Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sandwich on February 14, 2006, 03:42:01 pm
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Ok, I've had to reinstall Windows XP, and at the same time, I got a new 250Gb HDD and consolidated a couple of my older IDE drives onto that monster. So now, I'm left with an empty 14Gb IDE HDD with no reason to exist. So I figure I can finally properly install some distro of Linux onto the drive instead of futzing around with live CD versions.
Attached is my HDD status. I'd put a Linux distro on the 14Gb drive if at all possible.
My question for you guys is this: keeping in mind that I've never really gotten into Linux before, and that I'm next-to-helpless in the command prompt (console?) without specific instructions, which Linux distro should I install? I think I'd rather go for a distro that will "just work" at the basic level initially, allowing me to get more in-depth in my own time. However, I don't want to have to spring for some totally obscure distro - I'd rather just use Red Hat or Mandriva over Distro 8472, even if they are a bit less friendly, if you get my drift. ;)
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I say SuSe, It's the first I used, and I still like it. Plus SuSe comes with a couple of GUIs, KDE being teh most windows like and Gnome, the more original. SuSe comes with firefox and all other useful apps that you may need. I took to it quick, very easy to figure out.
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Anything with apt-get.
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I'd say Gentoo. It has a fool-proof install guide, offers great flexibility and has an apt-get derivate (portage) which makes installing/managing software packages very, very easy.
Install guide starts here (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=1)
As a matter of fact, I'm installing it on my old machine as I type.
If you're really lazy, go with SuSe. It's easier and faster to install than XP. But it comes with a lot of crap I don't need. And it lacks apt-get or portage, which I would really miss.
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Everything I have read says that Gentoo is not for beginners.
Whatever you do choose, make sure you can get the bootloader to load windows too...
I make no claims to being competant with Linux, but for all I tried I couldn't get Windows to dualboot with it. It was always one bootloader or the other.
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Gentoo isn't particularly hard, you just need to be able to READ (This is a dying skill...)
But, unless you have several days to spare, I wouldn't start off on Gentoo - Most Linux newbies end up re-installing their distro a few times to get it how they want because they aren't skilled enough to mod it once it's in place (Not a trivial thing if you don't know what you're doing lemme tell ya!! ;)), and Gentoo is painful to install (IMHO! And I'm a Slackware user!! ;)), espescially if you're new because you need to do a LOT of reading.
If you put the effort in 'tho, you get one of the fastest setups possible ;)
What LiveCD were you using?
Most Distro's feel VERY different from one another, and if you're used to, say, Knoppix, you don't want to use something that has a Gnome desktop because it'll confuse the heck out of you.
If your LiveCD has a self-installer, then I'd go for that assuming it does the job for you to begin with.
Alternatively, a good newbie distro is Ubantu (Ubuntu?) - Debian based, so it has apt-get which is a really nice installer system. It's not as Kitchen-Sink as other distros, and seems quite clean to use.
Like Knoppix, you can do most of everything you need through GUI, although as with any distro I recommend you at least get comfortable with the CLI at some point if you intend to push the disto beyond it's initial install setup ;)
I personally compile everything from source, but I hate portage so I use a hacked Slackware distro as a base and make my own tgz packages to stick things on top of it. Life's too short 'tho, so I might actually have to learn howto use Gentoo properly for my next run... ;)
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Whatever you do choose, make sure you can get the bootloader to load windows too...
I make no claims to being competant with Linux, but for all I tried I couldn't get Windows to dualboot with it. It was always one bootloader or the other.
That was gonna be my next question... WinXP is installed onto the 60Gb IDE, Linux of some sort will be installed onto the 14Gb IDE, leaving the 2 SATA drives. What should I do to ensure that the WinXP bootloader is the one that remains in charge (in case I ever need to remove the 14Gb Linux drive, I'd rather my system not be stuck looking for a Linux bootloader on a drive that doesn't exist anymore)?
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Since I am also (vaguely) considering getting into Linux, I've heard that Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com") really tops all other distros when it comes to newbie friendliness. Of course, I can't speak from any personal experience, but the impression that I get from the Interweb is that Ubuntu is what you get when you want Linux to, as you said, "just work".
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I used Knoppix Live a while back (year or two), and, more recently, Ubuntu Live. I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to figuring stuff out, so I probably COULD make do with pretty much any Linux distro once it was installed and running to the point where I had Internet access (to resolve any issues).
Unfortunately, I have neither time nor patience to learn Linux from the inside out like I'd like to, so I've decided to expose myself to the general outer presentation, get used to common terms and stuff. Top-down learning. I'm just not used to doing stuff that way, since I learned computers in general by starting with MS-DOS 5.0, and HTML and CSS by hand-coding it. I like to have control over as much as possible, but the problem with this and Linux is that it would take time that I don't have for me to aquire the knowledge required to excersice said control. :p
Since I've already used Ubuntu a wee bit, and I know that its hardware detection routines can identify enough of my computer's hardware to get Internet access, I'll probably install that.
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use fedora core
i use it for the PXO server and I havent had any problems with it
the install is completely visual and straightforward
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/
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RPM's (the software packages) are a pain in the arse though.
I'd go with Ubuntu for it's huge community, apt-get and ease of use.
Gentoo is the 'deep end' as far as newb distro's go, I had to re-install three times before it worked for me, on the flipside I learned a hell of a lot about how a linux distro is put together and I got comfortable with the CLI (command line interface).
14GB is tonnes of room and the linux boot loader (lilo anyhow) can be installed onto any other drive without mucking about with XP's boot sector. You simply create a pointer to the winXP partition in a text file (like a *.ini) that tells lilo what partitons are available to boot.
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Any distro that is based on Debian, like (K(Ubuntu.
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FWIW, Mandrake or {Ku|U}buntu are probably the best for a beginner.
Myself, I started out with pure Debian, but I was setting up a server and didn't have enough disk for a GUI... My main machine runs Gentoo and it took about 8 hours to set up. Given that Gentoo's install time is usually 90% compilation time, that's mainly due to the speed of the machine rather than my competence.
Gentoo is very easy to use once you have some experience of Linux, mainly because the OS tools are set up from the beginning to do stuff with the source. This makes installing display drivers much easier; most of them need to compile something at some point, and new Mandrake users will often be confused as to why the driver won't install (clue: how many newbies consider a full set of compilers and the kernel headers to be of critical importance? :p)
IMO, the 'newbie Linuxen' should install all that stuff by default, just so new users can install proprietary drivers onto the default install without further fiddling with the Package Manager.
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use fedora core
i use it for the PXO server and I havent had any problems with it
the install is completely visual and straightforward
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/
seconded, i managed to get it working the way i wanted to on my 2nd install (i forgot to install some features i wanted and couldnt figure out how to install them later, so i started over). the install time i think was less than winxp. i did have some problems learning how to compile things but after downloading several packages got it to work finally. im already fairly comfortable with using it. if it wasnt that all my favorite graphics programs were windows only id use it exclusively.
im still sorta confused as to how the filesystem works. all those directories and it seems to have combined my two hard drives. id recomend installing the yum extender to help get any packages you may need. it really saves time over the cli.
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(K)ubuntu.
Forums are big, IRC is easy to get at as it's the default server/channel for the IRC programs, and if you make enough noise someone will eventually respond unless it's something totally esoteric. (Drivers for a virtually unused sound card, for instance)
You would just not install a bootloader during the install to let XP's remain dominant, or you can use fixmbr from the XP cd if you accidentally install a bootloader (Google instructions before you start)
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Bootloader stuff:
I currently use GRUB as my bootloader - It loads on boot and offers to load Slackware, or I can chain down to the the Windows 2000 bootloader and pick '98 or 2000.
If you want to do any sort of boot-menu, I HIGHLY recommend you use GRUB in favour of LILO - LILO is ancient and a PITA; Assuming nothing's changed, you have to re-initialise it everytime you compile the kernel, and if you forget to and reboot you hose your system!
GRUB has big advantages over LILO if you move stuff around - LILO will break but GRUB will still work (And if it doesn't you can edit it on the fly to point to the right places!!)
I have GRUB in my MBR, and even if I take out all the hard disks except IDE0 (My boot) it will still be able to chain to the Win2000 boot loader and get me into Windows '98. (2K is on SATA1, Slackware is on SATA2)
You can get GRUB/LILO to boot to both Windows and Linux directly, but it's easier to leave the Windows boot loader in place and have GRUB/LILO chain to it. If you find a two-step bootprocess annoying 'tho, you may want to put in the extra work to get it to boot directly.
It *IS* possible to use the Windows bootloader to boot Windows or Linux, but I've never gotten it to work - From what I gather it's non-trivial...
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as many others have said, something debianbased. like k/ubuntu
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im still sorta confused as to how the filesystem works. all those directories and it seems to have combined my two hard drives. id recomend installing the yum extender to help get any packages you may need. it really saves time over the cli.
It hasn't combined the disks. The UNIX filesystem is mostly independant of disk filesystems. The root filesystem is constructed from one partition, but some bits are constructed only in memory. /proc, /sys and /dev don't actually exist on the disk.
All partitions, including root partition, are 'devices'. For instance, your primary hard disk is 'hda' and the partitions on it are named 'hda1', 'hda2', etc. You mount these devices on the filesystem to add them to it.
UNIX does not use drive letters. That idea was introduced, IIRC, by CP/M, and then DOS made it mainstream (possibly the biggest step backward in the history of computing).
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Bootloader stuff:
I currently use GRUB as my bootloader - It loads on boot and offers to load Slackware, or I can chain down to the the Windows 2000 bootloader and pick '98 or 2000.
If you want to do any sort of boot-menu, I HIGHLY recommend you use GRUB in favour of LILO - LILO is ancient and a PITA; Assuming nothing's changed, you have to re-initialise it everytime you compile the kernel, and if you forget to and reboot you hose your system!
GRUB has big advantages over LILO if you move stuff around - LILO will break but GRUB will still work (And if it doesn't you can edit it on the fly to point to the right places!!)
I have GRUB in my MBR, and even if I take out all the hard disks except IDE0 (My boot) it will still be able to chain to the Win2000 boot loader and get me into Windows '98. (2K is on SATA1, Slackware is on SATA2)
You can get GRUB/LILO to boot to both Windows and Linux directly, but it's easier to leave the Windows boot loader in place and have GRUB/LILO chain to it. If you find a two-step bootprocess annoying 'tho, you may want to put in the extra work to get it to boot directly.
It *IS* possible to use the Windows bootloader to boot Windows or Linux, but I've never gotten it to work - From what I gather it's non-trivial...
Ok, this sounds like what I'm looking for. Could you give me a stage-by-stage breakdown of how to go about installing Ubuntu onto my 2nd IDE drive without wiping out the XP bootloader, and at what point I toss this GRUB thing into the mix? Keep in mind that I want to be able to pull the plug on my 2nd IDE w/o WinXP brainfarting.
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Tommorow I'm going to install SuSE 10 on my IDE hard drive much like Sandwich is. Thats the plan anyways. I imagine that it'll go fairly smoothly? Its got a graphical interface for managing the installation so it should be just like Windows I imagine...
Anything I should know about dual booting? WinXP is still my primary...
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Bootloader stuff:
I currently use GRUB as my bootloader - It loads on boot and offers to load Slackware, or I can chain down to the the Windows 2000 bootloader and pick '98 or 2000.
If you want to do any sort of boot-menu, I HIGHLY recommend you use GRUB in favour of LILO - LILO is ancient and a PITA; Assuming nothing's changed, you have to re-initialise it everytime you compile the kernel, and if you forget to and reboot you hose your system!
GRUB has big advantages over LILO if you move stuff around - LILO will break but GRUB will still work (And if it doesn't you can edit it on the fly to point to the right places!!)
I have GRUB in my MBR, and even if I take out all the hard disks except IDE0 (My boot) it will still be able to chain to the Win2000 boot loader and get me into Windows '98. (2K is on SATA1, Slackware is on SATA2)
You can get GRUB/LILO to boot to both Windows and Linux directly, but it's easier to leave the Windows boot loader in place and have GRUB/LILO chain to it. If you find a two-step bootprocess annoying 'tho, you may want to put in the extra work to get it to boot directly.
It *IS* possible to use the Windows bootloader to boot Windows or Linux, but I've never gotten it to work - From what I gather it's non-trivial...
Of course when I used GRUB my MBR spontaneously quit working. :)
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Ouch! :eek2:
I'm probably the worst person you could ask for such a thing - I think an actual step-by-step guide by me would be larger than is permitted in a single post Sandwich ;)
That and I'm not overly familiar with Ubuntu's installer process...
You'd be better off researching the installer stuff yourself - I can tell you roughly what you need to have happen, but you'd have to figure out the 'How' part.
For a GRUB-setup where you can remove the other drive, you'll need a small (Say 2-10MB) partition on the primary boot HD to put the other half of GRUB (The first half goes into your boot drive's MBR) and the Linux kernel so that it'll still work when you take the 2nd HD out.
This partition should be formatted as a Linux ext2 filesystem drive and be mounted in your final installation as "/boot"
The best place for this is at the Beginning of your boot drive, but unfortunately I've just realised that this may not be possible for you to do without messing up Windows XP's bootloader...
However, assuming you have a BIOS that doesn't have the Cant-Boot-Past-Disk-Cylinder-1024 problem, you should be able to get away with shrinking your windows partition a tiny bit and tacking /boot on the end of it instead of the beginning so your partiton table would look something like:
Disk HD-A:
Partition - Mountpoint - Format - Size
hda1 - <Windows C:> - NTFS/Whatever - [Lots]
hda2 - /boot - ext2 - 20MB
I think for you, getting the partitions sorted out will be the most delicate part - Once that's done you can screw up and re-install as much as you want as long as you preserve the boot setup.
During the Ubuntu install, you'd configure the partitions so that /boot goes in that little niche you made on HDA, and have Ubuntu configure the freespace on HDB automatically.
I think from there the rest is up to you...
Note - Two things to do before you do *ANYTHING*:
1) Make a backup, or better yet a bootable ghost-image of your current system (before new HD gets out in) so you have a safety net.
2) Learn how to use the Windows XP Recovery Console - It's accessible by booting off the WindowsXP install CD; This way, if anything goes tits up you can boot into that and use the ?fixmbr? command to get the Windows XP bootloader back as the default.
Appendix (Don't read this! Seriously.)
Just to confuse and scare you more, this is what my GRUB.conf looks like for my ludicrously complicated drive setup:
#Default to 1st title section (Slacky!) ; Autoselect after 10 seconds
default=0
timeout=10
#GRUB Boot Menu entries
#0) Load Slackware!
title Slackware Linux
#Tell Grub where to look for it's stuff (HDA1 /boot)
root (hd0,0)
#Tell grub to boot the named kernel and use the specified root partiton
kernel /bzImage-2.4.25-cy2 root=/dev/hdc1
#1) Chain to Win2k bootloader
title Windows
#Set the FAT16 C: drive to be the root (Notenotenote! This is where the Windows 2000 bootloader is! Not hdb1!!) and boot it
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Luckily, Ubuntu should configure all this for you so you'll likely never need to look at it ;)
And here's my partiton table ;)
HDA
hda1 - /boot - ext2 - 20MB
hda2 - C: - FAT16 - 2GB (DOS 6.22, Win2k and 98 boot drive)
hda5* - D: - FAT32 - 10GB (Windows 98SE)
hda6 - E: - FAT32 - 15GB
hda7 - F: - FAT32 - 15GB
hda8 - G: - FAT32 - 35GB
HDB
hdb1 - W: - NTFS - 159GB (Windows 2000 SP4)
hdb2 - <LinuxSwap> - linuxswap - 1GB
HDC
hdc1 - / - ext3 - 20GB (Slackware Linux)
hdc2 - /usr - ext3 - 30GB
hdc3 - /var - ext3 - 10GB
hdc4 - /home - ext3 - 100GB
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Yeah actually, ignore my advice about LILO, I just stick with what I like and what works for me. You're right about having to re-initalise it every time you change the kernel Cyker.
This is a good example BTW of why a knoppix or any other liveCD is fantastic as a recovery tool. You can simply boot it, chroot into your installed OS and fix any problems.
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OK....I lept and I think I got in over my head. I'm in a wee bit of trouble now and I don't know how to get out. Before I get into the problem let me outline my present hard drive setup:
Windows XP Home on Seagate SATA 160gb hard drive
SUSE Linux on a Seagate IDE 80GB hard drive
nForce 2 chipsets consider the SATA drive to be a single drive in a RAID configuration (don't ask me why)
I installed SUSE Linux version 10 on the 80GB hard drive as indicated. All seems to be well. It can even see and access my two partitions on the SATA drive so I know all my documents are over there. The problem is that when I boot, I see the SUSE boot system...which I am to understand now is something called GRUB. I even figured out how to order the things in this through the YAST Control Panel. Cool. Problem is that when I select Windows XP the following happens.
I see a black screen and the following line appears:
chain loader (hd1,0)+1
Then there is a blinking cursor and NOTHING happens. So I'm a little Windows deprived, I had intended on doing some gaming tonight...but I'm a little concerned. So far I have done some searches online and while this sounds somewhat common, nobody seems to be able to produce an answer that makes sense to me yet.
So I'm in a wee bit of trouble!
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OH thank god! Ok...I SOLVED IT.
Next time I boot Linux I'll copy out what I did with the correct code for GRUB to make Windows happy again. Phew!
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/me is getting scared again... :p
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/me is getting scared again... :p
Honestly...SUSE makes it so easy to get started (although it did take over an hour with all the software updates and stuff) that you wonder what the catch is. The boot up stuff is a bit complicated. Made more complicated by my current system setup.
Linux is an odd conundrum. SUSE is my first distro that I'm trying...I'm not likely to jump ship right away. My impression is that on one hand its very easy to use. On the other hand there is a learning curve and its very hard to go cold turkey. I'm a tinkerer with computers so this stuff is OK by me but the average user would be frusterated out of their mind right now.
When I did get into SUSE for the first time...I tried a bunch of things like trying to play my MP3's and trying to play a DIVX or a Quicktime trailer. None of that seems to work. I'm sure I need to go and find something or install something. The video player software and and the audio player software are present...but presumably no CODECs are installed. The install is Open SUSE so maybe thats it.
Another thing...I go to download the ATI video drivers...and it downloads some file but when I try and open it I get source code or something like that and I can't actually use it. This is another Linux problem I feel. Its a bit harder than it needs to be.
I think Windows still is winning in terms of usability and ease of use for someone like me. That said, the actual system runs VERY smoothly with few hangs or pauses. I am impressed in some respects but I understand why its not quite universal yet.
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For someone who has used nothing but Linux, Windows is hellishly awkward to use.
For anyone brought up on Windows, Linux is complicated.
It all depends on what you're used to. Windows is ONE OPERATING SYSTEM and only needs one set of drivers. Linux is one kernel with several dozen different sets of libraries atop it. Drivers for Linux usually come in source code form because it's simpler than distributing 16 different binaries per CPU architecture.
Besides, how difficult is it to type:
./configure
make install
? I mean, if you can't read the README file, maybe you shouldn't be operating a computer?
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Besides, how difficult is it to type:
./configure
make install
? I mean, if you can't read the README file, maybe you shouldn't be operating a computer?
Oh please. You know well enough that command-line operations are not an option for 80% of the computer-using populace. Which, BTW, is basically the point I was trying to make back a few months ago with my "The Problem with Linux" thread. It's not that it's a problem per se, but that it's problematic IF you want to reach the general populace and have them start using Linux. Note the "if". :)
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Besides, how difficult is it to type:
./configure
make install
I'd say that's a bit optimistic, though.
Remember the dependency, versioning etc. issues? Not to mention all the distro specific pecularities.. :p
But even then it's worth the trouble for many people. Not all, but many.
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Besides, how difficult is it to type:
./configure
make install
Actually, one of the reasons I use Slackware is that, on 90% of modern distros, doing that would be EXTREMELY bad - You'd probably break a crap load of carefully crafted package dependencies...
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We are talking about dynamically-loaded driver modules here, right? Most of the ones I've got merely require compilation alongside the kernel headers. After that, modprobe does the rest. Dependencies are not an issue.
More complex software that does have dependencies usually works through the distro's package manager, and I am damned happy about that...
Finally, whether or not command line options are required is irrelevant if the exact sequence of commands is described in a README. All the user has to do is type them in as they appear in the file. Reading the documentation may be a dying art, but failing to at least read the 'quick start' instructions when clueless? That is the fault of the user. Besides, a fixed sequence of install instructions can be put in one script (usually install.sh) and that only requires a single command to execute.
The shell prompt is an important part of Linux. Users quickly learn the basics of running programs from it.
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We are talking about dynamically-loaded driver modules here, right? Most of the ones I've got merely require compilation alongside the kernel headers. After that, modprobe does the rest. Dependencies are not an issue.
More complex software that does have dependencies usually works through the distro's package manager, and I am damned happy about that...
Finally, whether or not command line options are required is irrelevant if the exact sequence of commands is described in a README. All the user has to do is type them in as they appear in the file. Reading the documentation may be a dying art, but failing to at least read the 'quick start' instructions when clueless? That is the fault of the user. Besides, a fixed sequence of install instructions can be put in one script (usually install.sh) and that only requires a single command to execute.
The shell prompt is an important part of Linux. Users quickly learn the basics of running programs from it.
Ahh you are right, I missed the 'Kernel Modules' part :o
It isn't always that easy, but for the most part this is very true. Heck, nVidia's drivers practically do everything for you :D
(My current worse-case is where I had to compile a kernel driver for some obscure on-board LAN chip, and you had to specify all sorts of compile-options crap for it or it'd barf! Remember this lesson kids: Stay away from cheap-ass obscure hardware (As opposed to cheap-ass generic-standards hardware ;)) if you want to have a happy Linux experience!)
At the moment, Linux is best for two kinds of people:
1) Newbies
2) Elite hackers (real, not press)
The newbies, they will just use what is given to them. Put something like Ubuntu or Knoppix in front of them and give them a quick tour and they'll be using it with no problems and without the threat of being r00ted or pwned by Joe-Trojan or John-Virus.
They'll only use the package installers and so will be under little risk of trashing the system
With modern distros, you need *never* touch the command line, and that makes this group happy :)
The elite hacker types, they relish the insane complexity that you can get into with Linux, (Should you want to!). Anyone using LFS or Gentoo usually comes under this catagory :D
People who are not total n00bs, but who're also not Linus Torvalds, will have the most trouble because they usually want the system up, but setup slightly different to the way they want, but don't have the knowledge/experience to do it, which usually ends up with lots of Hands On Learning (breaking stuff :D)
But they learn the most out of the three.
The ones with the most problems are Mainstream Gamers - If you're one of them, you can pretty much forget Linux - You are Own3d by Microsoft ;)
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I wouldn't call myself one of the Linux elite. Hell, I've only been using it for two years and that was mostly because Windows is too bulky to use as a server OS on a Pentium 3...
But I use Gentoo on my main rig. I wouldn't say it's especially difficult, because the instructions for a stage 3 install are pretty comprehensive. All you need to do is read and type. Setting up the make configs can be awkward but the default is OK for most people.
In fact, I'd say that Gentoo has been a lot simpler for me than Debian. Portage is a very smart package manager, certainly the equal of Aptitude. It doesn't have a graphical front end (at least, I haven't installed one) but it's pretty good at figuring out a package name from a keyword; DWIM in action, it seems.
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I've just gotten off my lazy arse to finally kludge toether a machine to be my next toy server.
I was considering putting Slackware 10.2 on it since I'm used to how Slackware does things, but since this machine is an AthlonXP and not an K6-3, it felt a bit wasteful since Slacky's binaries are almost all compiled for i386s for universal compatibility, so I decided to try Gentoo again.
Dear god, I'd forgotten how evil and painful the installation process is (Mainly because it doesn't actually *have* an installer!).
I've just had to start from scratch because I took a shortcut, using an old stage3 tarball, which I've discovered makes portage break when you get to the point where you have to "emerge sync" to build the software catalogue!
So now I am currently waiting for 92MB's of a 2005 stage3 to download over my slow DSL connection so I can start again :hopping: :(
I can honestly *not* recommend this one as a simple distro to you Sandwich :D
How far have you gotten anyway? If any :p
It's taken me about 6 months to finally do something about this one... :nervous:
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The cost of using a 'bleeding edge' distro I'm afraid Cyker.
I found a stage three install to be relatively straightforward. As for the CLI; if you have any reservations then I'd advise you to give up now as linux troubleshooting simply requires it.
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It's not the CLI I'm having trouble with, it's the lack of *stuff* the boot environment has once you get to the end of stage3, and also the end of the installation documentation.
It doesn't actually tell you how to get X up and running in a nice easy way for starters!
My goal is to get this system up and running the same as my current Slackware-on-a-486 box, which means people have to be able to SSH in and use VNC to run things like Opera.
I can see this is going to be a long road - I know now I can't just to emerge tightvnc or something, because it will install a metric-assload of crap into the system that I don't want (Ironically, better package options control is half the reason why I wanted to try Gentoo in the first place!)
After finishing the Installation guide, I just wanted to add Midnight Commander (It makes browsing the filesystem a lot easier, and you get mcedit which is a lot better than nano and a lot easier to use than vi!), but running "emerge -av mc" and it'll try and install GTK2 and X as well!
So I had to do 'USE="-X" emerge -av mc' instead, but it's stuff like that that tells me I'll have to install everything piecemeal.
The other annoyance is I don't know what versions of packages I currently have are; There doesn't appear to be an easy way of listing a) All the packages you've currently got b) What options they were compiled with and c) What version they are
I know this is just ranting, and I must apologise since this isn't really the place for it ;)
I'm just having a hard time getting used to this after using Slackware for so long.
Do you reckon I should just junk it and install Slackware 10 instead?
Or is it worth the initial pain to get everything working...?
My current worry is whether I can compile things manually without using Portage later, without breaking anything - The scripts and config layout is substantially more complicated than the BSD-style stuff in Slackware (Although it's better than the usual SysV setup! ;))
Really, I think I'm getting on pretty well. I'm just being a whiney bastard in here because nobody else wants to listen to my ranting :D
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Well I've only ventured into SUSE a few times since I installed it. I'm of mixed emotions over the whole thing. For one, I am glad that I made the jump and tried it out. Its a valuable learning experience to venture into a different OS entirely but on the same piece of hardware. You start to separate out the OS from the base of the hardware...even when that sort of thing is abundantly clear anyways.
SUSE takes a while to start (maybe almost 1 minute from start of boot to finished loading) but once its done it seems very brisk and it rarely skips a beat. Even when I'm running a few different tasks it seems to just keep going like not much is going on. I suspect that its one of those "bettar than Wind0wz" sorts of things.
So far I'm completely baffled on why I can't get Azerus to play MP3's (something to do with codecs which I haven't sorted yet - xine VS something else?), and I haven't got a clue how to install the ATI video drivers yet (although I'm getting along very well with just the default video mode whatever it is), but its not bad. I keep thinking...for a person who wants 3 things: office software, basic web-browsing, and e-mail this is pretty solid. For me...with many years of Windows use under my belt and the general understanding of most nooks and crannies in the OS this stuff is all new to me and I can't look under the hood as readily as I can in Windows...not that you can't..just I haven't quite figured and commited to memory everything.
Its a viable alternative...and if something were to go belly up with Windows via a doomsday sort of virus/worm scenario I'd still be chugging along on SUSE fairly well in my estimation. At the very worst its giving me a taste of the *nix environment and expanding my computer knowledge a bit.
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It doesn't actually tell you how to get X up and running in a nice easy way for starters!
*cough cough*
I think you're looking for this: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml?catid=desktop
specifically: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml
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As I said - Not in a nice easy way ;)
There is a manual there - There are manuals for *everything*, but half the time they don't actually tell me anything useful, or leave out important bits of info. (I'm glad I did X on my own BEFORE I found that section because all that stuff about Modular X.Org would have tripped me up, while the actual X.Org doc was sitting descretely in the middle somewhere!)
They're not so much guides/manuals as references - If I wasn't used to doing sutff 'the hard way' from my Slackware days I don't think I'd have gotten this far!
I did find one website that had nice one-shot mini-guides for doing specific tasks here:
http://perso.netplus.ch/FCorthay/InstallGentoo/index.html
but it glosses over anything other than a straight install...
I must admit, I'm getting a little disheartened at the lack of customisability with Gentoo - It does make things a LOT easier in some senses (I don't have to ./configure;make;make install EVERYTHING by hand! Woo!), but it's at the cost of a lot of customisability, and I haven't found a way of making emerge ./configure things with the options *I* want. USE= gets me a little of the way there, but man...
I am currently trying to get KDE to emerge without pulling in all this crap that I *know* it doesn't need, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do it so far :(
I am tempted to try hacking the dependency lists, but I do not think that'd be a good idea...! ;)
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Thought that's what USE flags were for... Anyway if you want to you could just edit the ebuilds for whatever features you want. As for 'useful' manuals i'd suggest you look at http://www.gentoo-wiki.com.
Other things:
You can find a list of installed packages in the /var/portage/world file
you can use app-portage/eix to find the installed version of specific packages (it's also a hell of a lot faster than emerge --search)
I'm pretty sure emerge (well i know it used to) has a option to just set a package as installed so you can ./configure && make && make install
If your having major problems go ask #gentoo on freenode
hope that helps anyone attempting to install gentoo
-oohal
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*hardly understands anything said in this thread*
Argh, I have to learn linux for the networks subject I'm doing at uni. The steep learning curve does not look so appealing when one's GPA score is involved. =/
I'm going to have to spend extra time on this during the week, which is gonna be a pain. :(
I hope I can call on you guys at least, should I have any troubles. :)
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Given that UNIX is used a hell of a lot in security- or reliability-critical networking scenarios, I'm not surprised you have to learn to use Linux.
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True, but just don't ASSUME Linux is secure - This can easily be a lie.
The reason people think it is secure is down to its userbase. See, Linux looks really hard, so only tech-heads use it, and THEY know what they're doing, so they set it up right.
However, with Linux, it is EXCEEDINGLY easy to shoot yourself in the foot (Or, in fact, blow your entire pelvis off) if you just wade into it gung-ho.
If your system gets r00ted, you're basically ****ed.
But TBH learning it is not hard. In fact, if you're gonna learn it, learning the CLI is pretty easy!
Just take it slowly and make sure you take copious amounts of notes on what the various commands do as you learn about them - Even I don't know every single command or how they're all used, but I get by fine because you really don't need to know all of them!
(Hell, I rebound half my commands to DOS equivs. I hate 'ls' (The directory lister), so my .bashrc (Kinda like the autoexec.bat) has a line (alias dir='ls -alF --color') which makes it more DOS-like. Same with many other commands (alias del='rm -i', alias rd='rmdir' etc.))
The thing with the CLI is that people automatically assume it's gonna be hard and their brain goes into what I call Denial mode. If you can overcome that hangup, the CLI is a piece of piss.
In a loose vague way, you could think of it as holding a conversation with the compy, IRC-style ;) (But all the evil IRC slang is evil Unix slang instead ;))
Some basic commands that are nice on the CLI are things like:
"ls" = LiSt current directory
"ls -alF --color" = LiSt current directory but DOS-style and with pretty colours :D
"cd" = Change directory (Use: cd /home/myname or cd ../subdir etc.)
"mc" = Launch Midnight Commander (Newbies to the CLI love this; It's basically a text-mode file manager ;))
"rm" = ReMove file; Basically like "del" in DOS
"less" = Good for reading text files, can also use it to pause stuff like long directory listings, e.g. "ls | less" to
"man" = You'll use this a lot; Type "man <name of command>" to get info on it. It's like a crap version of the old DOS 6.2 HELP program
"info" = Like man; Has more detail, but is more confusing.
"lynx" = Text mode web browser! Masochists only! :D
"alias" = Mix your own commands! e.g. alias dir="ls -alF --color" or alias pdir="dir | less"
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Be wary that some distros do not come with midnight comander or lynx installed.
Links2 has pretty much superceded lynx as the text browser of choice.
As for ls; I don't see what your problem is and I definately steer away from using dos-like commands, keep the two as seperate as possible and learn to think in the way that linux does things.
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Each to their own I guess.
I personally *hate* ls in it's default form. I mean, it just spits out a whole bunch of half-assed formatted filenames at you, and doesn't even list 'hidden' files!
I much prefer the vertical column view - It just gives so much more info, things like *gasp* file sizes, permissions, whether the files/dir is really a file/dir (As opposed to a symlink, which I use a fair bit; God I wish Windows had those in a usable form instead of those stupid .lnk shortcuts...)
Plus I like the pwetty colours :D
But it's all a usability thing for me.
Same with the other stuff (I'd rather type in 'rd' than 'rmdir' and 'md' instead of 'mkdir' etc.).
I have no problem with aliasing equivalent DOS commands - If it makes my life easier, I'll do it; Heck I even do it the other way around with some things (less is better than more... so now I have a DOS version ;)).
Frankly, there are a lot of things Linux (Well, Unix) does in a really stupid way (Case sensitive filenames being one of my most hated 'features'; Why for god's sake?! Mixed-case long filenames, sure, fine, that's A Good Thing, but case sensitive filenames are EVIL!), so assuming that the Unix way is always the best is flawed...
And yeah, I've noticed some distros don't come with mc/lynx installed by default...
lynx I can understand (I don't like links much, but this is mainly because it tries to build a quasi-gui on the console; Having used lynx for so long, it just feels... weird.)
But Midnight Commander?! Sacrilage damnit! It's all these new fangled GUIs I tell you! Why, in my day, we had Text-only Hercules monochrome cards AND WE LIKED IT! :hopping: ;)
#include<humor.h>
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I'm not criticising your view, if anything it's a rather nice reminder at how flexible linux can be. I would advise new users to stick with defaults until they're terribly comfortable with linux if for no other reason than to be able to follow install guides and the like.
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Case sensitive filenames being one of my most hated 'features'; Why for god's sake?! Mixed-case long filenames, sure, fine, that's A Good Thing, but case sensitive filenames are EVIL!
Damn good thing you meant that as a joke.
I'd've said that anything other than case-sensitivity was stupid, especially since case-sensitivity is pretty much the standard now. Of course, every filesystem Microsoft has been able to create/pervert ignores case, which leads to real problems when transferring files between systems.
Then we have the bug in WinXP (and possibly earlier Windoze versions, too, but I haven't used them in so long) where you can't begin a filename with a '.'. Of course, this would be because of MS's overwhelmingly dumb decision to hide file extensions by default; a filename beginning with a dot would be invisible, and we can't have that, can we? But since Apache uses .htaccess files...
So stick with the intuitively correct system of case-sensitivity. Anyone can see that 'A' != 'a', and that 'file1 file2' should be two seperate files.
Allowing spaces in a filename is stupid, too. It's another practice that's become common due to the decline of the command line.
And before anyone says the command line is less powerful than a GUI, I'd like to see how they copy all images from a mixed directory tree to another directory tree, while retaining the directory structure. It's a one-liner in UNIX (and DOS if you're comfortable with the hairier parts of the FOR syntax) but absolute hell with a mouse.
If people had to remember to escape spaces when typing in a filename, they'd be less inclined to use them in the first place.
Finally, securing Linux is not hard. In fact, here's a one-liner that secures the system against remote attacks:
iptables -P INPUT DROP
Drops all inbound connections. If you want a port open, you explicitly open it and then just worry about the consequences of that one port. I might also point out that GUIs get in the way of configuring a firewall, especially if said GUI is anything like as retarded as the web interfaces on the majority of routers out there.
As for securing the rest of the system, provided you don't use root too often and restrict /sbin to wheel users I don't see a problem. The OS needs updating quite often but so does Windows.
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first question from me:
'.' and '..' in linux.
I know they mean hidden files or restricted rights, and that ls -a brings them up. But what do they mean specifically. I can't seem to find any info about them using the $man command. =/
I'm using a Red Hat Fedora Core 4 distro I believe.
Time is of the essence...
Ed: Also how to chmod a file to different groups at once?
Ed2: What command to prevent users from accessing /home directory, what command to change for permissions to all files / folders in a folder?
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first question from me:
'.' and '..' in linux.
I know they mean hidden files or restricted rights, and that ls -a brings them up. But what do they mean specifically. I can't seem to find any info about them using the $man command. =/
. == Where you are right now. It's just a symbol for your current directory. Try cd .
.. == The next higher directory. If you're in /home/dude/stuff and cd .. you'll end up in /home/dude
Ed: Also how to chmod a file to different groups at once?
I don't believe a file can belong to multiple groups. Using chmod changes the read/write/execute permissions of a file for the owner, its group, and all users (in that order). The easiest method for doing this (IMO) is with octals, although it can seem a little complicated at first.
4 = Read
2 = Write
1 = Execute
Add them up for the r/w/x permissions you want to give. For example, being able to read, write and execute a file would be 7 (4+2+1). Just reading and writing would be 6 (4+2).
You'll need three values (user, group and all). So, given a file called example1, which we want everyone to be able to read, write and execute, we'd use the following command.
chmod 777 example1
Directories use the execute bit a little differently. It defines whether someone can enter that directory... So, if you chmod 666 a directory, no one will be able to access it. It's also the chmod of the beast, so avoid it if at all possible.
Change the owner and group of a file with chown (or chgrp if you'd just like to change the group ownership). If we wanted example1 to belong to root in group root, we'd enter the following command:
chown root:root example1
Ed2: What command to prevent users from accessing /home directory, what command to change for permissions to all files / folders in a folder?
It depends on which users. If you'd like no one but root to have access, the following would do the trick:
chown root:root /home
chmod 700 /home
To apply a command to all files in a directory, use a * (wildcard) in the place of a filename. To apply to every sub-directory, use the -R command line switch (that's a capital R). -R works with a large number of unix commands.
So, example time again... We're going to change ownership to me in the wheel group, give myself r/w/x, my group r/w, and everybody read, and apply it to everything in every folder under /home. Ready?
chown spectre7:wheel /home/* -R
chmod 762 /home/* -R
And, umm.... be careful with this kind of crap. Almost all of the above is at least slightly dangerous, and should not be done without some thought as to the consequences.
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. == Where you are right now. It's just a symbol for your current directory. Try cd .
.. == The next higher directory. If you're in /home/dude/stuff and cd .. you'll end up in /home/dude
Also, folders beginning with a '.' (in the name) are hidden, but can be viewed with 'ls -a'
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Cheers guys.
Expect more from me when I next need to fill out ze details. ;)
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Also, folders beginning with a '.' (in the name) are hidden, but can be viewed with 'ls -a'
Some useful stuff to be added to the ~/.bashrc file:
export LS_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
alias ls='ls $LS_OPTIONS'
alias ll='ls $LS_OPTIONS -l'
alias la='ls $LS_OPTIONS -la'
And if you're not root and you're feeling brave:
alias nuke='rm -rf'
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Spectre-7's totally right :D
The only thing I'd suggest different is for /home - If you want to block access totally, what he's saying is correct.
If however, you want to do something similar to what I do on my system it's better to set the permissions to:
chmod 711 /home
This sets the eXecute bit enable for everyone, which means they can cd /home/<username> to get to their directory, but not *read* /home to see every other user's directory.
(The eXecute bit is a bit weird; If you set it for a file, the OS will think it's an executable and try to run it (Even if it isn't! So be careful!!), but if you set it on a directory, it means you can go into that directory. A directory without the eXecute bit set won't let you 'cd' into it...)
<rant mode! can ignore :p>
Descenterace:
re: Case sensitivity
Actually, I wasn't kidding - I really do think it is a BAD thing.
I personally don't know of a SINGLE reason why it is a good thing.
NOTE - I am not talking about multi-case long-filenames.
I personally like being able to call something "Cyker's Big File Of Crap.zip" - As someone who's been forced to use 8.3 filenames and (even worse) things like 4DOS to workaround 8.3 filenames, I will never let go of my long multi-case filenames now!! :D
HOWEVER - I do NOT want to be able to have 6 files called:
"Cyker's Big File Of Crap.zip"
"Cyker's Big File Of Crap.ZIP"
"Cyker's Big File Of Crap.Zip"
"Cyker's Big File of Crap.zip"
"Cyker's Big File of Crap.Zip"
"Cyker's Big File of Crap.ZIP"
and have the system recognise them as ALL BEING DIFFERENT. There is just *NO* good usability reason for it!
If I wanted 6 big files of crap I'd put numbers on them!
(I suspect you will never know my pain until you have been forced to port a Windows IIS web-tree, with all student sub-folders, to a Linux Apache2 system and then support it... "No you prat! It has to be called index.html! NOT INDEX.HTML!!!! DIE!! DIE!!!!")
The ONLY reason we're stuck with this in Unix is because C (the language which Unix and Linux were originally coded in) is naturally case sensitive, and the original coders just didn't think of the problems this would cause.
As it stands we *can't* go back now, because it is such a fundamental filesystem attribute that changing it would break huge amounts of stuff...
This mean's we're stuck with it... I have accepted this, but it doesn't make it any less stupid.
re . files
The not beginning with a . thing in DOS/Windows is a throwback to the 8.3 filename system Windows/DOS is based on:
Unlike Unix, ALL files have a root 8-character FILENAME, and a 3-character EXTENSION - The Extension is used to define the type of file at a glance (Unlike, say on Unix and Amiga where they use a 'magic cookie'-type system and have to open every single file to see what type of file it is; This is more secure, but a lot slower)
This is why filenames shouldn't begin with a . in DOS/Windows - From the OS point of view, it means the file has *no* filename, only an extension!! In DOS, this would be Bad.
The use of .htaccess things in Apache is very Linux/Unix-specific, and not cross-platform-friendly.
The ONLY reason Apache uses .htaccess is because files that start with a dot are considered HIDDEN files. This is not defined by the filesystem in any way, but is just a Unix convention that anything pulling a directory list will hide things that start with a . by default.
However, on DOS/Windows this is *completely* unnecessary - DOS/Windows has a *specific* filesystem bit-flag to say whether a file is hidden or not, and doesn't need silly workarounds like the starting-with-a-dot thing.
This is moot anyway; IIRC you can tell Apache to use htaccess instead of .htaccess as it's config files, and then just make sure it has its hidden flag set ;)
re spaces in names:
Allowing spaces in filenames... mmmm... In Windows it's handled badly, but in Linux it correctly allows you to "" or \ them, and bash's tab to autocomplete helps a LOT (I love bash. bash rules my linux box. :D) , so I can live with it...
But I'm leaning more towards your opinion, having been forced to use both sh and the Windows Recovery Console (Pure Evil) in my time...
re Linux security:
Your gung-ho attitude to Linux security is exactly what I was warning about 'tho.
I mean, heck, I could point out that disabling the network connection on my Win98 box would make it just as secure!
It all boils down to Knowing how to do things, and the only way to get that is by Learning.
There is *no* quick and easy path to secure any OS. Well, at least if you want it to be connected to a network and/or actually usable!
Heck, you can even not bother up upgrade the system (My recently retired 486 had been running Slackware 8.0 for the past 2-ish years!) and still be pretty safe as long as you are Careful. But this applies to all OS (I'm proud of my Windows machine; Has Win98 as it's primary boot, has no anti-virus/anti-spyware crap, yet has never been hacked :D)
The biggest ace Linux has in terms of security is that it was built on Unix, which was a multi-user OS from the ground-up.
This means that you *can* run as a user and still be able to do almost everything you need, whereas Windows is a total PITA for a lot of things unless you run as Administrator all the time, which gets you pwned.
...
Right, did I scare everyone away again? :nervous:
(I'm not a zealot! No, really! :nervous: )
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OK... I think case-sensitivity is one of those Holy Wars that isn't going to get resolved because both sides are right, for a given value of 'right'. Being a longtime low-level programmer, I see those six filenames as different anyway.
The DOS naming convention is probably the worst ever invented. File extensions are a good idea (Linux uses them as first-chance hints these days) but the old CP/M filesystem that DOS inherited is absolutely abominable for anything other than a single, standalone workstation. Adding long filenames to the mix helped a bit, but it's just a stopgap measure.
Yes, I have ported stuff between IIS and a Linux machine. I cursed Windows' lack of case sensitivity. It just seems a lot more logical to treat 'A' != 'a', since there are different characters. But that's Holy War territory again.
Windows filesystems all inherit certain characteristics from FAT. Strangely, out of FAT's set of attributes, only the Read Only bit is remotely important. The others are all hacks intended to work around the lack of access control in that filesystem. The System bit would be redundant under UNIX because 'root:root, 740' is pretty much the same. The Hidden bit is enabled by inserting a dot at the beginning of the filename.
And the only reason the Hidden bit is required is because it treats the dot as a special character. The filename/extension seperator. A more sensible implementation would have supported a 12-character filename (instead of enforcing an 8.3 split) since the overhead to locate a '.' in a 12 character string is minimal.
The Archive bit has no equivalent under Linux. It was originally used to mark changed files for backup, which seems like a really good idea, but it's not used these days and no one misses it. The reason for this is that a file's modification date provides much the same function.
As for my gung-ho attitude towards Linux security: those were examples of how to close off major inroutes. A proper security solution would be somewhat more complex and require maintenance, but a GNUbie wouldn't know how to set it up.
My own method of securing a system involves closing down all access, then opening up what I need. This is pretty much the de facto standard method of securing a system, but the 'what I need' varies widely.
My Windows machine has never been r00ted either. It got a minor viral infection once, which it caught from a game patch I got at a LAN party from a trusted source (one who, I found out later, hadn't actually scanned the file for viruses despite having got it from the seedier parts of the Internet), but that got cleared out a couple of months later when I got hold of a free virus scanner. Even if it had gone off (April 26th, I think) it wouldn't have caused me too much trouble; I keep backups of important data files and the system had a Gigabyte DualBIOS mainboard at the time.
Yes, the virus was CIH.
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For those still looking for the right distro - There is now an Linux Distribution Chooser.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
HTH
ciao
futureshock
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With all those mentions of Holy War I suspect a few red flags went off in intelligence agency's across the globe.
*Waves at ASIO team*
Nice work fellah's now fix my damn internet connection! ><
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Carnivore bait:
terrorist bomb bush air force one cocaine osama saddam iraq north korea white house twin towers assassinate nuclear anthrax washington
That should raise a few more red flags, unless they've incorporated some means of filtering out obvious piss-takes.
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Desc:
You're probably right; The case-sensitivity war has already raged its course through Usenet and that's enough for me!! ;)
future:
That is cool! :D
Sadly, it said I should use Ubuntu. :eek: :nervous: :lol:
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(I suspect you will never know my pain until you have been forced to port a Windows IIS web-tree, with all student sub-folders, to a Linux Apache2 system and then support it... "No you prat! It has to be called index.html! NOT INDEX.HTML!!!! DIE!! DIE!!!!")
You could always use a little command line magic to convert the filenames to lowercase. God bless shell scripting... :)
EDIT- And, for the Unix hater with too much time on his hands... http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html
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Ahh if only it had been that easy...
I actually made a script to do recursively rename files, like the idiot I was, but failed to take into account that if you HREF something in mixed-case, the file HAS to be in that format as well!
So I wrote a script to lower-caseify all HREF links.
And then I found that some of them were using JavaScript. And image maps.
For complexity reasons, I couldn't write a script for that, so I ended up having to write a script that looked for that stuff and I had to trawl through the files by hand!
I only had to alter about 15 or so pages, but I had to wade through a lot more than that...
*whimper*
I don't wanna think about it anymore... :nervous: