FYI: Art's Linux for Newbies FAQ
Arthur Sowers
Art's Linux For Newbies FAQ (ver 1.0, May, 2001)
by Arthur E. Sowers (arth...@magpage.com)
Written in the public interest
for those who want to get into Linux.
I now have Linux and StarOffice 5.x and printers configured and
internet access on five different boxes and I learned some things the
hard way. Read below to avoid some of the "hard way" I had. If you
are an advanced newbie or above and have a contribution, please
email me or add it in a reply posting. Copyright info: This version of
this document is placed in the public domain and may be reproduced
as long as it is unmodified. If it is modified in any way, the author of
the modifications must indicate his name and designate what is his/her
modification and what is my content. This document is meant to be
a "hint list" rather than a detailed "how-to." It is in no way complete
or extensive. It carries no warranty whatsoever. The information below
represent MY experiences which may differ from others. Lastly I have no
connection, whatsoever in any way, with any sources or book authors
or companies or any other entities I mention below.
Getting Linux and StarOffice installed onto a box can be as easy as
any other commercial software (eg. the Evil Empire [EE]) or it can
crash or have problems at many earlier steps or not be totally
functional after install or display some misbehavior or all three. For
me, I've learned enough to be comfortable with LINUX and have
decided to put LINUX on all of my boxes that will run it instead of
my EE software and operating systems unless there is a good
reason to use them.
Questions:
1. Which LINUX distro to use?
2. Biggest LINUX problems and how to avoid them
2a. Backing out of Locked keyboard, frozen screen.
2b. Operator-induced crashes; avoiding need for re-install.
2c. X-server (you get command line, but can't get graphical desktop).
2d. When "shutdown -h now" does not work.
2e. CD-ROM drive access.
3. What are the best LINUX books to read?
================
Answers:
1. WHICH DISTRO TO USE?
There are two answers to this question. FIRST, visit you local large
bookstore instead of your local computer store and find a thick book
on LINUX that has a CDROM distro on one or more disks included
inside the back cover (You don't have to read all of this book before
you do the install, but it will help a lot if you read it before you get in
too deep). Your local computer store will have a distro on one or more
CDROM disks along with a totally inadequate thin comic book inside a
mostly empty box with about the same price tag on it. At least one
local public library has indicated to me the intention to obtain LINUX
distro disks for loan to library card holders, so check your local
libraries. SECOND, my experience with at least five distros is that,
usually, not all distros install completely and functionally on all boxes.
There may be some dimensional "tolerance" or quality problem, but
one distro installed without glitches on one of my boxes, but crashed
at many points and crashed on multiple attempts to install on another
of my boxes. Only one, Red Hat 5.2, could be installed on all of my
boxes without any problems. This does not mean this is for you.
People have told me some other distro installs on THEIR boxes, but
not RH 5.2. So, the answer is, use the distro that installs without
crashes AND ends up with everything being functional (including the
graphical desktop). Yes, this may mean going out and buying or
acquiring more than one distro.
2. BIGGEST PROBLEMS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM:
2A. LOCKED KEYBOARD, FROZEN SCREEN
My early newbie experience included me getting into things that I did
not know anything about but that I did not know how to get OUT of
those things. You can launch something off the command line and
your cursor stops blinking. What to do? Press CTRL + ALT + F2 (or
any F key up to F6) to get a new login prompt. Log in again, get the
command prompt, then type "ps" (or better, type "ps waux") to get all
processes (or even better, type in "ps waux | less" to get all processes
that you can scroll forward and backward with pageup or pagedown)
and do a "kill -9 <process number>" to stop the process that locked
you up on the first terminal. You should be able to do CTRL + ALT +
F1 to get back to the terminal you left. Try this a few times before you
try anything fancy.
2B. OPERATOR-INDUCED, POWER-FAILURE CRASHES, HOW TO
AVOID THEM.
I've had to reinstall my OS a few times when I would be fooling
around and get into something where either I did not know how to
back out or exit or my screen/keyboard would lock up. What to do?
You turn off the power switch and on the next boot, it hangs
somewhere during bootup with an abstract and useless error message
before even getting to the command prompt. I've found that the default
OS install starts more processes (sometimes called "services") than
are necessary. You don't need all of these if you are just learning
LINUX. Later you can start them up on boot if you want, but in the
meantime shut them off. At the command line, type in "ntsysv" and hit
enter. You'll get a menu and for each daemon, you can hit the "F1"
key and it will tell you what it does and sometimes a sentence whether
you need it or not. By minimizing the number of daemons, your OS
install becomes more "resistant" to an ungraceful shutdown. Some
people have told me they can shut off the power switch on their
LINUX box and it doesn't hurt anything. Generally you should not do
this, but some have. What happens on my boxes is that "fsck" runs
during boot up but not much else. I've even done a power shutoff with
StarOffice running and turned the power back on and all it does is run
"fsck". Again, power off without an OS "shutdown" should not be part
of your habits, but this change may save you from having to re-install
your OS.
2C.X-SERVER CRASHES, CRASHES ON LAUNCH, WHAT TO DO?
I've had a number of installs take place and end up with a boot
into the command line, but my X-server would not launch. Usually,
during install, there would be a glitch during the probe of the monitor-
video card and config file, too, but sometimes I got running X-servers
even with a glitch. You can run, from the command line, XConfigurator
which will give you a terminal-based set of menus that will help get
your X-server config file, XF86Config (which should be in your /etc/X11
directory), set up but this might fail. There is another command line
executable, XF86Setup, that sometimes works when XConfigurator does
not. Both should be in your /usr/X11R6/bin directory. One downside,
I could not find XF86Setup among the collection of files in one very
recent LINUX distro.
I've done things a few times and everything on my desktop
either goes blank (black) or freezes up. When you don't know what to
do, you may be in deep trouble. Once I read the book, and tried it, it
works: CTRL + ALT + Backspace should kill the X-server. Then you
can launch it again. Next time write down what you did if you can
reproduce the X-server crash. On a 486-33 box, with RH 5.2 I can
reproducibly generate a X-server crash by launching a second Xfishtank
screensaver (yes, I get two fishtank screensavers going
simultaneously and virtually nothing on the desktop works any more).
I've had some process running that did not respond to "kill -9
<process number>" and as a last resort, issued a shutdown and
reboot. This has worked for me so far.
2D. "SHUTDOWN -H NOW" DOES NOT WORK?
I had this happen once after doing some things and it is a cause for
worry since its not a good idea to shut off the power switch before
shutting down the OS. If it does not work, type "./shutdown -h now"
and hit enter. This has worked for me.
2E. CDROM access.
For months I could not boot from my HD into my RH 5.2 LINUX and
mount my CD-ROM drive and months of reading NGs did not help.
I could, however, boot into my RH 5.2 from a boot disk and get
my CDROM drive to mount. Finally, one post had the answer. You
may have a HD with a DOS/Windows partition in early cylinders and
have your LINUX native and LINUX swap files on later cylinders. What
may help you is to put still another LINUX partition during install on "/boot".
So, you will have three partitions: "/" for root on a LINUX native
partition, a swap on a swap partition, and a "/boot" partition on a
LINUX native partition. Do this with the Disk Druid. This worked for
me for all boxes and regardless of HD size.
3. BEST BOOKS TO READ
Out of more than a dozen UNIX and LINUX books I own, I can
say that there is no such thing as "LINUX in 24 Hours" or "LINUX
COMPLETE" even though you can find titles like that (I also strongly
advise anyone to read at least one LINUX book before getting on a
newsgroup with questions like "My Z does not work, please help." You
need a lot more detail and it helps to show that you really tried to
figure it out on your own before making a post). Don't overlook
"remainder & over-run" bookstores. Often I've been able to find a
LINUX book, complete with a distro CDROM, which is just two years
old but half price or less. Another thing is that I've had the feeling that
many of the more recent books for the newer distros are more poorly
written, possibly because of the pressure and competition to produce
something newer and better and the authors and programmers don't
have time to match the functionality with the book contents. Do not be
surprised if commands and functionality in any of these books do not
always match what your installation does. Also, I think even the best
books still don't tell you enough. LINUX is very complex and lots of
things are going on that the books don't tell you enough about. It also
helps to spend quite a bit of time looking around your directories and
sub-directories to see what is there and where it is.
The best book that can help you, in my opinion, is actually "The
Complete FreeBSD" 3rd Edition, (I bought my copy at a local Staples
store) by Greg Lehey (by Walnut Creek CDROM, Suite 260, 1547
Palos Verdes Mall, Walnut Creek, CA 94596, or www.cdrom.com).
The book is 800 pages long, but its the first 300 that are really really
useful. I think they have undergone some business reorganization so
some of this may be obsolete. The BSD is very different in many ways
from LINUX, but the command similarities and X-Window setup seems
very similar.
Another book which is surprisingly good but hard to find is "The
Complete Red Hat Linux Installation Guide 5.2" by Red Hat Software,
Inc., (ISBN 1-57595-199-1B) and came with RH 5.2 disks. The book
title, with the word "Complete" in it, is inaccurate (none of the books
are "complete") but never the less is one of the more readable and
coherent books out there.
Another book is "Red Hat Linux" 3rd Edition, by David Pitts and
Bill Ball, (1998, Sams Publishing Company). This is also a thick book
with the RH 5.2 distro in back.
A UNIX book which I found most useful is: "UNIX Complete" by
Peter Dyson, Stan Kelly-Bootle, and John Heilborn (a SYBEX book,
1999, and over a thousand pages for $19.95, new). Its the first 400
pages or so that are most useful, the rest looks like MAN PAGES
which you should already have on your install.