Newbie Terry's Pitiful Thread

pevelius, I'm definately a beginner in the *nix world. Where can I get debian? I want to continue with RH, but I have modular drives on this test machine. I can't tell you how many times I've attempted to learn linux over the years, how many different versions I've downloaded or bought, and how many books.

My thanks goes out to this forum and all of the members for their support and help and patience.

http://www.debian.org/
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/version.php?version=14

http://www.slackware.com/
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/version.php?version=1

Congrats on the install but I know next to nothing of KDE and even less about web servers. That said, editing the text files is often the best way to go. I actually *prefer* it but, regardless of preferences, it's usually as or more effective. But, yes, the GUI *should* work. Hope you get some help with that.

I'd go ahead and start the updates.

As far as starting the server, I dunno how Fedora does it. Slack is different and I think it'd just be chmod'ing /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd (which would be running by default if you put it that way during setup, IIRC). You can pop up a terminal and do 'ps aux | grep httpd' and see if anything turns up as running. In Fedora it's probably some of that SysV symlink nonsense.

Originally posted by scuzzman Use nano or pico they are both very simple. You may be interested in a vi(1) tutorial. There is one here.

Funny, the site name didn't say ANYTHING about "How to tame a rattlesnake!"

A nice place to learn some of the basic command line codes is www.linuxcommand.org . After an hour of that, you'll be a confident pro And, yes, nano is a nice easy editor.

Originally posted by tspeicher Is there some service I have to turn on for the web server to work.

this may help:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...startstop.html


RH has a well-written, detailed set of docs available:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/

A couple of bits that seem to have been missed Terry,

Yes, Gentoo is a distro that's installed from command - though the gentoo handbook for the current incarnation is very helpful.

Debian, well the "proper" version of it, I found damned near impossible to install on my own, but there are a few reasons why it's good and a couple of different ways round getting it installed without too much hassle.

Fedora is now at Core 3 - I can't really say what any fedora is like, I only tried Redhat once and it didn't want to install, and a total pain - so I personally, am biased against anything redhat related.

SuSE and Mandrake, used both, prefered mandrake, but SuSE is also good.


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So, with those points in mind, firstly, gentoo is very good, it's source based, yes, but the package manager (portage) is very good. The only downside to gentoo is that because it's source based, the download times don't take any longer than any other distro, but the packages have to compile - that, in some cases, takes a bloody long time, depending on what system you use. Though at least the portage checks package dependencies - It's my understanding that slackware, which is also source based?? doesn't - I may be wrong.


Secondly, If debian seems likely to "press your buttons", then there is a couple of easier ways to install it. Ubuntu or Knoppix are both easier ways of installing debian based systems. The difference is that knoppix is a "live" distro and can run entirely from the CD without touching any of your hard drive.

Though both are debian based, Ubuntu, I believe is based around the gnome environment and knoppix around KDE. They both have the apt package manager and it's not too hard to change the apt-sources list (the list that the system looks at so it knows where to look for the packages you may want to install/update/upgrade).

Not sure about Ubuntu, never tried it, but heard good things. Knoppix, I've had that as a hard disc install, because when I tried "proper" debian and failed miserably, knoppix has the luxury of a brilliant hardware detection system (IMO one of the best out there). Plus it was relatively straight forward to tailor it to my personal preferences - the debian advantage being the 10k+ packages/app that are available for debian systems - I wouldn't bother with debian stable (woody), as that is very very out of date, though that is more to do with debian policy of taking absolutely forever before moving packages from unstable (Sid) to stable - it's not a problem in my experience.



I have nothing further to add re deadrat/fedora you'll have to look around for pointers on that.



As for Mandrake and SuSE, I only changed from SuSE to Mandrake, because I felt more at home with mandrake. They are both rpm based distros (like fedora). Which IMO seems all well and good if you just stick to installing rpms for the distro you have installed, if you try a SuSE rpm in mandrake or fedora/redhat you may experience dependency problems - Personally I had no problems whatsoever with mandrake and their rpms. Their package manager, URPMI, was very good, it also looks for dependencies etc.

I should point out, that while lot's of people criticise the RPM package management system, I understand that fedora also offers YUM (originally from Yellow Dog linux - linux for PPC i.e. Macs) and apt4rpm, a version of debians apt, adapted for rpm based systems - I can't say whether it's as affective as the original debian offering.


That should give you something to be getting on with - or maybe just help point you in the right direction if you don't like or get on with deadrat/fedora. Though if you're gonna persevere with it, maybe you should find out about getting hold of some up to date discs (core 3?), if you have a surf around you should be able to find them for 5 to 10$ I should think.

Good luck with the other things you want to try/implement.

regards

John

Originally posted by bigjohn Debian, well the "proper" version of it, I found damned near impossible to install on my own

Me too - I went through the torture of that thing, kind of staring at the screen in bewilderment most of the time, finally couldn't take it any more and bugged out, figuring I'd failed. Very happy to boot back into Slack. A few days/weeks later, I finally mustered up the energy to try to actually boot Debian and was amazed when it came up. So frigging torturous I couldn't finish and so confusing I didn't realize I didn't need to. Second. Worst. Install. Experience. Ever.

But they *are* trying to fix it with the usual blistering Debian speed. (Several years and counting.)

But once it's on, it's a pretty good system and, with the slooow release cycle and package management that many love and stable packages, it does seem to make a good server. (Don't want anyone to get the idea I'm flaming Debian as a distro - it's just that the installer *sucks* and a distro-by-committee on 512 platforms doesn't tend to be able to shift gears real quickly.)

...It's my understanding that slackware, which is also source based?? doesn't...

That seems to be a common impression, maybe because Slackers often install a minimal system and build everything *else* from source and Slack is such a cool distro to build on, but Slack is actually a binary system like most of the rest. It doesn't do dependency checking, though, correct. Which is cool because I don't want to be fighting with a package manager. Slack does what I tell it and if I shouldn't have told it that, that's my fault. Which I prefer to it *not* doing what I tell it, but many people see Slackware's package management as deficient. Just depends on what you like.

I want to thank everyone for your help. I do read well (I learn well from books), even if I don't understand everything at first. So a couple of questions that seem like old hat to you.

There is a lot more distros than I thought. I have downloaded mandrake and suse before. Fedora 2 is the first rh distro I have installed that properly detected all hardware and came up properly. I can't say I like deadrat ( I finally got that). I purchased it once off the shelf so that I could install it and be able to call someone for some installation tech support. HA! Never again.

Ok, first, if I want to continue with the Fedora, is there a different forum I should be posting questions for specifics? Remember, I'm comfortable in a Windowing GUI environment, and for that matter, I am old enough to be very proficient in DOS.

Second, What is the name of the distro that runs from a cd? And would that be able to do what I need in Linux, namely, web server, ftp server, dns server, email server?

Third, other than that, Slackware is pretty easy to install? And it can also do the above functions?

(Sorry I fell asleep last night. Didn't mean to leave all you kind folks hanging.)

Talk to you tomorrow.

Originally posted by tspeicher There is a lot more distros than I thought.

I was just poking around at distrowatch and they list 370 distros. Only about half a dozen majors, though. Mandrake, RH/Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, Slack, with usually a distro du jour in the mix.

Ok, first, if I want to continue with the Fedora, is there a different forum I should be posting questions for specifics? Remember, I'm comfortable in a Windowing GUI environment, and for that matter, I am old enough to be very proficient in DOS.

I've found DOS experience to be extremely helpful. If you're used to a command line, console apps, editing bat files and ini files, and so on, that much of Linux is familiar and just a thousand times more powerful. As far as places, there's distro-specific forums for several distros

Fedora

and, of course, each distro's going to have its own website.

Second, What is the name of the distro that runs from a cd? And would that be able to do what I need in Linux, namely, web server, ftp server, dns server, email server?

The most famous live CD is Knoppix (Debian based, excellent hardware detection) but it's primarily a desktop distro. But you could check this page and maybe someone with specific experience will post up.

Third, other than that, Slackware is pretty easy to install? And it can also do the above functions?

Again, disk partitioning freaks some people out but, if you know DOS fdisk, Linux fdisk or cfdisk is no big deal. The rest is quite simple. I haven't used it as a server but I understand it makes a very good one. It's definitely got all the stuff you need - apache, proftpd, various mail apps, etc. It's going to tend to be text-based configuration, though, depending on how much Knome can do if you choose to install those.

The best advice I can give you is not to be afraid of the command line. Sounds like you're a Win-veteran; I was too. Your DOS experience will help

Slackware is a distribution that will force you to learn -- there's really not much in the way of GUI configuration tools that come with it, but then again -- that makes the text configuration files eatoosier to work with. You'll find that the config files are all commented very well, with instructions or details pertinant to whatever you're trying to configure.

When you try to do things with both the GUI and the command line (configuration, that is), you'll find that you tend to step all over yourself. The GUI tools may rewrite something that you carefully hand crafted, and you'll be chasing yourself like a dog and its tail.

/etc includes nearly all configuration files, usually within a subdirectory thereof you'll find the configuration file to whatever server or service you need. For example, /etc/apache contains httpd.conf which is the webserver config file. It's very thoroughly commented, and simply editing a few lines will give you a working server.

If you're not already, be aware that the permissions structure under *nix is not at all what you're used to with Windows/DOS. In order to edit any system-affecting configuration files, you need to be the "root" user, who has power to do anything on the system. Most times, you'll be running as a user, which has limited permissions.

The reason that your GUI wizard was not letting you save your configuration was likely because you were logged in as a user, and did not have sufficient permissions to save the configuration file in /etc

One last piece of advice -- Don't spend too long distro hunting before you settle down and really try to learn what's going on. People will tell you that Slackware is not a newbie distro, but It's the best learning tool I can think of. Often called the "most unix-like linux", knowledge gained from Slackware will benefit you with any other distribution you choose to work with down the road. Don't let its lack of pretty GUI tools scare you -- GUI tools really aren't as mature as many seem to think under linux.

Good luck!
Google is your friend, and so are we here at LQ. Don't be afraid to ask!

--Shade

BigJohn, not sure if this has been answered but in mandrake to run kwrite as root you just open the konsole type su and then the root passwd and then you type kwrite. This loads kwrite up as if your root.

HTH

tspeicher, I'd just mention a few things. If you're going to stick with Fedora, which I personally like quite a lot, I would suggest you get Fedora Core 3, instead of installing 2. FC3 seems to me to be a little more stable. I've never had an actual crash, but I've had system lags with FC2 that I haven't had with FC3.
If you want a console text editor, the one that comes with Fedora that I like is joe. In fact, I find joe so easy to use, I use it more than the GUI text editors.
All the various servers you want are possible with Fedora, and not difficult to use. I've got running on my computer http (Apache) with webDAV, ftp (vsftpd), smtp (sendmail), IMAP (dovecot), ssh, and samba shares. Now, these are all only for my own personal use. No more than two other computers (and rarely even that many) are ever connected to these services at any given time. So, I can't say from experience how well Fedora runs as a real server, but I can say, it's not difficult to setup, with some good HOWTOs, and help from LQ.

Originally posted by linuxgirlie BigJohn, not sure if this has been answered but in mandrake to run kwrite as root you just open the konsole type su and then the root passwd and then you type kwrite. This loads kwrite up as if your root. HTH

Rather stupidly, I never did work that out, as I found out how to do edit's with VI which I always did from a terminal.

Fortunately, now I'm running gentoo, nano is straight forward like kwrite, and I' m getting familiar with that (in fact because I can't be arsed to change the defaults, If I try to start VI it just kicks open a nano window instead).

I should point out though, going from mandrake to gentoo is a little like me giving up smoking (which I am doing at the moment). When the shit hits the fan, I can hear the mandrake disc's calling "install me, go on, install me, you know you want too". At the same time, I'll have images of dancing cigarettes in my head So far, I haven't given in though, to the cigs or the mandrake!!!!!

regards

John

Ok, I am going to continue on with Redhat and I will also work on downloading Slackware. I have installed and updated Fedora 2 and will also work on downloading Fedora 3.

The first task I am working on is to get the Web server working. I thought about going straight to a command prompt and editing the *#%! file but this GUI has really pissed me off and I want an explaination as to why it WILL NOT SAVE ANY CHANGES I MAKE. I'm going to go post a query in the Redhat forum since it is a very specific question. I'll let you know. I may also edit the file manually while I wait for an answer.

BTW, I did get the web server running (thanks Genesee) and I can pull up the test page from another machine. But I can't change the default document BECAUSE THE GUI WON'T SAVE MY CHANGES.

I thought that I should take the advise I have given to so many fellow programmers so I went to Google to look up the problem. (I believe someone else also mentioned that in this post.) Anyway, even after you run the updates, there is still a bug in the http GUI!!! It doesn't work at all!!! Someone said they used Webmin, so I'm going to go check that out. I am going to be hosting a dozen web sites and would prefer not to do all of the configuration manually.

I will be back after I get my Web Server running.

Alright, feels like we are getting somewhere. Anyone familar with this "Webmin"? Sounds like it's just the tool for me, but I'm having trouble installing it.

I copied the rpm into the \etc\rpm directory and ran the command line:

rpm -U webmin-1.170-1.1.fc2.rf.noarch.rpm

but this is a clip of the error I got:

[root@MaryAnn rpm]# rpm -U webmin-1.170-1.1.fc2.rf.noarch.rpm
warning: webmin-1.170-1.1.fc2.rf.noarch.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
perl(Net::SSLeay) is needed by webmin-1.170-1.1.fc2.rf
perl(Mon::Client) is needed by webmin-1.170-1.1.fc2.rf
[root@MaryAnn rpm]#

What the heck does all this mean?