i'm getting frustrated trying to learn things at the command line because I keep getting the message bash: command not found

apparently there's no finger command, or lsmod, lspci, lsusb, or a lot of other things that are listed as basic linux commands in the files i've been reading. is it just me, or are these commands really missing on my system?

(i'm using out-of-the-box mandrake 9.1, running a gnome terminal, not usually as root)

mcd

Most of those commands are going to require root privileges. Whenever you get a message like that, if your database is up to date, do a 'locate foo' and it'll show. Do a 'ls -l foo' and you'll probably see a lot of 'root's and the 'x's stopping suddenly.

Actually, I hate to say this...

But Mandrake, by default, does not give you some of those commands. They think you want their version:
lspcidrake
lsusbdrake
Which have a twist on em.

You still can get the real packages, it just takes a bit more work, and usually entails some elusion of downgrading packages since occasionally Mandrake will beef up a release version to give you the sense of 'latest package' even though it's their tweaked out version of the last release...

Mandrake is great to learn on, to get accustomed to something different, but once you start hitting the command line, personally I think it's time to find a distro that is built for that. Strap into:
www.archlinux.org
www.slackware.com
www.debian.org
www.gentoo.org
www.distrowatch.com
www.linuxfromscratch.org

And I think you'll see the difference.

Cool

thanks guys, i've heard a lot of people mention slackware, maybe i'll give it a try.

btw, i tried locate foo and it spat back
bash: locate: command not found

i tried find and i still couldn't find it

mcd

You'll need to install the slocate package from your install CD's.



COol

Try Debian.
It is great with broadband
It is used by most live CD distros - Knoppix, Mepis, Morphix, Damn Small Linux etc
It has all possible software working on it!
And Hurd is coming................

I'm looking at the different distros now to see which one I'd like to install and play around with, but I had a quick question. Since I've already got Mandrake 9.1, can I create a new / partition for slackware/debian or whatever, and use the same /swap and /home partitions?

Yes you can but....

Swap is just fine and encouraged, however sharing home can be a bad idea since you'll have version conflicts and stuff (home is where all the user specific info is kept for each program). But a swap and a /boot partition should be 'shared' for each distro.

Cool

Right now I've got the following:

Disk /dev/hdb: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 764 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 765 2728 15775830 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 765 827 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb6 828 1448 4988151 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 1449 2728 10281568+ 83 Linux

hdb5 is my /swap partition
hdb6 is my /home
hdb7 is my /multimedia

I also have 7G left unpartitioned for my new distro. My Mandrake Control Center partitioning GUI shows / on hdb1, but I'm guessing it's actually hdb2 since it doesn't list a /boot partition at all (and there clearly is one on hdb1)....is that what it looks like?

So when I'm installing I should create new / and /home partitions on the unused 7G right?

thanks,

/boot is probably not it's own seperate partition... yet.

Yes, in the free 7G you'll wanna create yourself a new / and **optionally** a new /home (good idea for reinstalling, backing up etc..). And probably a /boot that you will end up sharing on your existing distro as well (you'll edit fstab to show the changes, copy the /boot info to the new partition and mount it up).

/dev/hdb1 IS your / hdb2 is the container for which all your logical drives exist (or extended as I always get the 2 mixed up ). hdb1 is primary, hdb2 is extended and everything after that is because hdb2 is extended.

Cool

Doesn't /boot have to be on the first 1024 cylinders? Or is that just for older versions? If it does, how should I go about creating a new partition for it? Copy the present / partition to another location then resize the current hdb1, then copy / and /boot back separately?

thanks,

/boot no longer has to be within those parameters IIRC. In fact I don't think it was /boot that had to be there, but rather the location of the boot loader itself, the /boot had to be within the first 8GB of the drive? Not sure, but anyway, no I don't think it's an issue anymore.

Cool

hi

the 1024 limit in lilo was a old thing. grub and newer lilo dont have this problem