general questions

Loveless · 02-17-2002, 01:47 PM

Hi everyone, please call me n00b. =P

1) where is the volume control?

2) the other day I installed something, I was instructed to...
make -f something
./configure
make
make install
what does each of the command line mean

3) when I search I type find -name filename. What if I want to use wildcard?

4) in windows, ctrl C is copy, V is paste, X is cut, Z is undo, A is select all. such command don't seem to work in linux. Is there an alternative?

5) ctrl + alt + backspace is restart x sever. if I do this while in x windows, is it bad? (like hitting the ctrl + alt + del in windows)

6) I am running 1600x1200 resolution and 60hz on a 21 inch monitor/geforce2mx 64mb. I know it will flicker at this refresh rate/resolution and I need to set it to 72. How do I do that?

7) what's bash?

8) how do I do a screen capture?

TacKat · 02-17-2002, 02:05 PM

2) `./configure' detects what software your system has on it for compiling
`make' compiles the program
`make install' installs it

7) BASH is a command shell. It's what reads the commands you type and makes them happen.

finegan · 02-17-2002, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Loveless
Hi everyone, please call me n00b. =P

1) where is the volume control?

It depends on the desktop you are using... Linux pretty much has 2... this is a vast oversimplification, but primarily there is KDE and Gnome. If you went with RH defaults, you have Gnome. From the 'start-esque' foot, under multimedia, mixer, then fiddle with those settings.

Quote:

2) the other day I installed something, I was instructed to...
make -f something
./configure
make
make install
what does each of the command line mean

The first was probably to clean the dir... I think, that's not standard. The second was to run a configure script that checks out your file structure, whether you have a compiler, the proper code libraries, etc.

The third makes the program from the source code. You have to realize you weren't just installing something, but building it from source as well.

The fourth command installed everything you had made on your system.

Quote:

3) when I search I type find -name filename. What if I want to use wildcard?

'*', usually either before or after, however I'm a big fan of 'locate' as its not as pounding on your system as 'find', but the locate database only updates itself once a day or so. Locate assumes wilcard by default, so don't run a locate for gno unless you want to see your screen spin for 2 minutes.

Quote:

4) in windows, ctrl C is copy, V is paste, X is cut, Z is undo, A is select all. such command don't seem to work in linux. Is there an alternative?

In Gnome (and KDE), whatever is currently highlighted is what is in the buffer. Ctrl v works the same, but what you wanted to cut is only in the buffer if it is still highlighted.

Quote:

5) ctrl + alt + backspace is restart x sever. if I do this while in x windows, is it bad? (like hitting the ctrl + alt + del in windows)

Not at all... as far as I know, and I've done it alot... I mean a lot. Its not actually restart either, its kill. You have RedHat set to restart X whenever its not running, which is not all that great in the long run... but redhat is trying to hide the command line from the newbies these days in order to make Linux more approachable.

Quote:

6) I am running 1600x1200 resolution and 60hz on a 21 inch monitor/geforce2mx 64mb. I know it will flicker at this refresh rate/resolution and I need to set it to 72. How do I do that?

In /etc/X11 there is a file called XF86Config-4. That is what X reads in order to figure out... well... just about every setting. The section you want to modify should be at the bottom.

Quote:

7) what's bash?

Bourne Again SHell. Written by a guy named Bourne, with a sense of humour. In order to interface with the file system, to have a command line, you need something that will interpret commands, a shell. Bash is the default on pretty much every Linux distro these days... some others: csh, tcsh, zsh and ksh are all pretty popular, especially the last, Korn Shell, which was pretty much the standard before bash.

Quote:

8) how do I do a screen capture?

The easiest I know is to open the Gimp, somewhere in the menu with all of the script-fu is an option for a screen shot... with a delay timer too!

Cheers,

Finegan

Malicious · 02-17-2002, 05:41 PM

I can't help but add a few comments to thread.

First; Loveless - what a great list of questions!

Second; TacKat and Finegan - what a great set of answers!

This dialog is what makes these kinds of forums a great place to lurk (and post).

Third; You know I am going to add a bit here.

On the three finger X-salute (backspace, not delete), just remember that all of the programs that are running in your desktop will get killed. That may or may not be a good thing.

Bourne was the guy that wrote the original "sh" and bash was the GNU replacement for the "Bourne Shell". Is that a nit or what :-}?

Keep on truckin'...

katanastab · 02-17-2002, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Loveless
8) how do I do a screen capture?

If you have KDE Installed, you can run the program KSnapshot.
It's the easiest program, I found, that can do a screenshots. You don't have to have it running in KDE, as long as you can open KDE programs.

Loveless · 02-17-2002, 06:49 PM

9) kde, gnome, cde, emac, sawfish are all x window interface? I only have kde installed (2.2) For some reason konqurer have anti-aliasing which is extremely annoying. I looked around and found mozilla and netscape for alternate browser but thje don't support flash. When I opened mozilla for the first time it crashed and I had to kill the pid. There was something else poped up called "pane" I can't find it anywhere. What could it be?

10) I installed something, how do I uninstall it? I had to compile it from source according to the helping answers above. So no rpm.

11) how do I distinct files types? for instance, there is a xmms in bin, lib and there are folders called xmms. how do I know which one is which?

12) I know there are hidden folders... I ran ls -flair under my /home/username and found a lot of them have to do with programs I recenly ran. Are they setting/config files for that program?

13) by the way I still can't get samba to start up
when I type smb start it said command not found
I remember installing it prior to rh installation. I went to control panel > service and started smb manally and now I can see a smbd -D running.

when I smbmount //mywindowscomputername it said can not resolve mount point?
I have 1 win2k pdc and another win2k workstation running and neither one responded. poop!

14) I am looking for tracert and ipconfig /all like commands

15) just for the hell of it, I went to yahoo games to test out java applet (just to see if it works) and I get a error: java executable not found? I enabled java applet globally in my browser already.

Loveless · 02-17-2002, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by katanastab

If you have KDE Installed, you can run the program KSnapshot.
It's the easiest program, I found, that can do a screenshots. You don't have to have it running in KDE, as long as you can open KDE programs.

kde but can't seem to find such program, looks like it's not installed, where do I locate the rpm manager?

Loveless · 02-17-2002, 06:56 PM

damn, I feel like a counterstrike n00b asking how to aim correctly, haha.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Malicious · 02-17-2002, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Loveless

10) I installed something, how do I uninstall it? I had to compile it from source according to the helping answers above. So no rpm.

Unfortunately, unless you use a package manager like RPM, there is no uninstall. Not to say something you installed from source can't be uninstalled. If you did something like make, make install; you can go back to the same source dirctory where you did the original make and do a "make -n install". This will echo the commands that are executed by a make install and show you where all of the files were installed. Removing the files that were installed is a big part of the uninstall, maybe all. If you see output from the make that has "sed" as the command, that file was edited and possibly changed. Not much help, huh.

11) how do I distinct files types? for instance, there is a xmms in bin, lib and there are folders called xmms. how do I know which one is which?

For the most part the directory a file is in gives a big clue about what it is. Files in a bin directory are executables, files in a lib dirctory are libraries, files in an etc diretory are config files. To find out exactly what type a file is, use the "file" command; i.e. file x will tell you if file x is an executable, library, text file, etc..

12) I know there are hidden folders... I ran ls -flair under my /home/username and found a lot of them have to do with programs I recenly ran. Are they setting/config files for that program?

Files or directories with a dot (".") as the first character are "hidden" (not shown using a plain ls command). Most dot files/directories in your home directory are configs or data files for applications or programs that you have run or that were set up as part of the default "create user" during install. Usually you can tell what programs these belong to since the name of the file or directory is the name of the program. Sometimes there will also be an "rc" tacked on the end. For instance, ".bashrc" is a file used by the shell program "bash" during login; .vimrc is a config file that vi (vim) reads on startup; .kde or .kde2 are directories that contain config files and data for your kde session.

14) I am looking for tracert and ipconfig /all like commands

I know that the equivalent of ipconfig /all is /sbin/ifconfig -a. Not sure about tracert. The two best ways to find out the options for commands is either "man <command>" or "<command> --help". Man pages usually show most of the options and the --help is pretty much a GNU standard. If you don't know the command, use "man -k <keyword>". For a keyword, use a word that is pertains to what you are trying to find. "man -k route" shows "traceroute" as one of the commands found for "route". Then a "man traceroute" shows what the command does and what the options are. Want to see how many things are configurable? Try "man -k config".

finegan · 02-17-2002, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Malicious
10) I installed something, how do I uninstall it? I had to compile it from source according to the helping answers above. So no rpm.

Some, not a lot, but some, actually will have a 'make uninstall'.

Malicious, thanks for the pointer about Bourne. I must have spread that little fallacy all throughout a large crowd by now. Time to make amends.

Cheers,

Finegan