installer box The window in the middle shows how it will look If you like the appearance press the Apply button at the bottom of the panel to change your desktop theme If you do not like the appearance press Cancel to exit the KDE Control Center Other sources for themes include many Web sites that offer software downloads For a list of some of these sites refer to the What Good is a Linux Client white paper available
52. eeeeeaes 33 Q Is there a way to browse through a text file from the command line cccceeeeeeesteeeeeeeeees 33 Q Is there a command to search text files for a specific character String usses 34 Q What are symbolic and hard links and how can identify themM c cceeeeseteeeeseeeeeeeeees 35 Q How do create links symbolic or Nard ccceceeeceeeeeceeeeeeeaeeeeeeeceeeeeseaeeeeaaeeeeeeeseaeeeeeaeeeeeeeee 36 Q Can you summarize the differences between symbolic and hard links and differentiate between using links and simply duplicating a file c ceecceceseceeeeeceeeeeeeeeeceeeeceaeeeeaaeseeeeeseaeeesaeeseaeseeeeeeaes 37 Q recognize a number of file types such as JPG GIF WAV TXT HTM and ZIP from Windows but see many other file types don t know What are they for essensen 37 Q Should back up my entire system cee cece eeeeeeteeeeeeeaeeeeaaeeeeeeeeeaeeesaaeedeaeeseeeeesaeeeeaeeeeneesaas 38 Q How often should back Up My files eee eee eeeeeceee eect eeeeaeeeeeeeceaeeeseaeeeeaeeseeeesaeeseaaeseeeeeseas 38 Q What backup software should USC 00 2 ceeeceeeeeeeeneeceeeeeceaeeeeaaececeeeceaeeesaaeeeeaeeseaeeesaeeeeaaeeeeneesaas 39 Root User Accounts Groups and Permissions ccsscccsseeeeeseeesseeseneeeeeeeeeeseaesnseeeeeeeesesnaesneseeenes 40 Q Sometimes instructions say that must be root What does this M aN csseseeeeeeees 40 Q What
53. en created within a minute of one 35 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow another The real clincher however is in the set of numbers preceding the file permissions listings For an explanation of file directory permissions see the question How do I display the permissions for a file or directory The 619880 number is the inode or physical disk address of the file Only one file can occupy a given block of disk storage just as only one car can occupy a particular parking space at any one time Therefore these two files must in fact be only one physical file with two hard links filenames to the file Again unlike soft symbolic links deleting either of these two files doesn t affect the other Another difference between the two types of links is that hard links can t span disk drives In other words a hard link can t be created on dev hdb to link to a file on dev hda Q How do I create links symbolic or hard The In link command can be used to create both types of links For example to create a hard link called myfile2 txt to a file called myfile txt type 1n myfile txt myfile2 txt This will create the link in the same directory as the original file To create a symbolic link called myfile3 txt to the same original file use ln s myfile txt myfile3 txt the s parameter is what tells Linux to make the link symbolic If you use the 1s il command to list the directory contents you should see somethin
54. endent files only a few bytes in size that can be renamed or moved without affecting the original programs or files they point to Conversely if the original file is moved deleted or renamed it will break the link because it no longer matches the filename and location pointer stored in the link If a link is broken this way it should be deleted as it is no longer useful and a new link created if needed for the new filename and or location On the other hand if you rename the original file back to what the link is expecting or return it to its original location the link will magically work again Symbolic links can be identified using the K File Manager kfm or other graphical file manager by a small arrow in the lower right corner of an icon pointing at the icon From the command line one command you can use is 1s F capital F not lowercase When the filenames are listed the symbolic links will be followed by an symbol For example if you were to list the files in the bin directory you might see arch ash ash static aumix minimal awk basename bash bash2 bsh and so on where awk and bsh are the symbolic links to files in other directories The following the other names indicates that they are original files Alternatively you could use the 1s i1 command see below Link files specific to the KDE user interface will have kdelnk filename extensions such as Autorun kdelnk
55. er the name of a command need s 24 Q just used a command and got completely different results from the last time used it Why 25 Q Long pathnames are a pain to type in Is there any sort of shortcut can USC n s 25 Q Is there a way to use one command to start more than one program at a time s e 25 Q Is there a way to stack commands and have them execute concurrently in other command a E E A AE E R AE E satan bausieed A EENE E A 26 Logging In Logging Out Shutting DOWN cccssccscseeeeeeeeesneeeeeeeeesseaeseseeeeeeeesesaeseneeeeeseessaseenenseeaeas 27 Q can t seem to log in even though I m using the correct password What s wrong 06 27 Q Why do need to use Shutdown Can t just turn the power Off 0 0 eccceeeeessteeeeeesteeeeeeaes 27 Q can find a Logout option but where is Shutdown ccceeeceeeeeceeeeeeeaeeeeeeeseeeesaeeeeaaeeeeneeeaas 27 Q Is there a faster way to warm boot the system than using Shutdown cssceeeesseeeeeees 28 Q Do I have to use Shutdown if am just turning over the system to another user s 28 Q clicked on Logout and now the session is locked up How do log OUt ccsceeesteeeeeees 28 Q How can enable Linux to automatically restart applications that are running when use Shutdown or Logout isnan eek heise ae ee Meee iaaa a iaa iaeia eaii 28 Files ANd Directories iiinn aane aiaee e adenda Ee aiea unde du secutaade ei deve
56. es and let you add the words to the ispell dictionary if desired It runs from the command line with a text mode i e non graphical interface but is fairly easy to use There are a number of parameters that you can use type ispell for a list of them or info ispell for more detailed explanations But the simplest usage to check a file called memo txt would be ispell memo txt It will even check a series of files in order such aS ispell memo txt mydata txt or even ispell txt to check all files in the current directory with a txt extension When the program runs it will present a questionable word within the context of the line of text containing the word and offer suggested replacements in a numbered list To select one of the suggestions from the list to replace the original word simply type in the number of the word you prefer There are also several menu options displayed along the bottom of the program To Replace the word with something you type in type R or r ispell options are not case sensitive and then whatever word you want to replace the original with You also can type in the number of a replacement word from the list This is the same as just typing in the number directly but is there in case you forget you can do it that way Use A to Accept the existing word as is i e ignore it for the rest of the spell checking session Using the spacebar tells ispell to accept ignore the word this time only I lets you In
57. everal programs in different sessions offers possible advantages If for example one program is doing heavy database updating while a second is performing spreadsheet recalculations and a third is displaying complex graphics onscreen each is primarily stressing a different part of your computer s hardware The database update is using the hard drive heavily the spreadsheet is grabbing a lot of processor cycles to calculate numbers and the graphics program is mainly using the video controller Running them all at once could greatly improve the performance of your computer by using system resources that would otherwise sit idle until the current program finishes Bear in mind however that how useful this is will depend to a great degree on the kinds of programs you are running and the type of hardware your computer has installed For example if you run two programs at once that both make heavy use of your hard drives people with multiple IDE drives or one SCSI drive will likely see little or no performance improvement by doing this This is because the time spent jumping back and forth between hard drives or 26 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow even between areas on the same hard drive offsets much of the time savings of running the programs together IDE devices are dumb relying on the processor on the IDE controller to handle all the disk drive instructions but the controller can access only one drive at a time so it has t
58. extension Learn more about bzip2 bunzip2 from info bzip2 PKzip PKunzip PKzip is a popular shareware commercial packaging and compression tool primarily in the DOS Windows world PKzip is very fast and offers varying degrees of 39 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow compression vs speed Newer versions include a graphical front user interface PKunzip is compatible with files created by PKzip zip gzip and tar as well as the UUencode XXencode MIME and BinHex file formats PKzip files end with a zip extension For more information read the documentation that comes with PKzip Zip unzip zip and unzip are a pair of command line tools that will package and compress and decompress files and directories In addition to being very fast they are free and available for other platforms including DOS Windows OS 2 and other UNIX OSes including SCO The unzip command can also unpack files created by PKzip Like PKzip zip compressed files end with a zip extension The zip and unzip utilities may be included with your Linux distribution if so read their manuals using the following commands info zip and info unzip Other utilities you can obtain separately include Arkeia Backup Edge BRU2000 Catchup CTAR Drive Image Kbackup KDat PerfectB ACKUP Sitback Taper and many more For a lot more on this topic see the related white paper entitled Installing Linux Applications for the First Time available from the same sources a
59. f you are unable to find your way back to the language settings you may have to reinstall Linux to specify the default language all over again Gnome users can use the same KDE tool if they wish The only extra step is to go to the Gnome menu select the KDE menus option then proceed as directed above If you use another desktop environment besides KDE or Gnome refer to the manual or tutorial that came with the environment for information on how to change the language General Usage How to perform various tasks using Linux Q How do format a floppy diskette If you are using the KDE user interface the easiest way is to use the KDE Floppy Formatter utility supplied Simply click on the KDE icon on the Panel select Utilities then KFloppy The File System option gives you the choice of the Dos FAT file system for DOS Windows or OS 2 or the Linux native ext2fs file system If you are using Gnome go to the Gnome icon the fancy G shaped footprint on the Panel and select Utilities then GFFloppy From the command shell to format a diskette for the native Linux file system use the mke2fs command You can use the mtools utility to access DOS Windows formatted diskettes Use the commands mformat mcopy and mdel without parameters to see a list of command 16 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow options Using mtools to change from one directory on the floppy to another use the following command mcd a subdir where subdir
60. g Dividing the swap space across multiple drives may also increase system reliability Like any device hard drives have a finite life expectancy so spreading the workload between multiple drives means that the primary drive doesn t have to work as hard which in turn may no guarantees though extend its useful life For instructions on how to do this refer to the question How can I create multiple a swap partitions on one or more drives below Q How can speed up performance by using multiple swap partitions If your system especially a server has multiple drives set up as a RAID O array data striping it would automatically spread the data across all the drives in parallel greatly increasing the speed of disk writes versus a non RAID setup where the swap partition is on only one drive Of course not everyone can afford a RAID setup fortunately there is an alternative that offers many of the same performance benefits in a multidisk environment at least as far as swap space performance is concerned As it happens there is a way to parallelize swap file read writes through the use of the priority setting in the etc fstab file Note This works best with multiple SCSI drives and or controllers Two IDE drives on the same controller will see little or no performance boost from this technique but multiple IDE drives on multiple controllers may benefit somewhat Use an appropriate tool such as kfstab available from kf
61. g like the following 619880 rw rw rw 2 ownerid groupid 428 Apr 14 19 42 myfile txt 619880 rw rw rw 2 ownerid groupid 428 Oct 2 10 18 myfile2 txt 224516 lrwxrwxrwx 1 ownerid groupid 6 Oct 2 10 18 myfile3 txt gt myfile Note that all details of the hard link myfile2 txt including the inode address 619880 are identical to that of the original file myfile txt except for the creation date and time It is treated as a physical file as verified by the file size and the permission type of but at the same location as the original file Same inode address with the same read write permissions The 2 following the permissions reflects the number of hard links to the physical file the directory listing for the original file being the first hard link Conversely virtually every aspect of the symbolic link myfile2 txt is different The inode address differs because there is a physical file created elsewhere on the disk that contains a pointer to the original file Likewise the permissions differ with the symbolic link showing a file type of link the I leading off the permissions and including execute permissions for all user types The 1 following the permissions demonstrates that this is not a hard link Finally the filename is followed by gt myfile which reveals the name of the original file to which it points Note that creating a hard link for this file in the same directory probably would not be the normal usage of a hard
62. gether called chording These instructions should apply equally to other brands of notebook computers using IBM s pointing stick technology identified as a little pencil eraser usually red green or black nestled between the G H and B keys but to be sure contact the notebook vendor Migration from Windows If you are in the process of moving from Windows to Linux or are setting up a Linux system to coexist with Windows computers and perhaps share data between the two types of systems these questions may save you some time and effort Q How do I get Netscape for Linux to recognize my Netscape for Windows bookmark file For best results try to use the same version of Netscape on both systems or as close as possible e g 4 72 and 4 7 but not 3 0 to minimize the chance of inconsistencies in the bookmark file format Use the Linux Kfind or similar utility to determine where the default bookmark file is kept It should be in a directory with a name like home username netscape substitute your account name for username If you simply copy the bookmark htm file from your Windows PC to a floppy and then to the appropriate Linux directory when you restart Netscape and open the bookmarks you will see the default bookmarks not your customized list The problem is in the file name The Linux version is called bookmarks html note the two extra letters Therefore you must rename the bookmark htm file to book
63. guration files where system and application settings are stored Beneath that the etc skel directory contains shell or skeleton files used to create user accounts The usr user directory stores other important files including program libraries shareable system program modules in usr lib manual pages for the man utility in usr man and other documentation in the usr doc and usr info directories Other such system directories include lib libraries security files system modules and libraries containing software libraries and informational databases opt optional pre loaded software packages are often stored here and var variables spooling logs and all messaging files Unless you have a specific reason and know what you are doing it is a good idea to leave those directories alone Q Is there a command line shortcut to the login directory Yes From any shell prompt simply type cd and press the Enter key Q Some filenames are preceded by a dot What does this mean A filename that starts with a dot such as bashrc or netscape is a hidden file They are often used to hold user preference settings and other configuration information These files are hidden to make it less likely that they will be accidentally deleted Hiding files also makes a file listing shorter and less cluttered with files the user will rarely be interested in There are different ways to see these files For example the 1s list command with
64. he fourth partition Swap partitions are used in order from highest priority to lowest where a priority level of 32767 is the highest and 0 is the lowest This has the effect of forcing Linux to write to the first three partitions in parallel greatly increasing the read write throughput of the swap space The fourth partition would be used only if the first three fill up In addition to parallelizing the swapping this technique also allows you to prioritize access to the fastest drives first Therefore you can set up an emergency swap partition on an old slow drive using low priority so that it will be used only when all high speed swap space is exhausted Q How can I create multiple swap partitions on one or more drives To create multiple swap partitions 1 First use the su command to enter superuser mode If you don t do this you will be unable to use the fdisk command 2 Enter the command fdisk dev hda if your bootable hard drive is IDE or use fdisk dev sda if your bootable hard drive is SCSI If you are not sure which type of disk drives your system uses and you guess wrong the worst that can happen is that Linux will issue an error message saying Unable to open xda You can t hurt anything This is a text mode program so it is not pretty Where it says The number of cylinders for this disk is set to xxxx note the number displayed for xxxx for example 1024 3 Atthe prompt Command m for help
65. he shell prompt type updatedb Wait a few minutes for the database update to complete and try the locate command again Note Linux does also have a find command but for performance reasons locate is better for searching on filenames If you have a need to search by file date or other attributes or would like to automatically execute a program using the found file as a parameter or any of a large number of other interesting uses find is the command to use For more on find use info find As an alternative if you are merely looking for the binary source and manual pages for a command you might try the whereis command To illustrate the difference between whereis and locate try the following two commands whereis passwd and locate passwd As you can see the whereis command found only a few files while the locate command listed dozens That is because whereis was looking for a few specific files all called passwd while locate was busy seeking any file or directory name containing passwd in the name including gpasswd 1 gz autopasswd passwd 1 html etc For another example try whereis doc and locate doc As before the locate command came up with many files sporting a doc extension The whereis command however found nothing Why Because there is no Linux command called doc or even doc Remember whereis works only on files associated with commands not just any old data file or program Q Is there a way to
66. home you can skip the DNA and Gateway tabs If you are connecting in an office environment your network administrator will tell you if you need to enter anything in those tabs Unless told otherwise you should not need to enter anything in the Login Script tab either If you live outside the United States or Canada and your ISP charges by bytes transferred use the Accounting tab to select the country the company and whether you are charged by incoming data outgoing or both otherwise ignore it Click the OK button to close the Edit Account panel and return to the Kopp Configuration panel Click on the Device tab to set up your modem connection If the modem was set up correctly during installation you should have to select only the port to use COM1 through COM4 are mapped respectively to dev ttySO through dev ttyS3 Use the one that corresponds to the port to which your modem is connected An internal 45 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow modem may be mounted as dev modem For Flow Control use CRTSCTS to enable hardware flow control For Line Termination choose CR LF For a 14 4Kbps modem choose a connection speed of 57 600bps For faster modems select 115 200bps If you would like to prevent a second program from disconnecting one already using the modem check the Use Lock File box gt In the Modem tab you will configure the modem Use the Busy Wait box to specify how long to wait for a busy modem or dirty phone line before d
67. inal file won t hurt the link it will reflect the change When you delete the original file you are actually deleting only the original hard link the directory name So as long as at least one other hard link exists the file is still accessible Hard links can be created for files but not for directories Because the permissions indicate that a hard link is a physical file any software that tries to access these files will think it is accessing the original files which in fact it is through the link Q I recognize a number of file types such as JPG GIF WAV TXT HTM and ZIP from Windows but I see many other file types don t know What are they for There are a number of file extensions that are common in Linux UNIX but not typically seen in the Windows world Here are some of them a Archive file png Image file like jpg gif au Audio file like wav ps PostScript printer formatted file bzip2 bz2 Archive file compressed with rpm RPM Package Manager file bzip2 c C programming language source file So Program library file conf Configuration file tar Archive file cpp C language source file tar bzip2 tar bz2 Archive file compressed with bzip2 9Z gzip File compressed with gzip tar gz tar Z Archive file compressed with gzip h C or C language header file tga Image file html
68. ing something called Uniform Memory Architecture or UMA This means that the computer s processor may have to process all of the spreadsheet calculations and the graphics calculations at once reducing the performance of both programs Moreover using the main computer memory for both may again result in swapping unless you have lots of system RAM Still it can t hurt to try executing your stacked commands concurrently If they all complete faster than if run sequentially terrific If not you can always go back to running them the old fashioned way Logging In Logging Out Shutting Down This section contains questions or problems involving shutting down Linux or logging out of an account Q I can t seem to log in even though I m using the correct password What s wrong Linux is case sensitive meaning that a password of a1b2c3 is not the same as A1B2C3 Be sure that the Caps Lock key is turned off before typing your password unless of course your password is all caps Q Why do I need to use Shutdown Can t I just turn the power off Just as with Windows using Shutdown allows the system to save open files flush the system cache and do other necessary system maintenance Turning the power off abruptly circumvents this housekeeping and can result in lost data and other problems Also because the file system is left in a dirty state it must be cleaned up the next time the system is booted slowing the rebo
69. ion 8 to see the rmt command If you were to use the command apropos diskette instead Linux might return a nothing appropriate message This indicates that apropos doesn t recognize the term diskette If this happens on a search simply try another term to look for such as floppy It is also possible that apropos won t find every possible related command For instance if you search for information on tape drives using apropos tape it would list a number of commands related to operating the tape drive including mt and rmt but it would not include tar which can be used for tape backup so you may need to be creative to find what you are looking for 24 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Note lf the apropos command doesn t work it may mean that the whatis database which is accessed by the apropos command has not yet been built To create the database first use the su command and type in your password when prompted to log in as root then enter usr sbin makewhatis This process may take several minutes When it finishes try the apropos command again For more on whatis refer to the question s there online documentation for most programs Q I just used a command and got completely different results from the last time I used it Why Remember that Linux is case sensitive Verify the case of the parameters you used for the command For example if you type tar xvf filename tar onetime and TAR XVF F
70. is the name of the directory you wish to change to Q Is there online documentation for most programs Yes The official help tool for Linux is called man short for manual To read the manual for various programs including many commands type man lt something gt where lt something gt is the name of the program you need help with at a shell prompt For example to read the online manual for the man program itself use man man You can also use a viewer called Jess to view the manual man man less where is the piping symbol Shift Backslash located above the Enter key on a 101 key keyboard Using less press the Spacebar to move ahead a page at a time to back up use the B key When you are done press Q to quit Many newer programs have shifted to the info tool rather than using man Like man you can view info pages using the command info lt something gt Some programs now supply HTML or XML pages kept in the usr doc lt programname gt directory in place of either man or info pages These documents may be viewed from a Web browser or other HTML XML capable program Another option is to redirect the manual to a text file for browsing with an editor For example man mv col b gt move txt to redirect the text for the mv command will strip out the screen formatting codes that do not translate into print and then copy the output to a file called move txt co is the name of the formatting utility Once it is in a
71. is the root account and how does it differ from a user ACCOUNT eecceeeeeeeetteeeeeeeeees 40 Q Why would want to add other user accounts to My SYStCM ecccceeeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 41 Q How do l add Users tainviein N eina i en a e eave ee 41 Q How do delete users ccccceccecsseceecceceeeeeeaeceeaeecaeeecaaeseeaaeecaeeeeaaesseaaeegneeseaeeesaaeseeneeseneeeaes 42 Q Is there any way to change a user ID ooo eee eetceeneeeeee eect eeeeaeeeeeeecaeeesaaeeeeaeeseeeesaeeeeaaeeeeeeeeaas 42 Q Is there a way to disable a user ACCOUM cecececeeeeeceeeeeeeeeceeeeeceaeeecaaeeeeaeeseeeeesaeeseaeeeeneeeaas 43 Q How do add or change personal information in AN ACCOUNT ccceeeeeeseeceeeeeeseeeeseeeeeeeeeaes 43 QVHOW dO Add QrOUPS eE eases cheat hh cased eh aah A E 43 Q How do add delete users iN a group ccceceeceeneeceeeeecaeeeeeeeceeeeeeeaeeesaaeeeeaeeseeeeeseaeeeeaaeeteneeee 43 Q How do change a password 3 iv cciiecec siida nanta a ra aa ea ara aa qidetrieetataetdeeiee 43 Whiatiis a Shadow password ortine areenaa etaa a aaa aeaaea eaa aa ba a aeaa aaaea aiaa iaaa 44 Q How do display the permissions for a file or directory cceeececeeeeeeeeeceeeeeseeeeaeeesaeeeeeeeeees 44 Q How do change permissions cccececececeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceaeeeeaaeseeeecaaesesaaeseeeeeseaeeesaeeeeneeseeeeeaes 44 COMMUNICATIONS Ce eee o eaer cece Sect te cece ce aaa a Aa a a Ae ia ar
72. isconnecting The Modem volume slider lets you decide how loud to make the connection tones Use the Modem Commands button to set the default control codes for certain functions The Query Modem button can be used to test the modem and the Terminal pushbutton pops up a mini terminal for entering control codes manually gt Click the OK button at the bottom of the panel to close the KPPP Configuration panel and return to the KPPP panel gt Inthe Connect to field select the ISP for which you just created a record Then enter the Logon ID and Password you were assigned Make sure the Show Log Window box is checked This will let you see the progress of the logon process which is helpful in case there are problems logging on Then press the Connect button to dial the ISP If you are unable to connect verify all of the information you entered in previous steps If you do not find anything wrong contact the ISP or network administrator for further assistance e f you are using Gnome rather than KDE there is nothing packaged with the standard Linux distributions but there is a downloadable tool you might try called Gnome Dialup As of this writing it is still under development but worth a try if you are looking for a graphical dial up access setup tool for Gnome Gnome Dialup can be found at http tor pw1 netcom ca phantom gnome_dialup index html Other such tools may exist as well e From the command line you can use the pppd command to
73. ittlefield personnel txt Due to Smith s impending marriage she will be taking a two week honeymoon in Not only were there hits in two different files but there were two separate occurrences of mar in the personnel txt file as well The results of a search can even be copied to another text file or printed using the piping symbol See the question The directory listing is too long and scrolls off the page Is there a way to view a page at a time in this section for information on piping Search results can also be redirected to a file using the redirection and append symbols gt and gt gt See the question s there online documentation for most programs in the General Usage section for information on redirection There is much more that can be done with the grep command For example the c parameter tells grep to display only the count of the number of times a string appears in a file rather than the text of the matches Such as personnel txt 2 For more information read the manual page command man grep 34 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q What are symbolic and hard links and how can identify them Symbolic soft links work much like shortcuts in Windows as pointers to programs data files or directories located elsewhere Links allow you to start a program from more than one folder or the Desktop without having to duplicate the files in multiple places Links are indep
74. l ext2 defaults 0 1 dev hda2 usr ext2 defaults 0 1 dev hda3 none swap sw 0 0 There may be other disk partitions listed if you have other swap and or data partitions To activate your new swap file add a line similar to the following immediately after the last partition listing Then save and close the etc fstab file Swapdir Swapfile none swap sw 0 0 Should you later decide that you no longer need the swap file it is easy enough to remove First use the swapoff command to disable the use of the file swapoff Swapdir Swapfile Then simply delete the file rm Swapdir Swapfile Q already have a large swap file in my Windows partition Is there a way for Linux to use that swap space instead of creating another file Yes although Linux is rather meticulous about what format the data takes in its swap space Thus there is more to it than simply pointing Linux to the path of the Windows swap file have found several descriptions of how to accomplish this and all of them reportedly work but have not had the need to try any myself They all appear to be terribly complicated so unless you consider yourself well versed in Linux it might be best to avoid this topic entirely until someone develops a utility to simplify the process If you would like to look over one such procedure to make up your own mind whether or not to try it read the document at htto Awww linuxdoc org HOWT O mini Swap Space 1 html It seems rather thor
75. llow up with the groupdel command to remove the users UPG entry the default group such as groupdel groupname 4 Remove any other group affiliations for the user besides the UPG using usermod G username username Note that the G parameter is capitalized 5 Use a text editor to remove the login ID from the etc group file 6 Delete the users home directory and mailbox using rm R home username usr spool mail username Note that R is capitalized Q Is there any way to change a user ID Yes To change a user ID login name use the usermod command For example to change an account name from mary to Mary_Jones use usermod 1 Mary_Jones mary If you change a login name you should also change the user home directory where all the user account information is stored To do this use the command usermod qd home Mary_Jones m mary to move the user account information to the directory home Mary_Jones from home mary The l parameter tells usermod that you are changing the login name d identifies the directory you are changing and m means to move the contents to the specified directory 42 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q Is there a way to disable a user account Yes If you are using shadow passwords see the question What is a shadow password in this section for an explanation the simplest way to disable an account is via the usermod command Merely assign an expiration date that
76. mand doesn t show everything in the directory What s wrong The Is lowercase L not capital i utility has many parameters to let you view the directory contents in different ways For example 1s a shows all files and 1s al shows all files in long form with additional details while 1s a color adds a splash of color to differentiate the various types of files For the list of parameters use 1s help or type man 1s for a full description Q Can I use wildcard searches with the 1s command as I can with Dir in DOS Windows Sure You can search for all files ending with the txt extension using 1s txt or all files starting with mc and with any extension using 1s mc If you are looking for a file among a long list of files with similar names you might limit the wildcard to just one character using the symbol For example 1s hello 5 c would find files called hello05 c hello95 c helloj5 c and so on but not hello105 c or hellor7q5 c You can even combine wildcard characters for very specific searches such as 1s hello 5 Wildcards can also be used with other commands including cp copy mv move rm remove etc 31 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q want to do a wildcard search on files with or in the names How do I do that Unlike DOS Windows UNIX Linux does allow those characters as well as and and and other special characters in file and directory names To distinguish
77. marks html before Netscape for Linux will recognize it reverse the process to copy an updated file back to your Windows system First copy the bookmark htm file from the Windows system If you use a floppy Zip disk or other removable medium you can rename the file on the removable disk before copying to the Linux system The file should be stored in a directory called something like Program Files Netscape Communicator Users yourusername but you can use the Windows Find or Search function depending on the Windows product from the Start menu to locate it Once the file is copied to the removable disk use the Windows file manager to rename it bookmarks htnl 11 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow On the Linux computer KDE graphical interface users can copy the file to the home username netscape directory using the K File Manager just click on the icon on the taskbar or Panel that looks like a house in front of a manila folder Gnome users can use the Gnome File Manager click on the Gnome icon the vaguely G shaped footprint on the Panel select Programs then File Manager If you prefer to work from a command line interface use the following command cp dev fd0 bookmarks html home yourusername netscap Note the use of forward slashes and that dev fdO is used in place of a Linux and UNIX do not use drive letters unlike DOS Windows or OS 2 Alternatively you could combine the renaming and copying steps into
78. mation preferences such as default margins and tabs for a word processor One clue as to which files these are is to look at the file dates Generally the user setup files will have much newer dates than the files created when the program was first installed If in doubt about what to back up contact the software vendor for the filenames Q How often should I back up my files There is no one right answer to this question either Every user is different One way to answer the question for yourself is to use the ouch test Consider how much work you could 38 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow afford to lose before it hurts If you are a home user perhaps a once a week backup would be adequate right after you pay bills for example In a high performance office environment once or twice a day even hourly may be required It is also a good idea to use a grandparent parent child strategy of rotating backup media In other words use three or more sets of tapes or cartridges and alternate among them This way if for some reason your most recent backup is corrupted at least you have the next older one to fall back on Plus if you discover that you accidentally deleted a file a few days ago or it was damaged by a virus you can restore the file from a backup made before the deletion Another option is to back up only what has changed since the last backup some archival programs track this information from backup to
79. mplified explanation there is much more to it but this will do for this question This file is called a swap file in Windows or OS 2 and swap space in Linux but in either case it is a form of data file that is read from and written to off and on as long as your system is running Windows puts the swap file a hidden system file with different names for different versions of Windows in the bootable data partition by default OS 2 does the same but by changing the CONFIG SYS file a user can put the swap file in any directory in any partition on any drive they like Linux by default requires a special swap partition in which to store the swap file Actually Linux does allow swap files to be put in data partitions with caveats see below for more on this Q During installation have a choice of creating swap space in a Primary or an Extended partition Which should I choose Either will work There is no technical advantage to doing it one way or the other but there are only a limited number of primary partitions that can be created so if you plan on installing more than one operating system you might want to put the swap space in an Extended partition and save a Primary partition for other uses Note lf you have Microsoft Windows installed it may not boot if you have more than one primary partition installed on the bootable disk drive what Windows sees as C In this case Linux would have to be installed in an Extended parti
80. n on the Panel and select nternet then Kppp When the Kppp Configuration panel appears press the Setup button to create a new ISP connection record From the Accounts tab press the New pushbutton v When the Edit Account panel appears you will be in the Dial tab Enter whatever you want to use as the ISP name where it says Connection Name Enter the dial up connection phone number in the next field including area code or anything needed to dial out of the switchboard such as 9 The default authentication type is PAP Use that unless your ISP tells you otherwise The remaining fields are for experienced users Unless you have a reason to enter information in those fields leave them blank Click on the P tab When that panel appears either choose Dynamic IP Address or enter a static address Your ISP will have to tell you which option to use but generally the ISP will assign a temporary IP address each time you connect so most likely the ISP will tell you to select Dynamic IP Address If you are setting up a connection inside a firewall you will probably be using a static address The administrator in charge of the firewall will assign you a static address and tell you the subnet mask to enter in the appropriate fields Use the Auto configure hostname from this IP checkbox if you are connecting to a DHCP server or a Bootp server Your network administrator will tell you if you need this v If you are connecting from
81. nced version of the older Bourne shell To open the default shell for your distribution KDE users can click the Kvt icon on the Panel the icon that looks like a computer terminal or press Ctrl Alt F1 This will provide a command line interface CLI from which you can run commands as needed 21 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Gnome users can go to the Gnome icon on the Panel select System and open either a regular or color Xterm terminal session or command prompt window by clicking on the icons that look like a computer terminal with a large red or multicolored X in front of it respectively Alternatively you can right click anywhere and open a new terminal by selecting New then Terminal If you need only a quickie command line just long enough to execute one command and then close itself press the Alt F2 keys When the pop up panel appears type the command and press Enter Instead of a command you can enter a data file name with the path necessary to find it and Linux will launch the appropriate program based on the file association For example typing home username netscape bookmarks html will cause the default browser to launch If you use a path to a directory instead of a file Linux will open the directory using the default file manager such as KFM Q What are the Linux equivalents to DOS Windows commands There are a number of commands in Linux that are similar or identical to either the name or fun
82. need to add and use the Del key to delete unneeded text Alternatively typing pronounced bang bang and pressing Enter will execute the last command entered 23 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow If the command is too far back up the list for scrolling to be convenient and you know the name of the command you may prefer to jump to it directly using a shortcut string where string represents the command For example mcopy might find the previously used command mcopy tnm something txt c mydir and execute it directly If you are not sure of the command name or have used several variations of the command and are not sure which one you want you can view the entire history file using the command history without parameters The commands will be numbered in the order they were executed When you find the command you want you can execute it simply by typing 452 or whatever the correct number is If you do not want to view the entire 500 line history you can elect to see just the last x number of commands such as history 50 to see the last 50 If you need to search the entire 500 item list but do not want to read every line looking for a command you can use the grep command to search the contents For example to find that mcopy command from earlier type history grep mcopy where the piping symbol is the Shift Backslash character above the Enter key on a standard 101 key keyboard You can even use parti
83. nistration tools at their disposal For instance Caldera OpenLinux 2 3 users have Webmin and COAS Although neither individually can do everything linuxconf can do together they offer similar functionality To add users with the COAS tool 1 From the KDE menu select Settings then COAS then System and finally Accounts A panel will appear 2 Onthe tool bar select User and then Create user 3 When the menu appears begin customizing as many users as you need If your distribution doesn t offer a graphical tool or if you prefer to use the command line interface you can use adduser As with linuxconf before using adduser you must login as root Then type adduser newusername where newusername is the user name you wish to create The program will assign the next available ID for both the user and default group then remind you to set a password for this new account To add the password see below This will supply the minimum information necessary to create a user To add personal information to the account record such as the user s name address and phone number use the chfn Change Finger Name command see below Q How do I delete users This is a multistep process 1 Log in as root 2 Use the userdel command with the name of the user you wish to delete as in userdel mary Note however that while this deletes the user account name from the etc passwd file it doesn t delete all associated files 3 Fo
84. no parameters won t display these files but 1s a list all will On the other hand if you are using the K File Manager KFM under KDE simply select View then Show Hidden Files from the pull down menu to see these files To start KFM just click on the Panel icon that looks like a house in front of a manila folder 30 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Gnome users can click on the Gnome icon the funny G shaped footprint on the Panel select Programs then File Manager From the Gnome File Manager choose Settings then Preferences finally click on Show hidden files Q When l look at a list of files and directories the names are followed by something like rw rw r or Irwxrwxrwx What does this mean These cryptic notations actually describe the permissions or access levels assigned to three groups the file owner groups and other users The first position identifies what type of object the item is Possible types include a physical actual Directory folder d a physical file a mere Link alias pointer to a file or folder I similar to a Windows shortcut a Socket S a pipe or a device b is for Block devices such as disk drives that handle data a block at a time and c is for Character devices like serial and parallel ports that deal with data one byte or character at a time The remaining nine positions are composed of three groups of three characters each The first three apply
85. nsuccessful the disk was full or not formatted or defective it is possible for the file to be deleted without having been backed up first Q Is there a way to stack commands and have them execute concurrently in other command sessions Yes Running the stacked commands in the examples from the previous question will cause them all to execute one after the other in the same session window rendering it unavailable until all the commands have finished running If you would rather the commands launch another command session and run the commands from there simply append an ampersand amp symbol to the end of the first command such as cp dirl myfile dat dir2 amp cp dirl myfile dat dev fd0 myfile2 dat ls a dev fd0 In this case Linux would launch a new session for the first command then continue to execute the remaining commands in that session when the first one is finished Meanwhile the original session is available for your use If for some reason you want each command to run in its own session append the ampersand to all of them as follows cp dirl myfile dat dir2 amp cp dirl myfile dat dev fd0 myfile2 dat amp ls a dev fd0 amp Of course if you are doing this just to free up the original session so you can keep working while the other sessions are busy running those commands a simpler solution might be to just manually launch a second command session to work from while the first one is busy Launching s
86. o search from the command line you can use the grep utility It is a very powerful text file search tool You can perform wildcard searches on a specific file but more importantly you can search many files at once also with wildcards For example say you have a directory full of text files and you know that one of them contains the phrase Mary had a little lamb but you do not know which file it is Using the command grep Mary had a little lamb txt might result in the following output myfile txt Mary had a little lamb Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary Note the use of quotation marks around the phrase to identify the search string when multiple words are involved The grep command shows the entire line of text containing the search string to make it easier for you to determine whether it is the correct text because there may be multiple matches Note The grep utility is by default case sensitive so searching for Mary would not find mary or MARY If you wish to perform a case insensitive search add the i parameter in the preceding example Then it will find Mary mary MARY mARy or any other mixture of case For example a case insensitive wildcard search such as grep i mar txt might yield this result instead myfile txt Mary had a little lamb Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary personnel txt Candidates for a pay increase this year include Johnson Martin and L
87. o stop working on one drive switch to the other work for a while then stop and return to the first This is very disruptive On the other hand for those computers with SCSI drives the situation is very different SCSI devices are intelligent which is why they typically cost so much more than IDE drives and the SCSI controllers can multiprocess allowing all SCSI devices to execute concurrently and independently of one another So if you have two programs accessing data on two different SCSI drives they can both run full speed all the time Of course regardless of disk type if you do not have enough memory to run both of these programs concurrently Linux will have to alternate between them in memory swapping all or part of one program out to the hard disk temporarily This extra disk activity will reduce the amount of time that can be spent reading writing the data files again hurting performance Similarly if one program is making heavy use of the processor and the other is primarily graphics oriented there still may not be as much an advantage as you might think to running them concurrently If you have a high end video card with lots of memory it may be able to process all of the graphics commands using the video controllers onboard processor and memory However many computers especially those at the low end of the price range use inexpensive video controllers with little or no video memory Some share the computer s memory instead us
88. om the command prompt type sbin lilo to restart LILO then type exit to logout as the root operator and then exit again to close the shell session The next time you reboot Linux should be using all the memory installed Use the cat proc meminfo command to verify Warning It is possible to render Linux unbootable by specifying a memory size larger than that physically installed and available If your computer reserves some memory rendering it unavailable to Linux you must specify the lesser amount For example during power up POST if your memory count shows something like 130496 kilobytes rather than the full 131072 KB for 128MB of RAM 128 1024 this means that some of the memory is reserved by the hardware In this case do not use mem 128 M in the example above Instead use the exact amount of 130496K append mem 130496K or play it safe and step down to 127MB as in append mem 127M If you somehow manage to leave your system in an unbootable state i e it locks up on boot when it tries to use the reserved memory the remedy is to edit the etc lilo conf to correct the memory size Q have a printer attached to the parallel port What is this port called in Linux When prompted for the name of a parallel port in Linux in place of LPT1 LPT2 or LPT3 use dev lp0 dev Ip1 or dev Ip2 respectively Q have a device attached to a serial port What is this port called in Linux When prom
89. one using the following command mv dev d0 bookmark htm home yourusername netscape bookmarks html Note The diskette drive may already be mounted as dev floppy or mnt floppy in your Linux distribution If so use that mount location instead of dev fd0 If you transfer the file directly to the Linux system via network connection for example or prefer to rename the file once it is on the Linux system go to the home username netscape directory cd home username netscape and use a file manager or the move mv command to change the name mv bookmark htm bookmarks html If you use the mv command without a target location it simply renames the files Note In addition to the bookmarks file you might also want to copy the following files from the same Netscape directory on your Windows system to your Linux system liprefs js prefs js and proxy cfg They contain the user preferences information font selections proxies servers and so on In addition if you did not have cookies disabled on your Windows system copy cookies txt as well some Web sites store information about your user account in this file This will save you from having to manually reenter your preferences on your Linux system You will probably have to overwrite the default files with the same names on your Linux system If Netscape is still running close and restart it so it will read the new bookmarks file as well as the other files yo
90. ot considerably Q I can find a Logout option but where is Shutdown Using the KDE user interface click on the KDE icon the large stylized K on the Panel and select Logout When the Login panel pops up click on Shutdown and then one of the three options Shutdown Shutdown and restart or Restart X Server Shutdown shuts down the 27 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow operating system and turns the system power off Shutdown and restart does a restart and Restart X Server restarts only the X Server process without restarting the system From the Gnome desktop click on the Gnome icon the large stylized G that looks like a funny footprint on the Panel and select Log out When the Log Out Confirmation panel pops up select one of the three choices Logout Halt or Reboot and press the Yes pushbutton Logout logs you out of your account and brings up the Login panel Halt logs you out and turns off the system Reboot logs you out and restarts the system Halt and Reboot will require your account password to proceed Pressing the No pushbutton will return you to your Gnome session From a command line use one of the following commands shutdown r now to reboot immediately or shutdown h now to halt or stop the system To set an interval before shutting down replace now with tnumber such as shutdown r 5 for a five minute delay You will be prompted for your account password before the system shuts down Q I
91. ots of a tree form the foundation for the entire tree The trunk of the tree has a few large branches these branches lead to smaller branches which in turn have smaller and smaller branches that eventually lead to leaves 28 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Using this analogy the root directory is the base roots and trunk from which all directories main branches and subdirectories smaller ones branch off Inside these directories are data files and programs the leaves This sort of arrangement used by UNIX Linux DOS Windows OS 2 and other operating systems is often referred to as tree structured Q Can you explain more how the directory structure of Linux works The main difference between how this works in Linux versus Windows is that Windows uses backslashes instead of slashes in the directory pathnames To illustrate here is the hierarchy of a series of directories branching off the root home home mark home mark netscape home mark netscape cach home mark StarOffice51l home mark StarOffice51 database home mark StarOffice5l gallery home mark StarOffice5l gallery clipart home susan home susan netscape home susan netscape cach usr ust etc i To show it another way this is how it looks lining up those same directories by equivalent levels of depth 7 home mark netscape cache StarOffice5l database gallery clipart susan netscape c
92. ough Use the 10 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow left and right arrows to move back and forth through the document Use the up arrow to go to the document table of contents If you already have a Linux swap partition before you decide to try this technique to use your Windows swap file instead you should later delete it using fdisk to free up the disk space used by that partition For directions on how to use fdisk to check your partition tables and to delete a partition see the question How large a swap partition should create above Another possible way to share swap space is to have a swap partition shared by both operating systems This is not a no brainer either but if you are interested do an Internet search for Linux swap space and you should find several such documents Q If I install Linux on an IBM ThinkPad with a TrackPoint II or Ill pointer what kind of mouse should I select The installation program should correctly recognize the TrackPoint II III as a PS 2 type mouse Most such ThinkPad notebooks have two mouse buttons but some newer systems have a third button When installing on a ThinkPad with two buttons select the Emulate 3 Buttons option on the Mouse Configuration screen If your ThinkPad has three buttons do not select this option or it will cause problems To use the third button on a two button ThinkPad or any other system with a two button mouse press both buttons to
93. pted for the name of a serial port in Linux in place of COM1 through COM8 substitute dev ttySO through dev ttyS7 respectively 13 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Q What is my floppy drive called in Linux If prompted for the path of a diskette drive in Linux in place of a substitute dev fd0 dev floppy or mnt floppy depending on the Linux distribution you are using Unlike the DOS Windows world UNIX Linux doesn t use drive letters Devices are assigned mount points or mounting locations To determine which mount location is assigned to the floppy drive on your system type mount at acommand prompt You should see something like dev hdal on type ext2 rw none on proc type proc rw none on dev pts type devpts rw gid 5 mode 620 dev d0 on mnt floppy type vfat rw nosuid nodev user username Look for the part that starts with dev fdO on This tells you what soft mount location to use instead of dev fd0 mnt floppy in this particular case Q Wait a minute Are you saying that there are no drive letters in Linux That is correct Hard drives floppy drives CD ROM drives lomega Zip and Jaz drives and other devices that get drive letters in DOS Windows are instead assigned mount points by Linux Depending on the device involved here are some of the designations used by Linux following their typical Windows drive letters Floppy drives A drive in Windows dev
94. r the computer or contact the computer vendor s technical support organization Q How can tell how much memory Linux is using From a command shell use the concatenate command cat proc meminfo for memory usage information You should see a line starting something like Mem 64655360 etc This is the total memory Linux thinks it has available to use If you have more than 64MB of RAM installed and see a number close to the one above Linux is not using the remainder To see how much memory is currently unused use the free command Q If Linux is not using all the memory I have installed how do I make it use the rest To force Linux to recognize and use the full amount of memory you have installed open a command shell and login temporarily as the root operator with the su command For instructions on how to do this see the Root User Accounts Groups and Permissions section below When prompted type in the root password At the command prompt use an editor to open the file etce lilo conf such as pico etc lilo conf The first line of the file should start boot followed by other lines for map install and so on Position the cursor in front of the b in boot then insert the following append mem 128M and press the Enter key to move the boot line down Finally close the editor and exit the file Ctrl X in the case of the Pico editor Q to quit various other editors Save the changes if prompted Fr
95. ral terminology questions please refer to the white paper entitled A Brief Linux Glossary for Windows Users available from the same sources as this paper Special Note If you are reading this document online with Adobe Acrobat Reader simply click on the Web addresses highlighted in blue to go to those Web sites via your Web browser Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Contents Preface iacicccccetocts soles cede fo cs E aah Testa od ace a oe be eid a E Nae calect sd 1 MnStallation coco silat REEE PEE EE EE TETTETETT E EET sahdadaces tceetasdanabaned 5 Q During installation Linux creates a swap space partition Why do need this and how is it different from a Windows swap file ceccceeeeeceeeeceeeee seen eeeeaeeeeaaeceeeeecaaeeesaaeseeaeeseeeeesaeeseaaeseeeeeteas 5 Q During installation have a choice of creating swap space in a Primary or an Extended partition Which should CHOOSE 0 0 0 cccccceceecceceeeeeeececeeeeeeececeaeeeseesaeeeseeeaeeesecsaeeesenaeeesseaeeeesenaeeseneaas 5 Q How large a swap partition should Create cccceccceceeeceeeeeeeeeeeceeeeesaeeeeaeeseeeeeseaeeeeaeeeeneeseaees 5 Q How can speed up performance by using multiple swap partitions cceeeeeseeeeeeeeeeees 6 Q How can I create multiple swap partitions on one or more drives ceeeseeeeteeeeeeteeteeeeeeeeaees 7 Q How do create a swap file in an existing Linux data partition ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeeeneeteaees
96. ramming chaos it was inevitable that the various programs selected for a deliverable looked and worked differently from one another and that each deliverable looked and to some extent worked differently from other deliverables This is the reason for the inconsistencies between programs in a deliverable The flip side is that because the distribution companies were free to choose from among all available programs not just those that slavishly conformed to an arbitrary style the deliverables were able to include the very best programs even the ugly or nonconformist ones Q Where can download or buy Linux software There are quite a few sources for free or commercial Linux software if your local software store doesn t carry what you are looking for Here are just a few of them For free software try e DLR Fresh Archive htto Avww go dlr de fresh linux src e Freshmeat hito freshmeat net love the name e Linux Apps hito www linuxapps com e Linux Archives http home linuxarchives com software html e Linux Game Tome htto www happypenquin org e Linux Games htto Avwww linuxgames com e Linux Software Encyclopedia http stommel tamu edu baum linuxlist linuxlist linuxlist html e Linuxberg Tucows Linux htto linux tucows com e Slashdot hitp slashdot org If you see some commercial software that you would like to buy there are several Web sites in the United States with extensive Linux inventories e
97. ressed with gzip the extension may be tar gz tar Z or tgz Tar files compressed with bzip2 generally have a tar bz2 tar bz tbz2 or tbz extension The gzip and bzip2 compression utilities can also be used independently of the tar command to compress and decompress files see below There are many different parameters available for the tar command which does the unpacking of files as well so it is best to read the manual page for tar using the command info tar Note It is not advisable to compress tar files on a tape backup because tar would not be able to recover from tape errors gzip gunzip gzip GNU zip is the tool traditionally used for compressing tarred files and its companion gunzip is used to decompress those files More recent tools such as PKunzip can generally uncompress files created by gzip as well as those compressed by other tools such as PKzip and zip Due to this flexibility and because PKzip and zip are also available on other operating system platforms they have become more popular than gzip Files compressed with gzip usually end with gz or in the case of some older files z or Z You can read more about the gzip gunzip commands using info gzip bzip2 bunzip2 Think of bzip2 as a newer faster version of gzip It has a very similar command structure including many of the same parameters but it tends to be faster at compressing and decompressing than gzip gunzip Bzipped files end with a bz2 or bz
98. rive called in LINUX eeececeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceeeeeeaeeesaaeeeeaeeseeeeseaeeseaaeeeeeeeeaas 14 Q Wait a minute Are you saying that there are no drive letters in LINUX cccceeceseeeeeesteeeeeees 14 Q What about disk drive partitions Don t they have drive letters either 0 0 eceeeeesteeeeeees 15 Q Wow that s confusing Isn t there a simpler way to access drives eeceeeeceeeeeeeeeteeeeeteees 15 Q Is there an easy way to see what devices such as drives have been mounted 005 15 Q Is there any way to change the default language used by the operating system and applications nini uinen ee LA Ate didee ened edie aa aa aana dee aaa aaa Taaa aaa aiaa Sean aa iaa 15 General Usa Hetin aaaea aa aa a a aaa aeaaeae aaa dune a aa eiaa aoaaa ia i a 16 Q How do format a floppy diskette ssseeseeesieesenesinesrnssirssrnssrnssrnsssnnssrnnsrnnsrnnsrnnsnnnsrnnnnnnnn nnt 16 Q Is there online documentation for most programs ssessssssssisssissresrrssresiissriesrnsstinsrnnnrnnernnne 17 Q How do kill a program that has locked up cc ccceecceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseaeeeeaeeseeeeseaeeetaeeeeeeeeaas 17 Q Is there a way to increase the priority of a program to make it run faster cccseeeeeeeeee 18 Q Is there a spelling checker that can use outside of a word processor cccccsscceseesteeeeesees 18 GUIDO SK UO pp ie ac 2 acts ec oe a eae ee aca ce a aa ON De ts alana ee SE 19
99. rmissions for a file or directory From a command line use the Is command with the l parameter For example 1s a 1 txt would display all txt files in the current directory with their permissions such as rw rw rw 1 ownerid groupid 1428 Apr 2 19 42 myfile txt rw rw r 1 ownerid groupid 914 Sep 30 10 17 personnel txt The first 10 characters or switches on each line contain the permissions for that particular file directory folder or other object For an explanation of what the characters mean see the question When I look at a list of files and directories the names are followed by something like rw rw r or Irwxrwxrwx What does this mean If you are using the K File Manager KFM under KDE just click on the Panel icon that looks like a house in front of a manila folder simply select View then Long View from the pull down menu to display all objects with their permissions Gnome users will have to use the command line method Q How do I change permissions If you are the system administrator root or the owner of a file directory or other object you have the authority to grant or remove permissions for other users and groups using the chmod command The operative symbols to remember are u for User owner g for Group o for Other a for All r for Read w for Write and x for eXecute Precede the r w x characters with a plus sign to add permission or a minus sign to deny permission For exampl
100. s there a faster way to warm boot the system than using Shutdown Yes As with Windows you can use the Ctrl Alt Del key combination to restart the system but first you must open a full screen virtual console session A simple way to do this is by pressing Cirl Alt F1 Once the text mode screen appears you can press Ctrl Alt Del You will not be asked whether you are sure reboot is immediate Be sure that you do not have any files open before doing this as you can lose data otherwise If after opening a virtual console you change your mind press Ctrl Alt F7 to close the console and return to the graphical desktop Q Do I have to use Shutdown if I am just turning over the system to another user No In this situation the preference would be to simply use Logout allowing the next user to login without the time and effort of rebooting the system Q I clicked on Logout and now the session is locked up How do I log out Just press Cirl Alt Backspace to kill the session and return to the Login screen Q How can I enable Linux to automatically restart applications that are running when I use Shutdown or Logout On both the KDE Logout panel and the Gnome Log Out Confirmation panel there is an option to Save current setup Make sure these options are selected before logging out of these environments Files and Directories The following questions relate to working with files and directories Q What is the root directory The ro
101. s these links merely as a convenience and the inclusion of such links does not imply an endorsement 50
102. s this paper Root User Accounts Groups and Permissions These are questions revolving around administering accounts passwords and permissions Q Sometimes instructions say that must be root What does this mean It means that you must be logged in as the root user or superuser Sorry but you do not get a cape with a big S on it There are two ways to do this If you will be working as root extensively you should logout as yourself and login as root When you are done reverse the process and log back in as yourself On the other hand if you need to be root only long enough to execute a command you can open a command shell and issue the command su substitute user to temporarily login as another user while still inside your login shell You will be prompted for the root password Once that is provided you will be root and can issue commands as needed until you end the root session by typing exi t and pressing Enter or by closing the shell Some commands won t work unless you have logged in as root i e su won t work because Linux knows it is still you in charge An alternative is to use the su command su followed by a hyphen with a space separating them This makes you root with the root s login shell as if you had logged off and logged back in as root Q What is the root account and how does it differ from a user account When you installed Linux you were asked to provide a root password
103. sert or add the 18 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow existing word into the ispell dictionary Entering an L lets you Look up other words in the dictionary Perhaps you would like to find another word not on the suggestion list If the word is correct but capitalized inappropriately choosing U will Uncapitalize it Either Q or X will end the program If you have specified a list of files to spell check X will stop checking the current file save it and begin on the next one This is essentially save and exit On the other hand Q will ask whether you really want to Quit immediately without saving your changes Type Y or N depending on your preference Be sure to check out the associated online help for that program by entering In addition to explaining the above options there are others listed that you might not know about or remember including Redraw screen AL Warning ispell is not discriminating as to what files it checks It is entirely possible to spell check a word processing document or a binary program file Saving changes to a document created by a word processor may or may not corrupt it but the word processor probably has its own built in spelling checker anyway so why bother with ispell On the other hand you will corrupt a program if you change anything and then save the changes with the X option If you accidentally open a binary file easily identifiable by the gibberish displayed that ispell is
104. stab purespace de kfstab which knows the exact layout of the file that fstab requires to open the file etc fstab This file lists the partitions used by Linux including swap space Note It is possible to use a simple text editor such as vi but if you do not get the columns lined up just right or if you use tabs instead of spaces or vice versa you can corrupt your system so if you elect to go this route rather than using a tool specifically designed for editing fstab such as kfstab be sure to make a backup copy of fstab first so that you can recover if your system crashes When you open fstab if you have multiple SCSI drives with a swap partition on each you might see something like this without the headings lt partition lt mount lt partition lt mount lt backup name gt point gt type gt options gt dump gt lt pass gt dev sda2 none swap SW 0 0 dev sdb2 none swap sw 0 0 dev sdc2 none swap sw 0 0 dev sdd2 none swap sw 0 0 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow Under normal circumstances Linux would use the swap partition dev sda2 first then dev sdb2 and so on one at a time until it had enough space to meet its current swapping needs On the other hand if you change the settings to dev sda2 none swap sw pri 3 0 0 dev sdb2 none swap sw pri 3 0 0 dev sdc2 none swap sw pri 3 0 0 dev sdd2 none swap sw pri 1 0 0 you will be assigning the first three partitions the same priority levela higher one than t
105. start the PPP daemon This approach is not for the faint of heart however There are many parameters that need to be set via this command so unless you are quite knowledgeable about Point to Point Protocol setup or know someone who is this probably is not the best approach for you For more on the pppd command read the instructions at info pppd If you need help getting connected to the Internet via your office network contact your help desk If you are trying to set up Linux for DSL or cable modem non dialup access at home contact your DSL or cable modem provider for assistance and hope someone there has ever heard of Linux Miscellaneous This section contains questions or problems that did not fit into any of the other categories Q What is the difference between Linux and UNIX UNIX began as a proprietary operating system developed by Bell Laboratories in the 1960s It eventually spawned a number of mutually incompatible commercial versions from such companies as Apple Mac OS X Digital Digital UNIX Hewlett Packard HP UX IBM AIX NeXT NeXTSTEP and others Linux is an attempt to create a nonproprietary operating system for the masses It is a free open source UNIX like operating system originally begun by Linus Torvalds in 1991 Linux really refers to only the operating system kernel or core More than 200 people have contributed to the development of the Linux kernel The rest of a Linux distribution p
106. taskbar and then click on the mnt icon to view the various devices have not seen a KDE equivalent for the Red Hat Disk Management tool for other distributions As an alternative the Mount command can be used as described earlier in the question What is my floppy drive called in Linux Also for a less cluttered view of disk drives mounted with total and available space try the disk filespoace command use df h to display measurements in human readable form gigabytes megabytes etc It won t show non disk devices however Read the info manual pages at info df for more information Q Is there any way to change the default language used by the operating system and applications The short answer is Yes Of course as with most things Linux how you do it depends on the distribution you are using the user interface desktop environment you are using your 15 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow applications and perhaps other factors The default language is set during installation however there are ways to change this once the system is up and running If like many users you are running the KDE environment the way to change the language is very simple From the KDE menu 1 Select Settings then Desktop then Language 2 Specify your first choice from nearly three dozen languages including Catalan Slovak and Macedonian You are allowed to choose up to three languages When you start a program
107. text file it can be read with Emacs Pico Vi or any other text editor Note Substituting gt gt for gt in the example above would append the text to the end of an existing file whereas using gt a second time would overwrite man txt with new data Likewise to print a manual you will need to pipe send the document to a formatting program that will strip out the screen formatting codes before printing To do this for info pages type info mv col b lpr pr is the program that sends the document to the print spooler Another quick and dirty source of helpful information is the whatis command Whatis provides a brief synopsis of many commands For example try whatis man You will be shown several definitions of what the man command does The same goes for whatis whereis to find out what the whereis command does If there is no information available for a particular command you will see a nothing appropriate message instead Note If the whatis command doesn t work it may mean that the whatis database has not yet been built To create it first use the su command to log in as root then enter usr sbin makewhatis This may take several minutes When the process finishes try the whatis command again Q How do l kill a program that has locked up If you are not the owner of the program the user account who installed it you must log in as root For instructions on how to do this see the Root User Ac
108. tion or in a Primary partition on a second hard disk drive For more information refer to the lilo LInux LOader documentation on a Linux system using the command man lilo no man is not a politically incorrect command it is merely short for manual If you do not yet have a Linux system set up where you can read the lilo documentation there are a couple of other options available 1 If you are installing from a CD set look for a directory or separate CD as in Red Hat 6 2 containing documentation possibly in HTML format 2 Visit Linux Web sites such as http linux ctyme com and http www linuxdoc org for online documentation Q How large a swap partition should I create Although it can be smaller for best results the partition size should be at least equal to the amount of memory installed in the system preferably twice the amount of physical memory In other words if you have 64MB of RAM installed use double that amount for your swap space partition 64MB 2 128MB If you need more than 128MB of swap space but you are using an older distribution that does not support a swap file larger than 128MB there are ways around the 128MB swap file limitation 1 Linux allows more than one swap partition on a hard drive and 2 Linux also allows swap files to be put in data partitions i e in the same partitions as your programs and data files Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow If you create a swap partition and then later
109. to create bs is the block size to use and count is where you define how large to make the swap file in increments of the block size In the preceding example we are creating a 64MB swap file 65 536 1024 1K equals 65 536K or 64MB called Swapfile use whatever name you prefer in a directory called Swapdir Next to initialize or make ready for use the swap file use the following command Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow mkswap Swapdir Swapfile 65536 Use the same path as in the dd command and the file size you specified in the count parameter If you get a No such file or directory error verify that you typed the upper lower case correctly and did not omit the leading After initializing the file synchronize it to ensure that it is properly written to disk sync And finally to tell Linux to start using this new swap file swapon Swapdir Swapfile This will activate the swap file temporarily until the next time you log out or reboot To make it permanently active use an appropriate tool such as kfstab see the earlier question How can speed up performance by using multiple swap partitions for details which knows the exact layout of the file that fstab requires to open the file etc fstab When you open fstab you might see something like without the headings lt partition lt mount lt partition lt mount lt backup name gt point gt type gt options gt dump gt lt pass gt dev hda
110. to documents manuals and online magazines e Linux Gazette htto www linuxgazette com It includes articles columns and even comic strips e Linux Guide http www firstlinux com guide A glossary of Linux and communications terms e Linux Journal htto Avww linuxjournal com It contains links to newsgroups chat rooms online manuals FAQs vendor support sites local Linux user groups and more e Linux Man Pages hito inux ctyme com A collection of the man manual instructions for various Linux commands and utilities e Linux Newbies htto Avww linuxnewbies org Help files for newbies those new to Linux e Red Hat Linux support page http www redhat com apps support e Slick Penguin hitto www slickpenguin com White papers case studies and other Linux business related implementation success stories e SuSE Linux support page hittp www suse com us support index html e TurboLinux support page htto www turbolinux com support The following newsgroups can provide a significant amount of user to user help e comp os linux announce Announcements of new products updates bug fixes etc e comp os linux hardware Support on hardware issues including compatibility configuration device drivers and product evaluations e comp os linux misc A catch all for whatever doesn t fit in one of the other groups e comp os linux networking For questions about networking hardw
111. u copied If it still doesn t work verify that you put it in the correct directory and have spelled the file name accurately it must be in all lower case Q Are there any Linux programs that will read and write Microsoft Office files Yes there are For a list of several such programs and how compatible they are see the white paper entitled What Good is a Linux Client available from the same sources as this paper Configuration amp Setup Here are some tips for tailoring Linux or configuring devices Q How do I get my winmodem to work with Linux Winmodem is actually a trademark of 3Com Corporation but is often used generically to describe a class of low cost software based modems designed to be inexpensive by replacing some hardware functions with software This software typically incorporates low 12 Preparing Today for Linux Tomorrow level Windows functions that can t be duplicated in Linux Most such modems won t work with Linux however some can be made to be compatible These sometimes are referred to as Linmodems Go to htto www o2 net gromitkc winmodem htm for more information on this topic In most cases the easiest fix is simply to disable the software based modem and install a traditional modem adapter or attach en external modem to a serial or USB port Many 56K modems are quite inexpensive these days For information on how to disable the built in modem consult the user s guide fo
112. uld with the mouse Finally click the middle mouse button If you have a two button mouse set up to emulate a three button mouse press both the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously to achieve the same effect The highlighted text will be copied to the cursor position This should work in most text editors and command line sessions as well as in word processors and other graphical programs Alternatively you can paste the text with Shift Insert hold the Shift key while pressing the Insert key rather than using the third mouse button For a keyboard method you can highlight the text using the mouse or holding down the Shift key while using the left and right arrow keys to paint the text then use Ctrl C to copy or Ctrl X to cut the text then Shift Insert or the third mouse button to paste similarly to the Ctrl C Ctrl X Ctrl V trio used in Windows Note Because of all the different user interfaces editors and applications used in Linux not all of these techniques will work in every program so you may need to experiment to see what works where Command Shell The next series of questions are specific to using commands and command shells Q If I want to issue a command how do I open a command prompt In Linux parlance it is generally referred to as a command shell or simply a shell Each Linux distribution includes at least one shell The most commonly used one today is bash short for Bourne Again SHell an enha
113. will be prompted for a new password to use If it is too short or invalid for some other reason the prompt panel will reappear am not aware of any graphical password management tools for desktop environments other than KDE so if you are not using KDE you will have to do it from the command line From the command line simply use the passwd command It will prompt you for your current password and then the new password twice for verification To change another password you must be logged in as root Then tell the program which user you wish to change the password for such as passwd fred You won t be required to know the current password simply enter the new password twice Q What is a shadow password Shadow passwords are used to protect system passwords for user accounts by making the file containing those passwords etc shadow readable by the root operator only When shadow passwords are used they replace the encrypted password in the etc passwd file with asterisks Moving the passwords to etc shadow makes it less likely that the encrypted password can be decrypted because only the root operator has access to the file To see if you have shadow passwords enabled on your system use the command 1s etc shadow If you receive a message like ls etc shadow No such file or directory the files have not yet been installed For more information on shadow passwords read the manual page man 5 shadow Q How do I display the pe
114. y that the user will accidentally delete or corrupt important system files that they have no business playing with in the first place Important Note Most if not all Linux distributions require that you create a user account in addition to the root account when you install Linux While it is tempting to log on as root and use the root account for everything this is a Very Bad Idea There are too many ways in which you can accidentally or someone else can maliciously corrupt up a system from the root account By running mostly from the user account your system is protected to a great degree from most disasters It wont prevent a disk crash of course but at least you can t accidentally delete your usr lib directory for example If the Linux distribution you installed required you to create a user account use it If you did not create one during installation create one now and use it Q Why would I want to add other user accounts to my system If you are the only one who uses your system there may be no need to set up other user accounts besides your own On the other hand if you share your computer with other people second and third shift workers perhaps or you share a common work area or other members of your family use your computer or even if you wish to make your printer or other devices available to others on the same network you will need to set up individual user accounts and possibly group accounts Q How

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