Linux has me stumped
 

Ok i admit it, i'm a born windows geek sneaking into enemy territory, but its confusing the hell out of me. I wanted a very low resource impact distribution, and with DamnSmallLinux refusing to install i ended up with Morphix Light.

So far so good, its all running. Only thats where the good news ends. Theres no login screen to start with and I want to get out of the gui, so i exit it, but it reboots computer, and i see no way of stopping this. Theres no where to change any important settings or boot options or anything. I mean people say windows is annoying cos it hides everything away from the layman, but this is hiding a whole lot more. All i want to do is turn on the PC, and be presented with a console login which then leads to a prompt.

Is that too much to ask? Please help, i don't mean to sound agressive but when you've been staring a pc that refuses to do anything remotely like what you're yelling at it, its a tad annoying. Also i don't understand how a console can provide manageable access to multiple applications, its just way beyond my brain. DOS only ran one thing at a time so i get how that worked, but this is just brain mashing. Oh and does linux run services like windows or what? and wheres the task manager?

Basically i want to shut down anything and everything thats unnecessary, except networking services.

Any pointers/tips/thoughts?

Thanks

EDIT: Oh i know that morphix is a livecd distribution but i used the install wizard you get once the livecd is all booted. So its not like its running off the CD

ctrl-alt-backspace kills the GUI. Hope that helps ya!

First things first I guess... To exit the GUI only hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 on your keyboard. If Morphix uses the grub bootloader then your boot settings are read from /boot/grub/menu.lst. There are a vast amount of web resources on the many ways this can be configured. Also, the man page ($ man grub) is very helpful. The short of it is that if all you want is to boot to a console login -> prompt, then append the number '3' onto the kernel line in menu.lst or simply at the option entry at the grub bootloader screen (for one time only).

Ok Ctrl-Alt-F1 drops out the GUI into a console that doesnt seem to respond to any commands or do anything, and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace shuts the PC down just like exiting the gui with the menu's does.

Argh what am i doing wrong? why does linux hate me so?!

If you need to get a console, you should launch a terminal, become root by typing:

su -

and then type:

init 3

If you need to know about any running services, you should look under /etc/rc(number).d;
the number refers to the current runlevel. Any service preceded by a K is killed, any service preceded by S has been started.

Sometimes the first console is set up as more of a monitor. Try F2.
CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE usually shuts down the xserver, but both of these can be distribution specific.
Take a look at your /etc/inittab file. It will tell you how many terminals are available and that is where you can change the defaut runlevel (GUI or console).

If you want to learn the command line... The task manager equivalent is: ps
Mostly you want to run it with aux options
ps aux

Handling processes can get pretty complex. Too much for this topic, but there is more information on the net than you'll ever need.

In gnome it's the gnome-system-monitor (system - administration)

You rarely need to shut down X. You can do most command line stuff with xterm (gnome terminal or the like)

sixleaf;

If you are new to Linux, it might be better to start with one of the more popular distributions----www.distrowatch.com has a "hit list"--anything in the top ten should work for you.

My principal advice for you is: Patience
Linux is not the same as Windows, and --especially if you are really proficient in Windows, you will have some unlearning to do.

from one linux newb to another. Here are some things that helped me:

The One Page Linux Manual: A concise summary of Linux console commands and what they are for
(PDF) http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~squa...nux_manual.pdf

You can read more about each command, with the "man" program (brings up the command's manual). For example, say you want to learn about the ps command, for viewing running processes. You would then type "man ps" at the command prompt, and use the letter "q" to exit the man page.

Linux configuration files, sort of similar to WIndows INI files, can be viewed and edited at the comman line. The text editor I use to view files, is called vi. You just type "vi filename" at the command prompt, up and down arrows to move, Insert key to go to edit mode, Esc key to get out of edit mode, ":w" to save and ":q" to quit.

Hope this helps some.

pixellany - Compared to linux, i know windows inside out. I used to program in MASM so the win32api is my best friend. I really really know very little about linux and i think you might have a point about windows knowledge hindering my linux learning. which sucks.

My only goal was to get an old laptop running an absolutely minimal stripped down OS for hosting a server, but it seems that its a lot harder than i thought it would be. Funnily enough at the mo the server ran faster under xp than linux so far.

I'll have a play about tonight and see what i can get working.

If you have lots of time, lots of patience, and really want to learn a lot fast. Then stop using popular distributions, read up on Linux, install any working distro (use gentoo so you can familiarize yourself with the command line at the same time), then use that to install LFS as your new distro. If you understand the install instructions for LFS, you pretty much know all you need to. Total time for learning pretty much everything if you really try, and experiment a lot, about 3 months should do it.

Imagine being an expert in Unix or Linux and trying to learn Windows.

It is not so much about UNlearning as it is about learning that Windows is not the only way of doing something---as in the newcomer asking; "Where's the registry?"

Ok i've been fiddling at i'm getting somewhere(ish). One major problem for me - when not running a gui, is it possible to have 2 applications running at the same time not in background. I know (well, i've guessed from reading) that if i shove a & at the end of a process it should run in background hidden away, which is all well and good but what if i want to switch to it, how do i do that? Or is that not possible? Or switch between 2 running processes?

Thanks

you have two options. One is to run these processes on their own terminals. You start by default probably on tty1, but sometimes on tty2. To get to tty[n] you hit ctl+alt+F[n]. So tty2 is ctl+alt+F2. Each of these terminals is a full console that you can leave and come back to.

The second option is more powerful and flexible, but also more complicated - to use GNU screen. I'll leave you to the man pages for screen, as it's a complicated little thing, but darn useful.

no the consoles sound just perfect. thank you so much for that i was trying to guess what tty thingys meant. Also, i used nice to set priority on the server to -20 (well i think i did anyway), but how do you check this cos ps never shows the thread priority :(

hmm ok i should probably start a new thread for this but heyho. When i boot up into console, i have no network settings established, i have to startx, set network up (the settings always default to wrong ones every reboot), then exit again. How can i write a script or whatever to initialise the network adapter with the right ip, dns server, gateway etc etc. Also i move my computer between networks which is why a script would be good to change what settings.

I looked about and found http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-c...work-card-nic/ but it went a bit over my head cos i dont want to add alias's.

Thanks

DHCP is usually used to setup cable connections (and other broadbands i think). The command is "dhcpcd" or something similar. It will start a DHCP client that will connect to the ISP's DHCP server, and request connection information, it will then use that to setup the connection.

If the command works on the console, just add it to your startup scripts.

no no no i understand all about how dhcp works, networking is nothing new to me just linux is. but i don't want to use dhcp, i want to configure static IP, but the only way i've found of doing this is from the gui.

oh and fyi dhcpcd doesnt work for me.
thanks tho

static ip? This is something i have never seen since i first came to Linux, using Core Linux... what a pain, but since you have a static IP, ill try to recall how this was done (since you know network things, ill let you fill in the blanks).

OK, the main command i saw was "iproute" (ok, the only command, or at least the only one i remember), used to setup the network routing table to connect to the outside. OK, thats all i recall, and also dhcpcd setups the /etc/resolve.conf for DNS queries. Since i was never able to get the network up the static way (probably because i dont have a static IP), i never bothered to really learn it, so thats about all i can say.

edit: ok, i looked at the commands that are installed now, no "iproute", but there is "ip" (might have been used), and "route", which i remember the output looks exactly like what i originally saw.

Um, I think most modern distros are using ifconfig for this. If the card is eth0, then the command would be

just replace the X's with an IP address. You'll almost certainly need root priviliges tho.

I dont get why you would not want a gui? if your looking for a low impact distro check out xubuntu.

Avatar,

Most excellent resource! Thanks for pointing it out. :study:

be aware that one page command thing is for an rpm based distro and many of the commands aren't compatible with debian based distros