Couple questions. Firstly, can i let a hard drive spin down in linux, if its not being used? Right now i've got Windows 2000 on one drive and Slack on another. When using slack, i want the windows drive to spin down (no sense letting it run). Its formatted NTFS, so i cant access it anyway.

Can i make the monitor power off after x minutes like in windows?

How do you run a application as a "service". Basically, i want it to run even after i close the console. And then, after its closed, how do i find out what processes are running and close them?

LILO is not behaving nicely. I have to boot off a floppy to get into slack. Where are the config files kept, so i can mess around with it. Does it matter that Windows is on /dev/hdc/ and Slack is on /dev/hdd1/ ?

Thanks!

Hard drive spin should be controlled by either apm or acpi. It works on my machine, and I use apm (apmd) to control it. For instance, "apm --suspend" will put my computer into "sleep" mode.

Screen blanking is automatic on the console (text-mode only). It is controlled by xscreensaver, which can be configured through its own configuration program, for X11R6.

A "service" is called a "daemon" in UNIX-land and in Slackware Linux as well. There are several "application" that can run as daemons, such as sendmail, apache, etc.

To run application (NOT a daemon!) even after the console has been closed, try entering "name_of_application &" on the command line.

Finding processes and changing their state is done through "ps" or "top" (to display processes) and by "kill" to stop them. Try entering "man ps", "man top" and "man kill" on the command line for more information.

Try running "lilo" to setup a different configuration for your computer. Usually, it does not matter which drive Linux is installed on, as long as lilo can "reach" it...

You seem to know very little about Linux... Am I wrong? If that's the case, please read the "Slackware Essentials" book. It's an excellent introduction to Linux in general and to Slackware in particular.

You can find it on the Slackware site, at the following address:

http://www.slackware.com/book/

(Or, even better, order it from the Slackware store!)

You got that very right. Im very new to slack, but picking it up fast. Didnt realise slack had a book. I'll go check it out. Thanks for the help!

Byt the way, an excellent way to learn Linux and/or Unix is to get the book named "Think Unix" by J. Lasseter. Here is a link:

http://www.tux.org/~lasser/think-unix/

Is slackware essentials available for download? I want to be able to see it offline....I, too need to read it I have to recompile my kernel with APM support. Oops! If anyone knows if and where i can download that book from it would be most appreciated. Thanks

"Syncracirca":

Use "wget" to download Slackware Essentials (from the official Slackware site). It may even be present on the CD-ROM of Slackware, but I am not sure...

Also, you don't need to compile a new kernel to have APM support: as far as I know, the 2.4.20 & 2.4.21 kernels of Slackware 9.0 have APM compiled in as a standard.

Check your /etc/rc.d/rc.* files: "apmd" should be present somewhere. Un-comment the correct line and it should work...