Ok I’m an old school DOS guy. Could some one help me translate how to do the following.

Write a batch file. - I think this is called a script?

Edit startup options like in good old autoexec.bat and config.sys – I’ve compiled my own kernel before – I’m still not real sure about module loading.

I’ve read more than one HowTo on module loading and they were rather confusing. There seemed to be more than one way to do this. Which is the old and what is the new? Right now I have to type in a very long sting in order to get my sound card to work on my old laptop. It would be nice to have it load at startup. Or at very least be able to write a batch, excuse me, script to do this.

I’m sure there are other things but for now that’s it.

Remember, Unix came first. I'm pretty sure that DOS was based on Unix. So our school is older than yours...

"shell script" is the buzzword you're looking for--I guess to distinguish from Perl script, etc.

tldp.org has all manner of good--and free--documents. I would start with "Bash Guide for Beginners" by Machtelt Garrels.

The exact nature of the various startup files depends on the distribution....Since Slackware is targeted to relatively sophiticated users, I expect there is some useful documentation.

1) Yep, batch file sorta equals script. Not exactly though. Batch file is to shell script as Pinto is to Camaro.

2) There are indeed two ways to load modules. I'm not sure if there is a chronological relationship between the two, but one way is often seen as 'safer'. The first is to use 'insmod module_name' to load a module and 'rmmod module_name' to unload it. The "safer" way is to use "modprobe module_name" to load a module and "modprobe -r module_name" to unload it. The difference? modprobe checks module dependencies - if you want to load module A, and A requires module B, then "modprobe A" will also load B whereas "insmod A" will not.

3) If you want to write a script to load the module at startup you need to put script in /etc/rc.d and then create a symlink to it in /etc/rc.3 and /etc/rc.5

Oops, It seems Slack is a bit different in this regard. It would be /etc/rc.3 and /etc/rc.4 - they use runlevel 4 as the graphical level, not 5. If that sounds like gibberish, don't worry. Runlevels are kinda like "modes" that you can run your computer in. 3 is text-mode and 4 is graphical mode.

By the way, what part of South Carolina are you from (of course, that is if you don't mind saying over the net). Home for me is just outside Columbia in a town called Lexington, but I'm away at college in Charleston.

Thank you very much. Your info is most helpful.

Also with the old-school dos comment I was just trying to emphasize I predate the windows GUI not UNIX.

I live in Scumter. Oh I meant Sumter. I work in Columbia.

I predate ALL GUIs.......so there!!!.....

LoL

Well my FIRST pc was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color computer running at just under 1MHz and sporting a WOPING 32k of RAM. Its OS? The "Basic" programing language!

I loved the sounds my audio casset tape player made as I loaded programs up.

But yes there were already systems that ran Unix even then.

In Slackware the best place to call up any user desired commands, module loads, or bash scripts during boot is from /etc/rc.d/rc.local

I Google "Dos and Linux commands similarity"

and the first site comes up with this

Just for fun (& off topic), my first paid prog job was on Sinclair Spectrum, rubber keyboard, casstte loader. Not sure about RAM, but 8 or 16K rings a bell.

Masonm – That is exactly the info I needed to know. Thank you very much.



Saikee – I’ve run that search before. Very useful reference though. There are a few commands on there that I either didn’t know or just forgot. Like “free” I never remember that one for some reason.



Chrism – Yep the Sinclair Spectrum came in two versions one of which had only 16K but it was a speed demon at 3.5MHz! You Europeans and your fancy toys!

Me too!

But perhaps not by as much as we think -- in the early to mid '50's MIT's Univac had a TV screen that I saw used to play Tic-Tac-Toe w/ visitors. What I'm not sure about was how it was driven & controlled.