teach me to fish

bandofmercy · 04-09-2003, 07:50 PM

can someone point me in the direction of a list of important system files so i don't have to ask stupid questions like "what is that file with the bash profile?"

i'm sure it exists somewhere, a list with descriptions of files like modules.conf and inittab... if anyone knows of something like this i'd be quite interested. i'm still pretty new and i haven't found a single good linux instructional website yet hardly... maybe a few but the point is i'm past the basics now and i want to become and instant power user.

rising_sun · 04-09-2003, 08:18 PM

I am pretty new aswell however I have found that there is alot of "important" files in /etc.

The best way to find things however is to read manuals and use the locate feature read 'man locate'

Tinkster · 04-09-2003, 08:35 PM

I second what our Ozzie mate said :)

and also, I think the problem with such
a list would be that it would be hard to
maintain, considering that
a) everybody finds different things important and
b) Things change often between versions
and distributions...

Quote:

"what is that file with the bash profile?"

The best attempt to find an answer to that
would be

Code:

man bash
/FILES

Almost every program that makes use
of configuration files will have this
FILES-section near the end of the man-page
that will give you a brief overview of location
and meaning of the file.

Code:

FILES
       /bin/bash
              The bash executable
       /etc/profile
              The systemwide initialization  file,  executed  for
              login shells
       ~/.bash_profile
              The  personal  initialization  file,  executed  for
              login shells
       ~/.bashrc
              The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
       ~/.bash_logout
              The individual login shell cleanup  file,  executed
              when a login shell exits
       ~/.inputrc
              Individual readline initialization file

Man is your friend, and so is the / (search) ;)

Cheers,
Tink

jailbait · 04-09-2003, 09:04 PM

When I was in the same position as bandofmercy I got an enormous boost in my understanding of Linux by reading the book:

Running Linux, Fourth Edition, published by O'Reilly

Pcghost · 04-10-2003, 11:56 AM

Don't forget the famous
http://www.google.com/linux

The most cryptic log entry or filename normally has at least one page somewhere explaining what it means.

bulliver · 04-10-2003, 12:04 PM

As rising_son said most important config files are in /etc and sometimes they have man pages for more information. You can try 'man fstab' and 'man modules.conf' etc...

footfrisbee · 04-10-2003, 01:40 PM

If it weren't for the ldp I wouldn't be running Linux today.