problems with linux
 

Hey im a total noob with linux but decided to dive into it with absolutely no experience.

Im a little frustrated trying to figure some of it out heres the big ones:

!.) wine, I cant seem to get it to work no matter what I try, ive gotten it installed I just for the life of me cannot understand its seemingly cryptic instructions on how to install the "fake" windows drive for the programs to use. I redid my partition table and added /mnt/windows to it hoping that I could use that. I cant seem to figure out how to configure this in wine though at all. I've used the config file, and reinstalled since adding the partition but nothing gets copied to the mounted windows, and it doesnt seem to automatically make it anywhere like it says it does on most setups. Doing it manually which seems to be the way I have to do it is giving me some serious troubles.

2.) Apache/services I installed the apache packages and I cant figure out where to even find it, or much less how to run it as a service, any help on this would be appreciated.

3.) In general I'm having trouble finding how to access programs once I install their packages, I tried doing amule and I cant find it anywhere on my system.

Any help on this would be awesome,
Scott

open a terminal su to root and type
updatedb
this builds a database of all files and folders on the computer
when it's finished, exit root mode and then you can type
locate xxx (where xxx is program name)

wine
installs a fake version of windows in your user areas in a hidden folder (hidden folders have names that start with .) i think it's called .wine
open konqueror, go to View and Show Hidden Files

wine is tricky
i have little experience with it
there are probably quite a few threads on this on this forum
you just need to search a little

2.) is apache running? do a ps-aux|grep httpd

Thanks guys Ill try those out when I get home and see what I come up with.

wijnands, should apache automatically start as a service when i installed it from the package?

some more help
 

No....although you can set it up to start up on boot. To start apache on my machine I type
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start
other options :restart,stop,status

I don't know what amule is...but...each program has a command that starts it. For instance, I use evolution for my mail. To start it I type evolution.....they usually have similar names to start as the program name...usually. The best way to find out how to start it is (for evolution say) from the command line type ev and then press the tab button. You will be given a list of programs that use ev * to run. If you don't see anything, it may not be in your path. Use locate program_name (as mentioned above). Usually, the commands to start programs are in /bin/ or /usr/bin/ or /sbin/ or /usr/sbin
So you would have to type /bin/evolution to start the program. I think you can use the program which to find out the path which evolution.

If all that fails the programs usually have a site with the start command listed on it..or post a question here :)

Hope that helps

Later

to access programs you have installed go to your run command and type the name of the program

hehe typing the name of the program was too easy for me to even consider it =P thanks a lot on that one guys. Im still having troubles locating my apache program, I did locate and it came up with a httpd directory but not the executable so I cannot start it. And If I use the start command will that make it run on startup as well?

Thanks

ober ya didn't really read what devin said did ya ? ;)

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start

Im a linux newb myself although have been taking care of dns/named, http , new user accounts, ftp and mail etc etc at my work. I know a fair bit about setting stuff up but i've only just tried really getting into linux and setting it up at home from scratch.

We use slackware and basically that above command is the same we use to stop/start/restart apache/http.

Try this in your shell/console...
1) "su" -> when prompted type in root password
2) "updatedb" ->will update your file/directory database as mentioned above. Will take a few minutes
3) "locate httpd" -->this will return a list of locations where httpd(apache service) exists. Im not sure on the nuts and bolts although i think httpd is just a script file which then calls the apache service/daemon(?) to start/stop/restart. You are looking for httpd file which exists under rc.d. rc.d directory usually stores an assortment of different scripts(cant remember what rc stands for). once you've cd'd to the directory which contains the rc file type . type
"./rc.httpd start" --> should start the apache service
NOTE: if your inside the directory of a script or app you need to prefix the name with "./" this is telling linux to open a file inside the current directory. "." is a link to the current directory and ".." is a link to the parent directory

Just checked and atleast on our install yep i was right rc.d/rc.httpd is just a script it contains a case based on the argument you pass in when you call it. so if you call with "rc.httpd start" it will actually make the call to "/usr/sbin/apachectl start". I guess in short this means "apachectl" application exists in /usr/sbin/ (where most su apps exists)


hope that helped and wasn't too confusing?

Yeah I actually figured out it WAS running using the taskmanager like thing and found out it was httpd2 because im using apache 2 and all, managed to get localhost to show up and all, change the conf file and somehow broke the server. now it gives me forbidden access on the directory i pointed it to use as docroot. The directory I gave it was a www folder under my normal username directory just so I could use drag and drop to put stuff in there instead of using the default with the console as root. Ill just have to keep playing with the config file anyeone know why I might have broken it just by changing the directory?