The forming of a LQ.org Slackware FAQ - donations of knowledge required!

Now a slight change from the request to link to a wiki
While going into wiki I noticed that someone (not me altho I am thinking about it) had merely added a link to normal LQ forum posting.

idea has merit
1) not everyone goes to wiki and google will still bring back responses whether wiki or Lq forum
2) saves writing twice and bb or wiki coding
3) wiki allows others to edit whereas LQ allows others to post their comments and suggestions.

sidetrack A) it sounds arrogant to believe the original poster has all the knowledge so wiki can use the same doc to improve the base but I noticed that LQ is more ideally suited to questions or comments.
sidetrack B) everyone has a reluctance to make suggestions to another's tutorial / howto etc but as you are the maintainer of the FAQ you can negotiate better answers.
sidetrack C) invariably there will always be some duplication of how to do stuff because LINUX always has that flexibility

(4) so above makes me think (rarely do I heh heh) that wiki is like a mini LDP only not so slow to react to changes.

summary
make a howto in LQ forum and create a link to it in wiki
THEN tell you the link

Not really a FAQ just an observation......in the 'how do I shut down as a normal user' section, you night want to point out that if you boot to init 5 as per the graphical login FAQ then KDE (at least) gives you shutdown and reboot options whenever you push the logout button.

Two birds, one stone.

Q) I'm running Slackware 10.0. I updated my kernel to 2.6.X. Where have all my devices gone? Why is 'man XYZ'/'less XYZ' not working and giving me errors?

A) The 2.6 series of kernels use 'udev' to manage the devices. Unlike the devfs of old, udev works entirely in userspace and only creates nodes for devices that exist (and it does it dynamically, so if you remove the device, the nodes will be removed. Makes /dev a lot a smaller and easier to figure out what's what. For more, information on udev, see the udev FAQ)

udev also allows you to write rules, so that you can, theoretically, assign any name to a device that is plugged in, perhaps based on criteria such as it's name, or description (e.g. my Creative Muvo2 may be /dev/sda or /dev/sdb, but I have a rule that always creates a symlink at /dev/muvo to wherever the device is plugged in)

But what does this have to do with man page or less errors? Unfortunately, one of the rules in the udev-026-i486-1.tgz package that ships with Slackware 10.0 is wrong, causing problems with the terminals that less (which man uses) relies on. Either:

Taken from this thread

In /etc/rc.d/udev.rules change:

KERNEL="tty[p-za-e][0-9a-f]*", NAME="tty/s%n", SYMLINK="%k"

to

KERNEL="tty[p-za-e][0-9a-f]*", NAME="pty/s%n", SYMLINK="%k"

Alternatively, upgrade to the latest udev package from the -current tree.

BUMP - this is a very useful piece of information and should not get lost.
<EDIT> In fact, what about a sticky? </EDIT>

scuzzman,
See " News: SBing's Slackware FAQ ". (stickied)
That is the FAQ that this thread is associated with.

SBing hasn't been around in some time.
-tw

LOL - my bad - I just seen it raised by cathetic and figured I'd knock it up again - didn't know it was already done...

Originally posted by codec 2.add fontpath: edit /etc/fonts/local.conf and put your fontpath inside <dir>.....</dir>

Can someone clear this up? What happens if you have no local.conf file? Thanks.


pd

What happens if you have no local.conf file?

Just create one and then edit it.

didn't know it was already done...

I posted it in this thread, as it appears to be the FAQ donation thread, and for obvious reasons we mere mortals cannot post to the FAQ thread, and as of yet, there doesn't appear to be any Slackware FAQ Wiki pages, merely references that one should be created.

How about not having the FAQ as a BBS thread or wiki.
As you have to have net access when you need it.

A slackfaq.txt file would be better IMO.
The thread could be for submissions & discussions.
The text file could be placed up on a ftp. With dated revisons.
That way people can keep a local copy.

Game FAQS have been done like that for years, & IMO work much better than these huge threads.
Here is an example of an older style Faq:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade..._shodown_2.txt

Just my 2cents.

ATI DRIVER INSTALL SLACK10.1

Im confused why do i download XFree86 4.3: fglrx-4.3.0-3.12.0.i386.rpm if slackware 10.1 is xorg 6.8. im a noob so correct me if im wrong

the reason i think this is because when i run Check.sh it says Xorg 6.8 ?

may be we should just gather and write the best book about Linux? I think it's more useful than a FAQ. Why book? Because it'll be possible to guide every newbie step by step what he should do.
I think one of the most important things for EVERY linux newbie - is migrating from windows, i.e., partitioning: first shrink xp's ntfs, and then install Linux.
[working on the 4th chapter of the book "Linux for everyone". 4th chapter will be right about partitioning. the first 3 chapters are only introductory. if you're intersted look here . Don't kick me - it's only v.0.00!]

Because this FAQ thread is horribly out of date in that respect. If you are running X.Org 6.8, download the X.Org 6.8 version of the ATi drivers. (The XFree86 4.3 drivers only apply for X.Org 6.7).

and how does this even make sense

2) Convert this rpm to a Slackware package, by running:

$ rpm2tgz fglrx-4.3.0-3.12.0.i386.rpm

3) Install this newly created Slackware package, by running:

$ su -
<enter your root password as prompted>
# installpkg fglrx-4.3.0-3.12.0.i386.rpm


wouldn't it be # installpkg fglrx-4.3.0-3.12.0.i386.tgz

It would be - as I said, the original FAQ thread is out of date and not maintained.

Hmmm..... this almost seems like something that would be better served in a Wiki (someone may have suggested this already, I haven't read the whole thread), or at least in a Wiki type format.

My suggestion if you really want the resulting sticky thread to be used in the manner it is intended is to have each post constitute a question/answer, and then have links to each post in the top most post. This way I can open the thread, click a link and instantly find the post that has the info I am looking for.

Just my 2c

slight