Config Files - Linux Setup, Configuration & Administration

[Gregory]

I'm looking for, basically, information on all sorts of config files. And
generally on getting a system from basically nothing to the way I want it.
Where's a good place to find that? I have the Mandrake "Command Line"
docs, and they have some things that I know and some things that I don't,
but I want to go her than that.


--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[David]

Gregory L. Hansen wrote: 

I think you need to be more specific as to what your are trying
to configure since there are some 7000 different packages
available for linux.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with The Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org/
Slackware 9.1.0 Kernel 2.4.22 SMP i686 (GCC) 3.3.2
Uptime: 31 days, 2:10, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.07, 0.08

[Michael]

Gregory L. Hansen <ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:
 

It's unclear what you really want? Perhaps:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

 

$ rpm -qa --configfiles

Should show you all that have been installed through rpm.
Try 'man rpm' for more info.

Good luck

--
Michael Heiming

Remove +SIGNS and www. if you expect an answer, sorry for
inconvenience, but I get tons of SPAM

[Pedro]

Gregory L. Hansen wrote: 

the source?

or ...
the comments in the config files you have available?
maybe the man pages?
trial and error?

[Gregory]

In article <g5yqb.95466$ao4.280538attbi_s51>,
David <net> wrote: 
>
>I think you need to be more specific as to what your are trying
>to configure since there are some 7000 different packages
>available for linux.[/ref]

That's a lot.

Nothing that could be called productivity software, or games, etc. I'm
looking at the basic system -- networking, X, the boot process, that sort
of thing. I have Mandrake 9.1 CDs that won't give me more than a minimal
text-only setup, and Debian CDs that actually give me less than that. But
right now at least I have basic shell tools, I can read my disk drives,
and I have a C compiler. So my plan is to identify software as I need
it, install and configure it. I have to figure out what I need, how to
install it, and how to configure it. In the short term, I want to connect
to my ISP, and I want to get a window manager running, any window manager,
even twm would be a start.

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[David]

Gregory L. Hansen wrote: 

That's why I said you need to be more specific.
 

I haven't ever used Mandrake but is your ISP a cable, dial-up, or
DSL connection? It does make a difference. That is why I say you
need to be more specific. Also be specific as to what kind of
modem and NIC you have (Brand & Model).

Well if you have X installed you can configure it with:
xf86config, XF86Config, or xf86cfg. I haven't used Mandrake so
I'm not sure what they include.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with The Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org/
Slackware 9.1.0 Kernel 2.4.22 SMP i686 (GCC) 3.3.2
Uptime: 31 days, 3:10, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.23, 0.17

[Gregory]

In article <F6zqb.131975$Tr4.337859attbi_s03>,
David <net> wrote: 
>
>That's why I said you need to be more specific.
> 
>
>I haven't ever used Mandrake but is your ISP a cable, dial-up, or
>DSL connection? It does make a difference. That is why I say you
>need to be more specific. Also be specific as to what kind of
>modem and NIC you have (Brand & Model).[/ref]

It's dial-up. I have no idea what kind of modem I have, I pulled it out
of an ISA slot in an old OptiPlex and there are no markings on the circuit
board that I know how to relate to a brand or model. Maybe I'll just give
up on that and buy a new PCI modem, I understand they're pretty cheap
these days.
 

I don't have X installed. The last time I tried it, after a Mandrake
install attempt went bad, I don't even know if all the X-related software
got installed, and the usual configuration tools didn't seem to
believe me when I entered my monitor information, and I was stuck on
low-res strobe light mode. I thought I might have more luck if I
downloaded and installed everything I needed by hand, and edited the
configuration files directly rather than through a front-end. But first I
need to be clued in on how to do all that.


--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[Andy]

Gregory L. Hansen uttered the immortal words:
 

The gotcha there is that most cheap PCI modems are software modems (aka
Winmodems) and need a driver which may or may not be available for Linux.

I always go for an external serial hardware modem which normally just work.
I haven't needed to buy one in years so I can't recommend any specific
modems but others here will be able to.

--
Andy.

[Gregory]

In article <boehsv$1e7riv$news.uni-berlin.de>,
Andy Fraser <com> wrote: 
>
>The gotcha there is that most cheap PCI modems are software modems (aka
>Winmodems) and need a driver which may or may not be available for Linux.[/ref]

Are there identifying features, like perhaps the label "Winmodem", or the
subtitle "software modem", that I may rely on when selecting a model?
--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[Andy]

Gregory L. Hansen uttered the immortal words:
 
>
> Are there identifying features, like perhaps the label "Winmodem", or the
> subtitle "software modem", that I may rely on when selecting a model?[/ref]

I've only ever bought external serial modems so I wouldn't know. I just play
safe and assume all PCI modems are Winmodems unless they state Linux
compatibility on the box hence my sticking to external modems. Even then
though you'll probably have to compile the driver against the source of
your kernel and that's a whole other mine field.

You said you're using Mandrake. Depending on which version you have I hear
it's actually quite good with Winmodems. You can check hardware
compatibility here for versions from 8 and up:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/hardware.php3

I'm sure others will add to this :-)

--
Andy.

[Gregory]

In article <boev13$1c6rrb$news.uni-berlin.de>,
Andy Fraser <com> wrote: 
>>
>> Are there identifying features, like perhaps the label "Winmodem", or the
>> subtitle "software modem", that I may rely on when selecting a model?[/ref]
>
>I've only ever bought external serial modems so I wouldn't know. I just play
>safe and assume all PCI modems are Winmodems unless they state Linux
>compatibility on the box hence my sticking to external modems. Even then
>though you'll probably have to compile the driver against the source of
>your kernel and that's a whole other mine field.
>
>You said you're using Mandrake. Depending on which version you have I hear
>it's actually quite good with Winmodems. You can check hardware
>compatibility here for versions from 8 and up:
>http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/hardware.php3
>
>I'm sure others will add to this :-)
>
>--
>Andy.[/ref]


I see from the options that there's such a think as Mandrake 9.1 HP. Is
that some special version of Mandrake that runs on Hewlett-Packard
hardware? Because I happen to be trying to install this on an old HP
workstation.

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[lefty]

Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
 

hello gregory, sorry to hear you are having trouble (after i suggested that
kayak). i think it would be good to localize your load problems, if you
haven't already.

i hope it's just bad (or iffy) cds, and not something in the hw. maybe you
could grab a set of cd's from cheapbytes (etc.) to play with while you get
started.

http://www.cheapbytes.com/

fwiw, i think the best thing to do as a beginner is a few installs and
re-installs of the full system, trying to improve configuration of each as
you go. the config text files you change will be small enough to fit on a
floppy, and save as a reference for next time. just make it part of the
routine to copy edited files to the floppy. even better save the *.orig
and *.new files so you can "diff" them later.

i know for me (having used other unixes but not linux), it was easy to make
a wrong turn early in the post-install configuration, and then be fighting
my wrong turn more than anything else.

if you learn a bit and then "unix on, unix off" (to borrow from "wax on
....), you can do a little more right each time. it's much easier imo to
make backups and notes, and treat each install as temparary until things
start to really click.

[Gregory]

In article <G3Rqb.76$news.adelphia.net>,
lefty <invalid> wrote: 
>
>hello gregory, sorry to hear you are having trouble (after i suggested that
>kayak). i think it would be good to localize your load problems, if you
>haven't already.
>
>i hope it's just bad (or iffy) cds, and not something in the hw. maybe you
>could grab a set of cd's from cheapbytes (etc.) to play with while you get
>started.[/ref]

Heh! I still like the Kayak. When I get it working right, and figure out
how to benchmark a few things, I still want to put a pair of GHz PIIIs in
it. First one, see how it works, then think about the other.

I've found a few things on-line, including how to build a Linux system
from scratch, and about building XFree86 from source. So I've been
downloading X, KDE, and Gnome stuff and I'll burn it to CD to bring home
from work, except it just occurred to me that my wonky "PowerPack"
includes source, so it might have all of that already. But maybe it
will work better when I get back to basics.

I actually have a lot of material left to read, maybe my questions are
answered in there somewhere. It's just that I have about two thousand
pages worth of stuff, and whatever answers it contains I want now because
I have a system that doesn't work right now. A lot of that is things
like shell basics, which I know, a third or fourth tutorial on vi, how to
navigate the Gnome/KDE desktops, which is pretty self-explanatory and
won't do me much good until it's installed anyway, and so on.
 

I don't think I'm going to do many more installs from the Mandraks CDs
because it will sit and spin when I put the second disk in, and sometimes
it will hang and I don't know of a graceful way to exit, and I've booted
into "01 01 01 01..." a few times. So I installed as little as I could
and got the text screen with the usual tools and a C compiler. That
should be enough. I also sort of have X installed, but it won't start. I
discovered in Mandrake that my CD is at /mnt/cdrom, when I couldn't get it
to work before in Debian I was trying /dev/everything, but maybe
/mnt/cdrom would work there, too. Maybe, and maybe not, I guess I'm not
very eager to wipe what I have to try Debian again just on the off chance
that it might work.
 

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[Laurel]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 17:59:02 GMT, lefty <invalid> wrote: [/ref]
<snip> 

I think this method works pretty well too. It's a huge pain to realize
months after using an installation that I've messed up the install, and if
I want it right I have to somehow gather and back up everything to start
over. Much easier to re do it a bunch of times, varying this and that, to
learn what the options are.


--
- Laurel * * * http://amberdine.com