Linux Frequently Asked Questions with Answers This is the list of Frequently Asked Questions for Linux, the free, POSIX compatible operating system kernel that runs on many modern computer systems. Linux uses free, GNU system utilities and application software, although commercial programs are available also. Originally written for 386/486/586 Intel/ISA bus machines, Linux versions exist for Alpha, Sparc, MIPS, ARM, 680x0, PPC, and many other platforms. (Please refer to the question, ``[1]What is Linux?'' below.) This FAQ is meant to be read in conjunction with the Linux Documentation Project's HOWTO series. (``[2]Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP?'' and, ``[3]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'') The INFO-SHEET and META-FAQ also list sources of Linux information. Please read them, and, ``[4]You Still Haven't Answered My Question!'' before posting to a Usenet news group. You can also get Postscript, HTML, and SGML versions of this document. (``[5]Formats in Which This FAQ Is Available.'') _________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. [6]Introduction and General Information 1.1. [7]What is Linux? 1.2. [8]Where Do I Start? 1.3. [9]What Software Does Linux Support? 1.4. [10]Does Linux Run on My Computer? What Hardware Is Supported? 1.5. [11]What Ports to Other Processors Are There? 1.6. [12]How Much Hard Disk Space Does Linux Need? 1.7. [13]How Much Memory Does Linux Need? 1.8. [14]How Much Memory Can Linux Use? 1.9. [15]Does Linux Support the USB Bus? 1.10. [16]Is Linux Public Domain? Copyrighted? 1.11. [17]Is Linux *nix? 2. [18]Topics of Current Interest. 2.1. [19]What Resources Are There for Linux DeCSS and Other Open Source DVD Software? 2.2. [20]Where Is Information About Electronic Privacy Laws that Affect ISP's? 2.3. [21]How Is the DocBook Version of the FAQ Produced? 3. [22]Network Sources and Resources 3.1. [23]Where Can I Get the Latest Kernel Version? 3.2. [24]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation? 3.3. [25]Where Should I Look on the World Wide Web for Linux Stuff? 3.4. [26]What News Groups Are There for Linux? 3.5. [27]What Other FAQ's Are There for Linux? 3.6. [28]Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP? 3.7. [29]I Don't Have FTP Access. Where Do I Get Linux? 3.8. [30]I Don't Have Usenet Access. Where Do I Get Information? 3.9. [31]What Mailing Lists Are There? 3.10. [32]Where Are Linux Legal Issues Discussed? 3.11. [33]Are the News Groups Archived Anywhere? 3.12. [34]Where Can I Find Out About Security Related Issues? 4. [35]Compatibility with Other Operating Systems 4.1. [36]Can Linux Share My Disk with DOS? OS/2? 386BSD? Win95? 4.2. [37]How Do I Access Files on My DOS Partition Or Floppy? 4.3. [38]Does Linux Support Compressed Ext2 file Systems? 4.4. [39]Can I Use My Stacked/DBLSPC/Etc. DOS Drive? 4.5. [40]Can I Access OS/2 HPFS Partitions from Linux? 4.6. [41]Can Linux Access Amiga File Systems? 4.7. [42]Can Linux Access BSD, SysV, Etc. UFS? 4.8. [43]Can Linux Access SMB File Systems? 4.9. [44]Can Linux Access Macintosh File Systems? 4.10. [45]Can I Run Microsoft Windows Programs under Linux? 4.11. [46]Where Can I Get Information about NFS Compatibility? 4.12. [47]Can I Use True Type Fonts with Linux? 4.13. [48]How Can I Boot Linux from MS-DOS? 4.14. [49]How Can I Boot Linux from OS/2's Boot Manager? 5. [50]File Systems, Disks, and Drives 5.1. [51]How Can I Get Linux to Work with My Disk? 5.2. [52]How Can I Undelete Files? 5.3. [53]How Do I Make Backups? 5.4. [54]How Do I Resize a Partition (Non-Destructively)? 5.5. [55]Is There a Defragmenter for Ext2fs, Etc.? 5.6. [56]How Do I Format and Create a File System on a Floppy? 5.7. [57]Does Linux Support Virtualized File Systems Like RAID? 5.8. [58]Does Linux Support File System Encryption? 5.9. [59]I Get Nasty Messages about Inodes, Blocks, and the Like. 5.10. [60]My Swap Area Isn't Working. 5.11. [61]How Do I Add Temporary Swap Space? 5.12. [62]How Do I Remove LILO So My System Boots DOS Again? 5.13. [63]Why Can't I Use fdformat Except as Root? 5.14. [64]My Ext2fs Partitions Are Checked Each Time I Reboot. 5.15. [65]My Root File System Is Read-Only! 5.16. [66]I Have a Huge /proc/kcore! Can I Delete It? 5.17. [67]The AHA1542C Doesn't Work with Linux. 5.18. [68]Where Do I Find the Journalling File System? 6. [69]Porting, Compiling and Obtaining Programs 6.1. [70]How Do I Compile Programs? 6.2. [71]How Do I Install GNU Software? 6.3. [72]Where Do I Get Java? 6.4. [73]How Do I Port XXX to Linux? 6.5. [74]What Is ld.so and Where Do I Get It? 6.6. [75]How Do I Upgrade the Libraries without Trashing My System? 6.7. [76]Has Anyone Ported/Compiled/Written XXX for Linux? 6.8. [77]Can I Use Code or a Compiler Compiled for a 486 on My 386? 6.9. [78]What Does ``gcc -O6'' Do? 6.10. [79]Where Are linux/*.h and asm/*.h? 6.11. [80]I Get Errors when I Try to Compile the Kernel. 6.12. [81]How Do I Make a Shared Library? 6.13. [82]My Executables Are (Very) Large. 6.14. [83]Does Linux Support Threads or Lightweight Processes? 6.15. [84]Where Can I Get lint for Linux? 6.16. [85]Where Can I find Kermit for Linux? 6.17. [86]I Want to Use Linux with My Cable Modem. 6.18. [87]Is There an ICQ Program That Runs under Linux? 7. [88]Solutions to Common Miscellaneous Problems 7.1. [89]PPP Connection Dies when Sending Large Files. 7.2. [90]Free Dumps Core. 7.3. [91]How Do I Keep Track of All My Bookmarks in Netscape? 7.4. [92]The Computer Has the Wrong Time. 7.5. [93]Setuid Scripts Don't Seem to Work. 7.6. [94]Free Memory as Reported by free Keeps Shrinking. 7.7. [95]When I Add More Memory, the System Slows to a Crawl. 7.8. [96]Some Programs (E.g. xdm) Won't Let Me Log in. 7.9. [97]Some Programs Let Me Log in with No Password. 7.10. [98]My Machine Runs Very Slowly when I Run GCC / X / ... 7.11. [99]I Can Only Log in as Root. 7.12. [100]My Screen Is All Full of Weird Characters Instead of Letters. 7.13. [101]I Have Screwed Up My System and Can't Log in to Fix It. 7.14. [102]I Forgot the root Password. 7.15. [103]I've Discovered a Huge Security Hole in rm! 7.16. [104]lpr and/or lpd Don't Work. 7.17. [105]Timestamps on Files on MS-DOS Partitions Are Set Incorrectly 7.18. [106]How Do I Get LILO to Boot the Kernel Image? 7.19. [107]I Upgraded the Kernel and Now My PCMCIA Card Doesn't Work. 8. [108]How Do I Do This or Find Out That... 8.1. [109]How Do I Know If My Notebook Runs Linux? 8.2. [110]How Do I Install Linux Using FTP? 8.3. [111]How do I resume an interrupted FTP transfer? 8.4. [112]How Can I Get Scrollback in Text Mode? 8.5. [113]How Do I Get E-mail to Work? 8.6. [114]How do I prevent Sendmail from pausing for up to a minute at each command? 8.7. [115]How Do I Switch Virtual Consoles? How Do I Enable Them? 8.8. [116]How Do I Set the Time Zone? 8.9. [117]How Do I Get Dial-up PPP to Work? 8.10. [118]What Version of Linux and What Machine Name Am I Using? 8.11. [119]What is a ``core'' File? 8.12. [120]How Can I Enable or Disable Core Dumps? 8.13. [121]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel? 8.14. [122]Can I Have More than 3 Serial Ports by Sharing Interrupts? 8.15. [123]How Do I Configure Emacs to Start with My Default Settings? 8.16. [124]How Do I Make a Rescue Floppy? 8.17. [125]How Do I Remap My Keyboard to UK, French, Etc.? 8.18. [126]How Do I Get NUM LOCK to Default to On? 8.19. [127]How Do I Set (Or Reset) My Initial Terminal Colors? 8.20. [128]How Can I Have More Than 128Mb of Swap? 9. [129]Miscellaneous Information and Questions Answered 9.1. [130]How Do I Program XYZ Under Linux? 9.2. [131]What's All This about ELF? glibc? 9.3. [132]How Do I Determine What Packages Are Installed on My System? 9.4. [133]What Is a .gz file? And a .tgz? And .bz2? And... ? 9.5. [134]What Does VFS Stand For? 9.6. [135]What is a BogoMip? 9.7. [136]What Online/Free Periodicals Exist for Linux? 9.8. [137]How Many People Use Linux? 9.9. [138]How Many People Use Linux? (Redux.) 9.10. [139]How Should I Pronounce Linux? 9.11. [140]Where Can I Find Out about Free Software Projects? 10. [141]Frequently Encountered Error Messages 10.1. [142]Modprobe Can't Locate Module, XXX, and Similar Messages. 10.2. [143]Unknown Terminal Type ``linux'' and Similar. 10.3. [144]INET: Warning: old style ioctl... called! 10.4. [145]ld: unrecognized option '-m486' 10.5. [146]GCC says, ``Internal compiler error.'' 10.6. [147]Make Says, ``Error 139.'' 10.7. [148]Shell-Init: Permission Denied when I Log in. 10.8. [149]No Utmp Entry. You Must Exec ... when Logging in. 10.9. [150]Warning--bdflush Not Running. 10.10. [151]Warning: obsolete routing request made. 10.11. [152]EXT2-fs: warning: mounting unchecked file system. 10.12. [153]EXT2-fs warning: maximal count reached. 10.13. [154]EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached. 10.14. [155]df Says, ``Cannot read table of mounted file systems.'' 10.15. [156]fdisk Says, ``Partition X has different physical/logical...'' 10.16. [157]fdisk: Partition 1 does not start on cylinder boundary. 10.17. [158]fdisk Says Partition n Has an Odd Number of Sectors. 10.18. [159]A Mtools Utility Says It Cannot Initialize Drive XYZ. 10.19. [160]At the Start of Booting: Memory tight 10.20. [161]My Syslog says, ``end_request: I/O error, ....'' 10.21. [162]``You don't exist. Go away.'' 10.22. [163]``Operation not permitted.'' 11. [164]The X Window System 11.1. [165]Does Linux Support X? 11.2. [166]How Do I Get the X Window System to Work? 11.3. [167]Where Can I Get a Ready-Made XF86Config for My System? 11.4. [168]What Desktop Environments Run on Linux? 11.5. [169]xterm Logins Show Up Strangely in who, finger. 12. [170]How to Get Further Assistance 12.1. [171]You Still Haven't Answered My Question! 12.2. [172]What to Put in a Request for Help. 12.3. [173]I Want to Mail Someone about My Problem. 13. [174]Acknowledgments and Administrivia 13.1. [175]Feedback Is Invited. 13.2. [176]Formats in Which This FAQ Is Available. 13.3. [177]Authorship and Acknowledgments. 13.4. [178]Disclaimer and Copyright. 1. Introduction and General Information 1.1. What is Linux? Linux is the kernel of operating systems that look like and perform as well or better than the famous operating system from AT&T Bell Labs. Linus Torvalds and a loosely knit team of volunteer hackers from across the Internet wrote (and still are writing) Linux from scratch. It has all of the features of a modern, fully fledged operating system: true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared, copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and TCP/IP networking. Most people, however, refer to the operating system kernel, system software, and application software, collectively, as "Linux," and that convention is used in this FAQ as well. Linux was written originally for 386/486/586-based PC's, using the hardware facilities of the 80386 processor family to implement its features. There are now many ports to other hardware platforms. (``[179]What Ports to Other Processors Are There?'') There are also Linux distributions specifically for mobile and handheld platforms. An API specification and developers kit for the Crusoe Smart Microprocessor developed by Transmeta Corporation are at [180]http://www.transmeta.com/. Information on the Linux distribution for the Compaq iPAQ is at [181]http://www.handhelds.org/ Refer also to the Linux INFO-SHEET for more details as well as the answers to ``[182]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'', ``[183]Does Linux Run on My Computer? What Hardware Is Supported?'', and ``[184]What Ports to Other Processors Are There?'', below. A reasonably up-to-date archive of the major and more specialized distributions is on-line at [185]ftp://ftp.tux.org/. The Linux kernel is distributed under the GNU General Public License. (``[186]Is Linux Public Domain? Copyrighted?'') There is a historical archive of all versions of the Linux kernel at [187]http://ps.cus.umist.ac.uk/~rhw/kernel.versions.html. _________________________________________________________________ 1.2. Where Do I Start? There are a handful of major Linux distributions. For information about them, and how they are installed, see Matthew Welsh's Installation and Getting Started, or IGS for short. It's located at the Linux Documentation Project Home Page, [188]http://www.linuxdoc.org/, and on the Linux FAQ home page, [189]http://www.mainmatter.com/ Postings on the comp.os.linux.* Usenet News groups, including the FAQ, are archived on [190]http://www.deja.com/usenet/. Search for ``comp.os.linux'' to retrieve articles from the Linux News groups. (``[191]What News Groups Are There for Linux?'') The information in IGS is somewhat dated now. More up-to-date information about first-time Linux installation is located in the LDP's Installation HOWTO, also located at the LDP Home Page. Commercial distributions have begun to appear on the shelves of many book and electronics stores in the last year, in the U.S., and they have been available in many other countries for some time. Some hardware vendors now ship systems with Linux pre-installed. There is a very thorough installation guide on line at [192]http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/linux.html. Some distributions can still be installed via anonymous FTP from various Linux archive sites, but in many cases, the size of the distribution makes this impractical. (``[193]Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP?'') There are also a large number of other releases which are distributed less globally that suit special local and national needs. Many of them are archived at [194]ftp://ftp.tux.org/ _________________________________________________________________ 1.3. What Software Does Linux Support? Linux supports GCC, Emacs, the X Window System, all the standard Unix utilities, TCP/IP (including SLIP and PPP), and all of the hundreds of programs that people have compiled or ported to it. There is a DOS emulator, called DOSEMU. The latest stable release is 0.98.3. The FTP archives are at [195]ftp://ftp.dosemu.org/dosemu The Web site is [196]http://www.dosemu.org. The emulator can run DOS itself and some (but not all) DOS applications. Be sure to look at the README file to determine which version you should get. Also, see the DOSEMU-HOWTO (slightly dated at this point--it doesn't cover the most recent version of the program), at [197]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO. Work has been progressing on an emulator for Microsoft Windows binaries. (``[198]Can I Run Microsoft Windows Programs under Linux?'') iBCS2 (Intel Binary Compatibility Standard) emulator code for SVR4 ELF and SVR3.2 COFF binaries can be included in the kernel as a compile-time option. There is information at [199]ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/BETA/ibcs2/README. For more information see the INFO-SHEET, which is one of the HOWTO's (``[200]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'' and ``[201]How Do I Port XXX to Linux?'') Some companies have commercial software available, including Motif, WordPerfect, and Framemaker. They often announce their availability on comp.os.linux.announce-- try searching the archives. (``[202]Are the News Groups Archived Anywhere?'') _________________________________________________________________ 1.4. Does Linux Run on My Computer? What Hardware Is Supported? Giving Linux a try requires a machine with an Intel '386, '486, or '586 processor with at least 2Mb of RAM and a single floppy drive. To do anything useful, more RAM and disk space is needed. (``[203]How Much Memory Does Linux Need?'') VESA Local Bus and PCI are supported. MCA (IBM's proprietary bus) and ESDI hard drives are mostly supported. There is further information on the MCA bus and what cards Linux supports on the Micro Channel Linux Web page, [204]http://www.dgmicro.com/mca. See also (``[205]Where Should I Look on the World Wide Web for Linux Stuff?'') Linux runs on most current laptops, with a decent X display. Refer to How do I know if my notebook runs Linux? For details of exactly which PC's, video cards, disk controllers, etc. work see the INFO-SHEET and the Hardware-HOWTO. (``[206]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'') There is a port of Linux to the 8086, known as the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS). This is a 16-bit subset of the Linux kernel which will mainly be used for embedded systems. See [207]http://www.linux.org.uk/Linux8086.html for more information. Linux will never run fully on an 8086 or '286, because it requires task-switching and memory management facilities not found on these processors. Linux supports multiprocessing with Intel MP architecture. See the file Documentation/smp.tex in the Linux kernel source code distribution. See the question below for a (probably incomplete) list of hardware platforms Linux has been ported to. _________________________________________________________________ 1.5. What Ports to Other Processors Are There? At present there doesn't seem to be a definitive list of the Linux ports that are in existence. The URL's below are simply the ones that people have submitted for inclusion in the FAQ. If you do know of a definitive list, please let the FAQ maintainer know. A project has been underway for a while to port Linux to suitable 68000-series based systems like Amigas and Ataris. The Linux/m68K FAQ is located at [208]http://www.clark.net/pub/lawrencc/linux/faq/faq.html. The URL of the Linux/m68k home page is [209]http://www.linux-m68k.org. There is a m68k port for the Amiga by Jes Sorensen, which is located at [210]ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/680x0/redhat/. The installation FAQ for the package, by Ron Flory, is at [211]http://www.feist.com/~rjflory/linux/rh/. There is also a linux-680x0 mailing list. (``[212]What Mailing Lists Are There?'') There is (or was) a FTP site for the Linux-m68k project on [213]ftp.phil.uni-sb.de/pub/atari/linux-68k, but this address may no longer be current. Debian GNU/Linux is being ported to Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC, and ARM platforms. There are mailing lists for all of them. See [214]http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe One of the Linux-PPC project pages has moved recently. Its location is [215]http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe. [216]http://www.linuxppc.org, and the archive site is [217]ftp://ftp.linuxppc.org/linuxppc. There is a Linux-PPC support page at [218]http://www.cs.nmt.edu/~linuxppc/. There you will find the kernel that is distributed with Linux. Apple now supports MkLinux development on Power Macs, based on OSF and the Mach microkernel. See http://www.mklinux.apple.com. There are two sites for the Linux iMac port: [219]http://w3.one.net/~johnb/imaclinux, and [220]http://www.imaclinux.net:8080/content/index.html. A port to the 64-bit DEC Alpha/AXP is at [221]http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/. There is a mailing list at vger.rutgers.edu. (``[222]What Mailing Lists Are There?'') Ralf Baechle is working on a port to the MIPS, initially for the R4600 on Deskstation Tyne machines. The Linux-MIPS FTP sites are [223]ftp://ftp.fnet.fr/linux-mips and [224]ftp://ftp.linux.sgi.com/pub/mips-linux. Interested people may mail their questions and offers of assistance to [225]mailto:linux@waldorf-gmbh.de. There is (or was) also a MIPS channel on the Linux Activists mail server and a linux-mips mailing list. (``[226]What Mailing Lists Are There?'') There are currently two ports of Linux to the ARM family of processors. One of these is for the ARM3, fitted to the Acorn A5000, and it includes I/O drivers for the 82710/11 as appropriate. The other is to the ARM610 of the Acorn RISC PC. The RISC PC port is currently in its early to middle stages, owing to the need to rewrite much of the memory handling. The A5000 port is in restricted beta testing. A release is likely soon. For more, up-to-date information, read the newsgroup comp.sys.acorn.misc. There is a FAQ at [227]http://www.arm.uk.linux.org. The Linux SPARC project is a hotbed of activity. There is a FAQ available from Jim Mintha's Linux for SPARC Processors page, [228]http://www.geog.ubc.ca/sparclinux.html. The SPARC/Linux archives are at [229]ftp://vger.rutgers.edu/pub/linux/Sparc. The Home Page of the UltraSPARC port ("UltraPenguin") is located at [230]http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/linux/ultrapenguin-1.0/. There is also a port ("Hardhat") to SGI/Indy machines. The URL is [231]http://www.linux.sgi.com/. _________________________________________________________________ 1.6. How Much Hard Disk Space Does Linux Need? About 10Mb for a very minimal installation, suitable for trying Linux, and not much else. You can fit an installation that includes X into 80Mb. Installing Debian GNU/Linux takes 500Mb--1GB, including kernel source code, some space for user files, and spool areas. Installing a commercial distribution that has a desktop GUI environment, commercial word processor, and front-office productivity suite, will claim an additional 1 GB of disk space, approximately. _________________________________________________________________ 1.7. How Much Memory Does Linux Need? At least 4MB, and then you will need to use special installation procedures until the disk swap space is installed. Linux will run comfortably in 4MB of RAM, although X Apps will run slowly because they need to swap out to disk. Some recent applications, like the later versions of Netscape, require as much as 64MB of physical memory. There is a distribution, "Small Linux," that will run on machines with 2MB of RAM. Refer to Where can I get Linux material by FTP? _________________________________________________________________ 1.8. How Much Memory Can Linux Use? A number of people have asked how to address more than 64 MB of memory, which is the default upper limit. Place the following in your lilo.conf file: append="mem=XXM" Where "XX" is the amount of memory, specified as megabytes; for example, '128M'. For further details, see the lilo manual page. _________________________________________________________________ 1.9. Does Linux Support the USB Bus? Linux supports a few dozen USB devices at present, and work is underway to develop device drivers for additional hardware devices. There is a Web page devoted to the subject, at [232]http://www.linux-usb.org/. In addition, there is a LDP HOWTO. See also, (``[233]Where Should I Look on the World Wide Web for Linux Stuff?'') _________________________________________________________________ 1.10. Is Linux Public Domain? Copyrighted? The Linux trademark belongs to Linus Torvalds. He has placed the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License, which basically means that you may freely copy, change, and distribute it, but you may not impose any restrictions on further distribution, and you must make the source code available. This is not the same as Public Domain. See the Copyright FAQ, [234]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/law/copyright, for details. Full details are in the file COPYING in the Linux kernel sources (probably in /usr/src/linux on your system). The licenses of the utilities and programs which come with the installations vary. Much of the code is from the GNU Project at the Free Software Foundation, and is also under the GPL. Note that discussion about the merits or otherwise of the GPL should be posted to the news group gnu.misc.discuss, and not to the comp.os.linux hierarchy. For other legal questions, see (``[235]Where Are Linux Legal Issues Discussed?'') _________________________________________________________________ 1.11. Is Linux *nix? Not officially, until it passes the Open Group's certification tests, and supports the necessary API's. Even very few of the commercial operating systems have passed the Open Group tests. For more information, see [236]http://www.unix-systems.org/what_is_unix.html. [Bob Friesenhahn] _________________________________________________________________ 2. Topics of Current Interest. 2.1. What Resources Are There for Linux DeCSS and Other Open Source DVD Software? The free DeCSS software that decodes DVD's was developed for MS Windows and Apple systems, and Linux support is in the works. The Motion Picture Association of America and DVD Content Control Association's filed lawsuits that restrain distribution of the software, although a U.S. court ruled that the software may be freely distributed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, [237]http://www.eff.org is coordinating legal defense for computer users that were affected by the lawsuits. There is a DeCSS Resource Site at [238]http://www.pzcommunications.com/main.htm, which is maintained by PZ Communications, one of the defendants in the DVD CCA case. Another suit, against the magazine 2600, is being covered by the New York Times on the Web, at [239]http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/cyber/cyberlaw/ Access to the Web site is free but requires registration. _________________________________________________________________ 2.2. Where Is Information About Electronic Privacy Laws that Affect ISP's? The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued a report to Congress that recommends regulations to guarantee privacy for customers of Internet Service Providers. The text of the report is at [240]http://www.ftc.gov/acoas/papers/finalreport.htm. The FTC E-commerce site is at [241]http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm/ The New York Times on the Web has a resource page of electronic privacy information resources at [242]http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/index-privacy.html Access is free but requires registration. The Electronic Privacy Information Center maintains a Web page at [243]http://www.epic.org/. The site also has pointers to information about international laws that affect cryptographic software. _________________________________________________________________ 2.3. How Is the DocBook Version of the FAQ Produced? At present, the Linux FAQ uses the OASIS DocBook SGML DTD. HTML output is produced using James Clark's Jade DSSSL parser with modified versions of Norman Walsh's modular style sheets. Question numbers are generated with Perl. The text version is formatted from HTML with lynx, and split into segments using the standard GNU text utilities, and the segments are posted to Usenet. The DocBook utilities are located at [244]ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/sourceware/docbook-tools/. _________________________________________________________________ 3. Network Sources and Resources 3.1. Where Can I Get the Latest Kernel Version? Make that versions. The 2.0. series kernels are still available for older machines. Following Linus's even/odd versioning scheme, the latest production kernel is 2.2.x. The updates to this kernel are bug fixes. Active development is proceeding on the 2.3.x versions of the kernel, and a feature freeze has recently been announced for the 2.4 series production kernels. Linux kernel version 2.2. was released on January 25, and a bug fix version 2.2.1 was released several days later. New versions are always being released. The kernel contains numerous improvements in features and performance compared to the kernel versions 2.0.x. Among the 2.2 kernel's many improvements are a video frame buffer, faster (although bigger) memory management, support for more hardware devices, improved security, and improved POSIX compatibility. The Linux kernel, in many of these instances, is superior to commercial OS's. To read more about the features in kernel version 2.2.x, the unofficial, draft press releases are located at [245]http://www.tip.net.au/~edlang/linux/linux2.2pr.html. If you want to download the source code, FTP to ftp.xx.kernel.org, where "xx" is the two-letter Internet domain abbreviation of your country; e.g., "us" for United States, "ca" for Canada, or "de" for Germany. Kernel versions 2.2.x are archived in the directory pub/linux/kernel/v2.2, as are patches for the prerelease versions. The kernel source code is archived as a .tar.gz file, and as a .tar.bz2 file. Follow the instructions in any of the standard references to compile the 2.2 kernel, as you would with any other custom kernel. The Documentation subdirectory also contains information by the authors of various subsystems and drivers, and much of that information is not documented elsewhere. If you want to participate in kernel development, the latest 2.3 version kernels are available from ftp.kernel.org as well. Make sure you sign on to the linux-kernel mailing list to find out what people are working on. (``[246]What Mailing Lists Are There?'') There is a story about the features of the 2.4 series kernels at [247]http://features.linuxtoday.com/stories/8191.html. _________________________________________________________________ 3.2. Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation? Look in the following places, and the sites that mirror them. * [248]http://www.linuxdoc.org/ * [249]ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux/doc/HOWTO/ * [250]ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/ * [251]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/ For a list of Linux FTP sites, see, (``[252]Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP?'') If you don't have access to FTP, try the FTP-by-mail servers at [253]mailto:ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, [254]mailto:ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk, or [255]mailto:ftp-mailer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de. A complete list of HOWTO's is available in the file HOWTO-INDEX at [256]http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html. The mini-HOWTO's are indexed at [257]http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/mini.html. In addition, translations available from [258]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/translations/ and mirrors worldwide. The HOWTO's and other documentation have been translated into the following languages: Chinese (zh) Croatian (hr) French (fr) German (de Hellenic (el) Indonesian (id) Italian (it) Japanese (ja) Korean (ko) Polish (pl) Slovenian (sl) Spanish (es) Swedish (sv) Turkish (tr) Additional documents are always in preparation. Please get in touch with the coordinators if you are interested in writing one. Contact and submission information is at [259]http://www.linuxdoc.org/mailinfo.html. There is also a LDP HOWTO page at [260]http://howto.tucows.org/. The Guide Series produced by the Linux Documentation Project is available from [261]http://www.linuxdoc.org/. Please read them if you are new to Unix and Linux. And, of course, a number of people have written documentation independently of the LDP: * Linux Administrators Security Guide, by Kurt Seifried. [262]http://www.freek.com/lasg/. * Newbie's Linux Manual. [263]http://www.linuxdoc.org/nlm/. * One-Page Linux Manual. [264]http://www.powerup.com.au/~squadron/. * Short beginners' manual for Linux. Also available in Dutch. [265]http://www.stuwww.kub.nl/people/b.vannunen/linux-man.php3. * Virtual Frame buffer HOWTO, by Alex Buell. [266]http://www.tahallah.demon.co.uk/programming/prog.html. * X11 & TrueType Fonts, by Peter Kleiweg. [267]http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/. There is a FAQ for Linux kernel developers at [268]http://www.tux.org/html/. To find out about Linux memory management, including performance tuning, see Rik van Riel's Web page at [269]http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/. The Linux Consultants HOWTO has a directory of Linux consultants at [270]http://www.linuxports.com/. Gary's Encyclopedia lists over 4,000 Linux related links. Its URL is [271]http://members.aa.net/~swear/pedia/index.html. There is also a FAQ specifically for the Red Hat Linux distribution, at [272]http://www.best.com/~aturner/jRedHat-FAQ/faq_index.html. And the Home Page of this FAQ (by default, The Linux FAQ) is the Mainmatter Press, [273]http://www.mainmatter.com/. _________________________________________________________________ 3.3. Where Should I Look on the World Wide Web for Linux Stuff? In addition to the Linux Documentation Project Home Page, [274]http://www.linuxdoc.org/, there are many pages that provide beginning and advanced information about Linux. These two pages provide a good starting point for general Linux information: Linux International's Home Page, at [275]http://www.li.org/, and the Linux Online's Linux Home Page at [276]http://www.linux.org/. Both of these pages provide links to other sites, information about general information, distributions, new software, documentation, and news. The tutorial, Unix is a Four Letter Word..., is located at [277]http://www.linuxbox.com/~taylor/4ltrwrd/. It is a general introduction to Unix operating systems and is not Linux specific. Additionally, here is a certainly incomplete list of Web pages devoted to Linux: * AboutLinux.com. [278]http://www.aboutlinux.com/. * Adventures in Linux Programming. [279]http://members.xoom.com/rpragana/. * Dave Central Linux Software Archive. [280]http://linux.davecentral.com/. * Erlug Webzine (Italian). [281]http://www.erlug.linux.it/. * Ext2 File System capabilities (draft). [282]http://pocket.fluff.org/~mrw/linux/ext2.txt. * Free Unix Giveaway List. [283]http://visar.csustan.edu/giveaway.html. Lists offers of free Linux CDs. Also available via E-mail: [284]mailto:axel@visar.csustan.edu, with the Subject: send giveaway_list. * Information on Linux in corporate environments. [285]http://www.smartstocks.com/linux.html. * Jeanette Russo's Linux Newbie Information. [286]http://www.stormloader.com/jrusso2/index.html. * JustLinux.com. [287]http://www.justlinux.com/. * LinuxArtist.org. [288]http://www.linuxartist.org/. * Linux Cartoons. [289]http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~conradp/linux/cartoons/. * linuXChiX.org. [290]http://www.linuxchix.org/. * Linux Educational Needs Posting Page. [291]http://www.slip.net/~brk/linuxedpp.htm. * Linux in Business: Case Studies. [292]www.bynari.com/collateral/case_studies.html. * Linux Inside. [293]http://linuxinside.org/. * Linux Links. [294]http://www.linuxlinks.com/. * Linux Memory Management Home Page. [295]http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/. * Linux Newbie Project. [296]http://kusma.hypermart.net/. * Linux on the Thinkpad 760ED. [297]http://www.e-oasis.com/linux-tp.html. * Linux Parallel Port Home Page. [298]http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html. * Linux MIDI & Sound Applications. [299]http://sound.condorow.net/. * Linux Start. [300]http://www.linuxstart.com/. * Linux Tips and Tricks Page. [301]http://www.patoche.org/LTT/. * Linux Today PR. [302]http://www.linuxpr.com/. * My Linux Contributions by Richard Gooch. [303]http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/. * Micro Channel Linux Web Page. [304]http://www.dgmicro.com/mca/. * Parallel port scanners and SANE. [305]http://www2.prestel.co.uk/hex/scanners.html. * PegaSoft Portal. [306]http://www.vaxxine.com/pegasoft/portal/ * Red Hat and ISDN4Linux [307]http://www.webideal.de/. * SearchLinux. [308]http://www.searchlinux.com/. * USB Linux Home Page. [309]http://peloncho.fis.ucm.es/~inaky/uusbd-www/. * VLUG: The Virtual Linux Users Group. [310]http://www.vlug.com/. _________________________________________________________________ 3.4. What News Groups Are There for Linux? Comp.os.linux.announce is the moderated announcements group; you should read this if you intend to use Linux: it contains information about software updates, new ports, user group meetings, and commercial products. It is the only newsgroup that may carry commercial postings. Submissions for that group should be e-mailed to [311]mailto:linux-announce@news.ornl.gov. Comp.os.linux.announce, however, is not archived on DejaNews or Alta Vista. The only archive for the news group seems to be [312]http://www.iki.fi/mjr/linux/cola.html. [Axel Boldt] Also worth reading are the following other groups in the comp.os.linux.* hierarchy--you may find many common problems too recent for the documentation but are answered in the newsgroups. * alt.uu.comp.os.linux * alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions * comp.os.linux.admin * comp.os.linux.advocacy * comp.os.linux.alpha * comp.os.linux.answers * comp.os.linux.development * comp.os.linux.development.apps * comp.os.linux.development.system * comp.os.linux.embedded * comp.os.linux.hardware * comp.os.linux.help * comp.os.linux.m68k * comp.os.linux.misc * comp.os.linux.network * comp.os.linux.networking * comp.os.linux.portable * comp.os.linux.powerpc * comp.os.linux.questions * comp.os.linux.redhat * comp.os.linux.security * comp.os.linux.setup * comp.os.linux.test * comp.os.linux.x * comp.os.linux.x.video Remember that Linux is POSIX compatible, and most all of the material in the comp.unix.* and comp.windows.x.* groups will be relevant. Apart from hardware considerations, and some obscure or very technical low-level issues, you'll find that these groups are good places to start. Please read (``[313]You Still Haven't Answered My Question!'') before posting. Cross posting between different comp.os.linux.* groups is rarely a good idea. There may well be Linux groups local to your institution or area--check there first. See also (``[314]I Don't Have Usenet Access. Where Do I Get Information?'') Other regional and local newsgroups also exist--you may find the traffic more manageable there. The French Linux newsgroup is fr.comp.os.linux. The German one is de.comp.os.linux. In Australia, try aus.computers.linux. In Croatia there is hr.comp.linux. In Italy, there is it.comp.linux. _________________________________________________________________ 3.5. What Other FAQ's Are There for Linux? There are a number of special-interest FAQ's on different subjects related to system administration and use, and also on unrelated topics like Flying Saucer Attacks (the music) and support for recovering sysadmins. The official Usenet FAQ archives are at [315]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/. The FAQ's are on the Web at [316]http://www.faqs.org/, which also has a complete library of Usenet RFC's and other references. Here are some FAQ's that might be especially useful, and their home pages: * A FAQ for new users. [317]http://homes.arealcity.com/swietanowski/LinuxFAQ/. * BASH Frequently Asked Questions [318]ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pug/bash/FAQ/. * Frequently Asked Questions about Open Source. [319]http://www.opensource.org/faq.html. * GNU Emacs. http://www.lerner.co.il/emacs/faq-body.shtml. * GNU Linux in Science and Engineering. [320]http://members.home.net/scieng/. * Gnus 5.x. [321]http://www.ccs.neu.edu/software/contrib/gnus/. * List of Periodic Information Postings [322]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/ . * Sendmail. [323]http://www.sendmail.org/faq/. _________________________________________________________________ 3.6. Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP? There are three main archive sites for Linux: * [324]ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux/ (Finland). * [325]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/ (US). * [326]tsx-11.mit.edu//pub/linux/ (US). The best place to get the Linux kernel is [327]ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/. Linus Torvalds uploads the most recent kernel versions to this site. Of the U.S. distributions, Debian GNU/Linux is available at [328]ftp://ftp.debian.org/pub/debian/. Red Hat Linux's home site is [329]ftp://ftp.redhat.com/, and Linux Slackware's is [330]ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/. The Small Linux distribution, which can run in 2 MB of RAM, is located at [331]http://smalllinux.netpedia.net/. The contents of these sites is mirrored (copied, usually approximately daily) by a number of other sites. Please use a site close to you--it will be faster for you and easier on the network. * [332]ftp://ftp.sun.ac.za/pub/linux/sunsite/ (South Africa) * [333]ftp://ftp.is.co.za/linux/sunsite/ (South Africa). * [334]ftp://ftp.cs.cuhk.hk/pub/Linux/ (Hong Kong). * [335]ftp://sunsite.ust.hk/pub/Linux/ (Hong Kong). * [336]ftp://ftp.spin.ad.jp/pub/linux/ (Japan). * [337]ftp://ftp.nuri.net/pub/Linux/ (Korea). * [338]ftp://ftp.jaring.my/pub/Linux/ (Malaysia). * [339]ftp://ftp.nus.sg/pub/unix/Linux/ (Singapore). * [340]ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/linux/ (Thailand). * [341]ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linux/ (Australia). * [342]ftp://sunsite.anu.edu.au/pub/linux/ (Australia). * [343]ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/linux/ (Australia). * [344]ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux/sunsite/ (Austria). * [345]ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/UNIX/linux/ (Czech Republic). * [346]ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/sunsite/ (Finland). * [347]ftp://ftp.univ-angers.fr/pub/Linux/ (France). * [348]ftp://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/ (France). * [349]ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/sunsite/ (France) * [350]ftp://ftp.loria.fr/pub/linux/sunsite/ (France). * [351]ftp://ftp.dfv.rwth-aachen.de/pub/linux/sunsite/ (Germany). * [352]ftp://ftp.germany.eu.net/pub/os/Linux/Mirror.SunSITE/(Germany ). * [353]ftp://ftp.tu-dresden.de/pub/Linux/sunsite/ (Germany). * [354]ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/Linux/MIRROR.sunsite/ (Germany). * [355]ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mirrors/sunsite/ (Germany). * [356]ftp.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/linux/mirror.sunsite/ (Germany). * [357]ftp://ftp.ba-mannheim.de/pub/linux/mirror.sunsite/ (Germany). * [358]ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/Mirrors/sunsite.unc.edu/(Germa ny). * [359]ftp://ftp.uni-rostock.de/Linux/sunsite/ (Germany). * [360]ftp.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/unix/systems/linux/MIRROR.sunsit e/(Germany). * [361]ftp://ftp.uni-tuebingen.de/pub/linux/Mirror.sunsite/ (Germany). * [362]ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/linux/(Hungary). * [363]ftp://linux.italnet.it/pub/Linux/(Italy). * [364]ftp://ftp.unina.it/pub/linux/sunsite/ (Italy). * [365]ftp://giotto.unipd.it/pub/unix/Linux/ (Italy). * [366]ftp://cnuce-arch.cnr.it/pub/Linux/ (Italy). * [367]ftp://ftp.flashnet.it/mirror2/metalab.unc.edu/ (Italy). * [368]ftp://ftp.nijenrode.nl/pub/linux/ (Netherlands). * [369]ftp://ftp.LeidenUniv.nl/pub/linux/sunsite/ (Netherlands). * [370]ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/linux/sunsite/ (Norway). * [371]ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/Linux/metalab.unc.edu/ (Poland). * [372]ftp://ftp.rediris.es/software/os/linux/sunsite/ (Spain). * [373]ftp://sunsite.rediris.es/software/linux/ (Spain). * [374]ftp://ftp.cs.us.es/pub/Linux/sunsite-mirror/ (Spain). * [375]ftp://ftp.etse.urv.es/pub/mirror/linux/ (Spain). * [376]ftp://tp.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/linux/ (Spain). * [377]ftp://ftp.luna.gui.es/pub/linux.new/ (Spain). * [378]ftp://ftp.metu.edu.tr/pub/linux/sunsite/ (Turkey). * [379]ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/sunsite/pub/Linux/ (UK). * [380]ftp.maths.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors/linux/sunsite.unc-mirror/(UK) . * [381]ftp://ftp.idiscover.co.uk/pub/Linux/sunsite.unc-mirror/(UK). * [382]ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/linux/sunsite.unc-mirror/ (UK). * (UK) * [383]ftp://ftp.io.org/pub/mirrors/linux/sunsite/ (Canada). * [384]ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/ (US). * [385]ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/linux/sunsite/ (US). * [386]ftp://ftp.siriuscc.com/pub/Linux/Sunsite/ (US). * [387]ftp://ftp.engr.uark.edu/pub/linux/sunsite/ (US). * [388]ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/linux/sunsite/ (US). * [389]ftp://linux.if.usp.br/pub/mirror/metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/(B razil). * [390]ftp://farofa.ime.usp.br/pub/linux/ (Brazil). Please send updates and corrections to this list to the Linux FAQ maintainer, [391]mailto:rkiesling@mainmatter.com Not all of these mirror all of the other ``source'' sites, and some have material not available on the ``source'' sites. _________________________________________________________________ 3.7. I Don't Have FTP Access. Where Do I Get Linux? The easiest thing is probably to find a friend with FTP access. If there is a Linux user's group near you, they may be able to help. If you have a reasonably good email connection, you could try the FTP-by-mail servers at [392]mailto:ftpmail@ftp.sunet.se, or [393]mailto:ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de. Linux is also available via traditional mail on CD-ROM. The file [394]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO, and the file [395]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Distribution-HOWTO contain information on these distributions. _________________________________________________________________ 3.8. I Don't Have Usenet Access. Where Do I Get Information? A digest of comp.os.linux.announce is available by mailing the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) as the body of a message to [396]mailto:linux-announce-REQUEST@news-digests.mit.edu. Subscribing to this list is a good idea, as it carries important information and documentation about Linux. Please remember to use the *-request addresses for your subscribe and unsubscribe messages; mail to the other address is posted to the news group. _________________________________________________________________ 3.9. What Mailing Lists Are There? The Linux developers now mainly use the Majordomo server at [397]mailto:majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu. Send a message with the word "lists" (without the quotes) in the body to get a list of lists there. Add a line with the word, "help," to get the standard Majordomo help file that lists instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing to the lists. Please do not post off-topic material to the mailing lists. Most of them are used by Linux developers to talk about technical issues and future developments. They are not intended for new users' questions, advertisements, or public postings that are not directly related to the mailing list's subject matter. Comp.os.linux.announce is the place for all public announcements. This is a common Internet policy. If you don't observe this guideline, there's a good chance that you'll be flamed. There is a linux-newbie list where, "no question is too stupid." Unfortunately, it seems that few experienced users read that list, and it has very low volume. There are numerous Linux related mailing lists at [398]http://www.onelist.com/. Go to the categories page and choose "Linux." _________________________________________________________________ 3.10. Where Are Linux Legal Issues Discussed? On the linux-legal mailing list, of course. You can subscribe to it, as with many of the other Linux related lists, by sending a message with the word "help" in the body of the message to [399]mailto:majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu. _________________________________________________________________ 3.11. Are the News Groups Archived Anywhere? The Usenet Linux news groups are archived at [400]http://www.dejanews.com/, and [401]http://altavista.digital.com/. [402]http://www.reference.com/ is unavailable until further notice, apparently due to lack of support. [403]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/linux-announce.archive contains archives of comp.os.linux.announce. These are mirrored from [404]src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/, which also archives comp.os.linux, comp.os.linux.development.apps, and comp.os.linux.development.system. There is an `easy to access' archive of comp.os.linux.announce on the World Wide Web at [405]http://www.leo.org/archiv/unix/linux/ which supports searching and browsing. _________________________________________________________________ 3.12. Where Can I Find Out About Security Related Issues? Look at [406]http://www.rootshell.com/, which has information about security problems and software. _________________________________________________________________ 4. Compatibility with Other Operating Systems 4.1. Can Linux Share My Disk with DOS? OS/2? 386BSD? Win95? Yes. Linux uses the standard MS-DOS partitioning scheme, so it can share your disk with other operating systems. Note, however, that many other operating systems may not be exactly compatible. DOS's FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.EXE, for example, can overwrite data in a Linux partition, because they sometimes incorrectly use partition data from the partition's boot sector rather than the partition table. In order to prevent programs from doing this, it is a good idea to zero out--under Linux--the start of a partition you created, before you use MS-DOS--or whatever--to format it. Type: $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdXY bs=512 count=1 where hdXY is the relevant partition; e.g., /dev/hda1 for the first partition of the first (IDE) disk. Linux can read and write the files on your DOS and OS/2 FAT partitions and floppies using either the DOS file system type built into the kernel or mtools. There is kernel support for the VFAT file system used by Windows 9x and Windows NT. There is reportedly a GPL'd OS/2 device driver that will read and write Linux ext2 partitions. For information about FAT32 partition support, see [407]http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html. See, (``[408]What Software Does Linux Support?'') for details and status of the emulators for DOS, MS Windows, and System V programs. See also, "Can Linux access Amiga file systems? ", "Can Linux access Macintosh file systems? ", "Can Linux access BSD, SysV, etc., UFS? ", and "Can Linux access SMB file systems? " There are said to be NTFS drivers under development, which should support compression as a standard feature. _________________________________________________________________ 4.2. How Do I Access Files on My DOS Partition Or Floppy? Use the DOS file system, type, for example: $ mkdir /dos $ mount -t msdos -o conv=text,umask=022,uid=100,gid=100 /dev/hda3 /dos If it's a floppy, don't forget to umount it before ejecting it! You can use the conv=text/binary/auto, umask=nnn, uid=nnn, and gid=nnn options to control the automatic line-ending conversion, permissions and ownerships of the files in the DOS file system as they appear under Linux. If you mount your DOS file system by putting it in your /etc/fstab, you can record the options (comma-separated) there, instead of defaults. Alternatively, you can use mtools, available in both binary and source form on the FTP sites. (``[409]Where Can I Get Linux Material by FTP?'') A kernel patch (known as the fd-patches) is available which allows floppies with nonstandard numbers of tracks and/or sectors to be used; this patch is included in the 1.1 alpha testing kernel series. _________________________________________________________________ 4.3. Does Linux Support Compressed Ext2 file Systems? The ext2compr project provides a kernel patch Information about them is located at [410]http://e2ompr.memalpha.cx/e2compr/. There is also a Web site for the e2compr patches. The code is still experimental and consists of patches for the 2.0 and 2.1 kernels. For more information about the project, including the latest patches, and the address of the mailing list, look up the URL at [411]http://debs.fuller.edu/e2compr/. [Roderich Schupp, Peter Moulder] zlibc is a program that allows existing applications to read compressed (GNU gzip'ed) files as if they were not compressed. Look at [412]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/libs/. The author is Alain Knaff. There is also a compressing block device driver, "DouBle," by Jean-Marc Verbavatz, which can provide on-the-fly disk compression in the kernel. The source-only distribution is located at [413]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/patches/diskdrives/. This driver compresses inodes and directory information as well as files, so any corruption of the file system is likely to be serious. There is also a package called tcx (Transparently Compressed Executables), which allows you to keep infrequently compressed executables compressed and only uncompress them temporarily when in use. It is located at [414]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/compress/. _________________________________________________________________ 4.4. Can I Use My Stacked/DBLSPC/Etc. DOS Drive? Until recently, not very easily. You can access DOS 6.X volumes from the DOS emulator ("What software does Linux support? "), but it's harder than accessing a normal DOS volume via the DOS kernel option, a module, or mtools. There is a recently added package, dmsdos, that reads and writes compressed file systems like DoubleSpace/DriveSpace in MS-DOS 6.x and Win95, as well as Stacker versions 3 and 4. It is a loadable kernel module. Look at [415]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/dosfs/. _________________________________________________________________ 4.5. Can I Access OS/2 HPFS Partitions from Linux? Yes, but Linux access to HPFS partitions is read-only. HPFS file system access is available as an option when compiling the kernel or as a module. See the Documentation/filesystems/hpfs.txt file in the kernel source distribution. (``[416]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') Then you can mount HPFS partition, using, for example: $ mkdir /hpfs $ mount -t hpfs /dev/hda5 /hpfs _________________________________________________________________ 4.6. Can Linux Access Amiga File Systems? The Linux kernel has support for the Amiga Fast File System (AFFS) version 1.3 and later, both as a compile-time option and as a module. The file Documentation/filesystems/affs.txt in the Linux kernel source distribution has more information. See (``[417]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') Linux supports AFFS hard-drive partitions only. Floppy access is not supported due to incompatibilities between Amiga floppy controllers and PC and workstation controllers. The AFFS driver can also mount disk partitions used by the Un*x Amiga Emulator, by Bernd Schmidt. _________________________________________________________________ 4.7. Can Linux Access BSD, SysV, Etc. UFS? Recent kernels can mount (read only) the UFS file system used by System V; Coherent; Xenix; BSD; and derivatives like SunOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and NeXTStep. UFS support is available as a kernel compile-time option and a module. See, (``[418]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') _________________________________________________________________ 4.8. Can Linux Access SMB File Systems? Linux supports read/write access of Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT SMB volumes. See the file Documentation/filesystems/smbfs.txt of the Linux kernel source distribution, and (``[419]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') There is also a suite of programs called Samba which provide support for WfW networked file systems (provided they're for TCP/IP). Information is available in the README file at [420]metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/samba/. The SMB Web site is [421]http://www.samba.org/, and there is also a Web site at [422]samba.anu.edu.au/samba/. _________________________________________________________________ 4.9. Can Linux Access Macintosh File Systems? There is a set of user-level programs that read and write the older Macintosh Hierarchical File System (HFS). It is available at [423]metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/disk-management/. Access to the newer, HFS+ file systems is still under development. _________________________________________________________________ 4.10. Can I Run Microsoft Windows Programs under Linux? WINE, a MS Windows emulator for Linux, is still not ready for general distribution. If you want to contribute to its development, look for the status reports in the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine newsgroup. There is also a FAQ, compiled by P. David Gardner, at [424]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/faqs/Wine-FAQ/. In the meantime, if you need to run MS Windows programs, the best bet--seriously--is to reboot. LILO, the Linux boot loader, can boot one of several operating systems from a menu. See the LILO documentation for details. Also, LOADLIN.EXE (a DOS program to load a Linux, or other OS, kernel is one way to make Linux co-exist with DOS. LOADLIN.EXE is particularly handy when you want to install Linux on a 3rd or 4th drive on a system (or when you're adding a SCSI drive to a system with an existing IDE). In these cases, it is common for LILO's boot loader to be unable to find or load the kernel on the "other" drive. So you just create a C:\LINUX directory (or whatever), put LOADLIN.EXE in it with a copy of your kernel, and use that. LOADLIN.EXE is a VCPI compliant program. Win95 will want to, "shutdown into DOS mode," to run it (as it would with certain other DOS protected-mode programs). Earlier versions of LOADLIN.EXE sometimes required a package called REALBIOS.COM, which required a boot procedure on an (almost) blank floppy to map the interrupt vectors (prior to the loading of any software drivers). (Current versions don't seem to ship with it, and don't seem to need it). [Jim Dennis] _________________________________________________________________ 4.11. Where Can I Get Information about NFS Compatibility? This information is partly taken from Nicolai Langfeldt's excellent NFS HOWTO, and is current as of 10/1/1999. Most version 2.2.x kernels need a set of patches to install the knfsd subsystem, maintained by H.J. Lu, to communicate efficiently (if at all) with Sparc, IBM RS, and Alpha machines, and probably others. This package is actually a collection of patches to the kernel sources. There is also a user-space server. Although it lacks remote file locking, it is easier to install. It may be equally efficient. In the Documentation/Changes of recent kernel distributions, there is a list of URL's for both the knfsd server and the user-space server. There is a CVS server available for the kernel-space NFS subsystem, as well as a NFS WWW page at [425]http://www.linuxnfs.sourceforge.org/, although the URL requires a password for access. The relevant URL's are listed in the README.nfs file at [426]ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/, and other kernel archive sites, along with login information. Patches are at [427]ftp://ftp.varesearch.com/pub/kernel/latest/patches/. The source archives of the user-space server and utilities currently reside on [428]ftp://linux.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de:/pub/linux/people/okir/. In the case of older Solaris releases, the lack of statd or lockd on a client or server machine may cause incompatibility. On some versions of Solaris, statd can be used to exploit features of the automounter. Sun released a patch to correct this, but statd still needs to be started by root on such systems. On recent Solaris systems, refer to the information in /etc/dfs/dfstab and the share(1M) manual page to enable volume sharing. In addition, the rpcinfo program can tell you if statd or lockd are available on the local or remote machines. The linux-kernel mailing list has on-and-off discussions of the status of the NFS subsystem, which appears to be changing rapidly. [Nicolai Langfeldt, Robert Kiesling, Anders Hammarquist] _________________________________________________________________ 4.12. Can I Use True Type Fonts with Linux? Yes. There are a number of True Type font servers for the X Window System. One of them is xfsft. Its home page is [429]http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jec/programs/xfsft/. There are also instructions for configuration. People have reported success with other True Type font servers. There are links from the xfsft Home Page to them as well. You can also compile True Type Font support into your X server directly. Again, refer to the xfsft Home Page for details. _________________________________________________________________ 4.13. How Can I Boot Linux from MS-DOS? If LILO doesn't work, and if the machine has MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows, you may be left with a computer that won't boot. This can also happen on an upgrade to your Linux distribution. Re-installing LILO is the last thing that the installation does. So it is vitally important when installing or upgrading Linux on a dual boot machine, to have a MS-DOS or Windows rescue disk nearby so you can FDISK -MBR. Then you can go about using LOADLIN.EXE instead of LILO. This config.sys file is one possible way to invoke LOADLIN.EXE and boot MS-DOS or Linux. [menu] menuitem=DOS, Dos Boot menuitem=LINUX, Linux Boot [LINUX] shell=c:\redhat\loadlin.exe c:\redhat\autoboot\vmlinuz vga=5 root=/dev [DOS] STACKS = 0,0 rem all the other DOS drivers get loaded here. This creates a menu where you can directly jump to LOADLIN.EXE before all of the MS-DOS drivers get loaded. The paths and options are peculiar to one machine and should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. See the LOADLIN.EXE docs for options. They are the same as LILO, and options are just passed to the kernel, anyhow. [Jim Harvey] _________________________________________________________________ 4.14. How Can I Boot Linux from OS/2's Boot Manager? 1. Create a partition using OS/2's FDISK.EXE (Not Linux's fdisk). 2. Format the partition under OS/2, either with FAT or HPFS. This is so that OS/2 knows about the partition being formatted. (This step is not necessary with OS/2 `warp' 3.0.) 3. Add the partition to the Boot Manager. 4. Boot Linux, and create a file system on the partition using mkfs -t ext2 or mke2fs. At this point you may, if you like, use Linux's fdisk to change the code of the new partition to type 83 (Linux Native)--this may help some automated installation scripts find the right partition to use. 5. Install Linux on the partition. 6. Install LILO on the Linux partition--NOT on the master boot record of the hard drive. This installs LILO as a second-stage boot loader on the Linux partition itself, to start up the kernel specified in the LILO configuration file. To do this, you should put boot = /dev/hda2 (where /dev/hda2 is the partition you want to boot from) in your /etc/lilo/config or /etc/lilo.config file. 7. Make sure that it is the Boot Manager partition that is marked active, so that you can use Boot Manager to choose what to boot. There is a set of HOWTO's on the subject of multi-boot systems at the LDP Home Page, [430]http://www.linuxdoc.org/. _________________________________________________________________ 5. File Systems, Disks, and Drives 5.1. How Can I Get Linux to Work with My Disk? If your disk is an IDE or EIDE drive, you should read the file /usr/src/linux/drivers/block/README.ide (part of the Linux kernel source code). This README contains many helpful hints about IDE drives. Many modern IDE controllers do translation between `physical' cylinders/heads/sectors, and `logical' ones. SCSI disks are accessed by linear block numbers. The BIOS invents some `logical' cylinder/head/sector fiction to support DOS. An IBM PC-compatible BIOS will usually not be able to access partitions which extend beyond 1024 logical cylinders, and will make booting a Linux kernel from such partitions using LILO problematic at best. You can still use such partitions for Linux or other operating systems that access the controller directly. It's recommend that you create at least one Linux partition entirely under the 1024 logical cylinder limit, and boot from that. The other partitions will then be okay. Also there seems to be a bit of trouble with the newer Ultra-DMA drives. I haven't gotten the straight scoop on them--but they are becoming a very common problem at the SVLUG installfests. When you can get 8 to 12 Gig drives for $200 to $300 it's no wonder. [Jim Dennis] _________________________________________________________________ 5.2. How Can I Undelete Files? In general, this is very hard to do on unices because of their multitasking nature. Undelete functionality for the ext2fs file system is being worked on, but don't hold your breath. There are a number of packages available which instead provide new commands for deleting and copying which move deleted files into a `wastebasket' directory. The files can be recovered until cleaned out automatically by background processing. Alternatively, you can search the raw disk device which holds the file system in question. This is hard work, and you will need to be logged in as root to do this. But it can be done. Run grep on the raw device; e.g.: grep -b 'bookmarks' /dev/hda If the data has not been overwritten, you should be able to recover it with a text editor. [Dave Cinege] _________________________________________________________________ 5.3. How Do I Make Backups? You can back up a directory hierarchy or complete file system to any media using GNU tar or cpio, the standard *nix tools for this purpose. tar seems to be the more commonly used program currently, and includes command line options to make compressed, incremental, and multi-volume backups. Complete information is contained in the documentation, which is in GNU Texinfo format. The free program, Amanda, receives a lot of mentions on Usenet. Its home page is [431]http://www.amanda.org/. Several commercial backup utilities also exist. They are often included in commercial distributions. _________________________________________________________________ 5.4. How Do I Resize a Partition (Non-Destructively)? Use the FIPS.EXE program, included with most Linux distributions,under MS-DOS. Parted, the free GNU partition editor, seems to be approaching usability for normal, non-systems programmer users. The latest version is at [432]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/parted/. Also, some commercial distributions come with their own partitioning software, like Partition Magic. _________________________________________________________________ 5.5. Is There a Defragmenter for Ext2fs, Etc.? Yes. There is defrag, a Linux file system defragmenter for ext2, Minix, and old-style ext file systems. It is available at [433]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/defrag-0.70.ta r.gz. Users of the ext2 file system can probably do without defrag, because ext2 contains extra code to keep fragmentation reduced even in very full file systems. _________________________________________________________________ 5.6. How Do I Format and Create a File System on a Floppy? To format a 3.5-inch, high density floppy: $ fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 $ mkfs -t ext2 -m 0 /dev/fd0H1440 1440 For a 5.25 inch floppy, use fd0h1200 and 1200 as appropriate. For the B: drive use fd1 instead of fd0. The -m 0 option tells mkfs.ext2 not to reserve any space on the disk for the superuser--usually the last 10% is reserved for root. The first command performs a low-level format. The second creates an empty file system. You can mount the floppy like a hard disk partition and simply cp and mv files, etc. Device naming conventions generally are the same as for other unices. They can be found in Matt Welsh's Installation and Getting Started guide. Refer to (``[434]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'') A more detailed and technical description is Linux Allocated Devices by H. Peter Anvin, [435]mailto:hpa@zytor.com, which is included in LaTeX and ASCII form in the kernel source distribution (probably in /usr/src/kernel/Documentation/), as devices.tex and devices.txt. _________________________________________________________________ 5.7. Does Linux Support Virtualized File Systems Like RAID? The most recent Linux kernels support software RAID, and they will work with RAID disk controllers. An automounter for NFS partitions is part of most Linux distributions. In addition, several virtual file system projects exist. One of them, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, is located at [436]http://linux.msede.com/lvm/. _________________________________________________________________ 5.8. Does Linux Support File System Encryption? Yes. One file system, ppdd, is archived at [437]http://pweb.de.uu.net/flexsys.mtk/. _________________________________________________________________ 5.9. I Get Nasty Messages about Inodes, Blocks, and the Like. You may have a corrupted file system, probably caused by not shutting Linux down properly before turning off the power or resetting. You need to use a recent shutdown program to do this--for example, the one included in the util-linux package, available on sunsite and tsx-11. If you're lucky, the program fsck (or e2fsck or xfsck as appropriate if you don't have the automatic fsck front-end) will be able to repair your file system. If you're unlucky, the file system is trashed, and you'll have to re-initialize it with mkfs (or mke2fs, mkxfs, etc.), and restore from a backup. NB: don't try to check a file system that's mounted read/write--this includes the root partition, if you don't see VFS: mounted root ... read-only at boot time. _________________________________________________________________ 5.10. My Swap Area Isn't Working. When you boot (or enable swapping manually) you should see Adding Swap: NNNNk swap-space If you don't see any messages at all you are probably missing swapon -av (the command to enable swapping) in your /etc/rc.local or /etc/rc.d/* (the system startup scripts), or have forgotten to make the right entry in /etc/fstab: /dev/hda2 none swap sw for example. If you see: Unable to find swap-space signature you have forgotten to run mkswap. See the manual page for details; it works much like mkfs. Running, free in addition to showing free memory, should display: total used free Swap: 10188 2960 7228 [Andy Jefferson] _________________________________________________________________ 5.11. How Do I Add Temporary Swap Space? In addition to a swap partition, Linux can also use a swap file. Some programs, like g++, can use huge amounts of virtual memory, requiring the temporary creation of extra space. To install an extra 64 MB of swap space, for example, use the following shell commands: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap bs=1024 count=65535 # mkswap /swap # swapon /swap The count= argument to dd determines how big the swap file will be. In this example the swap file's name is /swap, but the name and location are, generally, arbitrary, depending only on the file system's available space and your having write permissions in the directory. When you don't need the swap space any more, remove it with the following statements: # swapoff /swap # rm /swap Take a look also at the Installation HOWTO and Installation & Getting Started for detailed instructions. If that still doesn't provide enough swap space, refer to (``[438]How Can I Have More Than 128Mb of Swap?'') _________________________________________________________________ 5.12. How Do I Remove LILO So My System Boots DOS Again? The lilo program (not the complete LILO package), uses the command line option -u to uninstall the LILO boot loader. You have to supply the device name of the device you installed LILO on, for example: lilo -u /dev/hda This rewrites the original, pre-LILO master boot record back to the first hard drive, from the boot record saved in /boot/boot.0300. If you installed LILO to a partition as a secondary boot loader, for example, /dev/hda1, lilo re-installs the original boot sector from the save file /boot/boot.0301. Refer to the lilo manual page for details. Thanks to Villy Kruse for reminding me to update this answer. If you have an earlier version of LILO, you will have to use the DOS (MS-DOS 5.0 or later, or OS/2) FDISK /MBR (which is not documented). This will restore a standard MS-DOS Master Boot Record. If you have DR-DOS 6.0, go into FDISK.EXE in the normal way and then select the Re-write Master Boot Record option. If you don't have MS-DOS or DR-DOS, you need to have the boot sector that LILO saved when you first installed it. You did keep that file, didn't you? It's probably called boot.0301 or some such. Type: dd if=boot.0301 of=/dev/hda bs=445 count=1 (or /dev/sda if you're using a SCSI disk). This may also wipe out your partition table, so beware! If you're desperate, you could use dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 This will erase your partition table and boot sector completely: you can then reformat the disk using your favorite software. But this will render the contents of your disk inaccessible--you'll lose it all unless you're an expert. Note that the DOS MBR boots whichever (single!) partition is flagged as ``active.'' You may need to use fdisk to set and clear the active flags on partitions appropriately. _________________________________________________________________ 5.13. Why Can't I Use fdformat Except as Root? The system call to format a floppy can only be done as root, regardless of the permissions of /dev/fd0*. If you want any user to be able to format a floppy, try getting the fdformat2 program. This works around the problems by being setuid to root. _________________________________________________________________ 5.14. My Ext2fs Partitions Are Checked Each Time I Reboot. Refer to (``[439]EXT2-fs: warning: mounting unchecked file system.) _________________________________________________________________ 5.15. My Root File System Is Read-Only! Remount it. If /etc/fstab is correct, you can simply type: mount -n -o remount / If /etc/fstab is wrong, you must give the device name and possibly the type, too: e.g. mount -n -o remount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 / To understand how you got into this state, see, (``[440]EXT2-fs: warning: mounting unchecked file system.'') _________________________________________________________________ 5.16. I Have a Huge /proc/kcore! Can I Delete It? None of the files in /proc are really there--they're all, ``pretend,'' files made up by the kernel, to give you information about the system and don't take up any hard disk space. /proc/kcore is like an ``alias'' for the memory in your computer. Its size is the same as the amount of RAM you have, and if you read it as a file, the kernel does memory reads. _________________________________________________________________ 5.17. The AHA1542C Doesn't Work with Linux. The option to allow disks with more than 1024 cylinders is only required as a workaround for a PC-compatible BIOS misfeature and should be turned `off' under Linux. For older Linux kernels you need to turn off most of the `advanced BIOS' options--all but the one about scanning the bus for bootable devices. _________________________________________________________________ 5.18. Where Do I Find the Journalling File System? The journalling file system, named Reiserfs has just been released from testing. It is said to make Linux even faster than Linux with the Ext2 file system installed. Complete information is available at [441]http://devlinux.org/namesys/. _________________________________________________________________ 6. Porting, Compiling and Obtaining Programs 6.1. How Do I Compile Programs? Most Linux software is written in C and compiled with the GNU C compiler. GCC is a part of every Linux distribution. The latest compiler version, documentation, and patches are on [442]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/. Programs that are written in C++ must be compiled with the GNU G++ compiler, which is also included in Linux distributions and available from the same place as GCC. To build version 2.0.x and later kernels, you will need GCC version 2.7.2.x. Trying to build a Linux kernel with a different compiler, like GCC 2.8.x, EGCS, or PGCC, may cause problems until the kernel developers changed change the code so it will compile correctly with compilers other than GCC 2.7.2.x. Information on the EGCS compiler is at [443]http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html. Note that at this time, the kernel developers are not answering bug requests for earlier kernels, but instead are concentrating on developing 2.3.x version kernels and maintaining 2.2.x version kernels. [J.H.M. Dassen, Axel Boldt] _________________________________________________________________ 6.2. How Do I Install GNU Software? On a correctly configured system, installing a GNU software package requires four steps: * With the source.tar.gz archive in the /usr/src/ directory, or wherever you maintain your source files, untar and decompress the package with the command: tar zxvf package-name.tar.gz * Run the ./configure script in the untarred source archive's top-level directory with whatever command line arguments you need. The options that configure recognizes are usually contained in a file called INSTALL or README. * Run make. This will build the source code into an executable program (or programs) and may take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on the speed of the computer and the size of the package. * Run make install. This will install the compiled binaries, configuration files, and any libraries in the appropriate directories. _________________________________________________________________ 6.3. Where Do I Get Java? The Sun Microsystems Java Developer's Kit (JDK) Version 1.2, is at [444]http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/download-linux.html. You can also get the source code, which is licensed by Sun Microsystems. Kaffee, an Open-Source version of Java, is at [445]http://www.transvirtual.com/products/. The home page of IBM's Jikes Java compiler is [446]http://www10.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/jikes. There is a version of Sun's HotJava browser for Linux at [447]http://www.java.sun.com/products/hotjava/. Netscape Communicator comes with its own version of the Java Runtime Environment, so if you need Java only to view Web graphics, you may already have the runtime version of the Java Virtual Machine and libraries that you need installed on your system. You can download Communicator from [448]http://www.netscape.com/. _________________________________________________________________ 6.4. How Do I Port XXX to Linux? In general, *nix programs need very little porting. Simply follow the installation instructions. If you don't know--and don't know how to find out--the answers to some of the questions asked during the installation procedure, you can guess, but this tends to produce buggy programs. In this case, you're probably better off asking someone else to do the port. If you have a BSD-ish program, you should try using -I/usr/include/bsd and -lbsd on the appropriate parts of the compilation lines. _________________________________________________________________ 6.5. What Is ld.so and Where Do I Get It? ld.so is the dynamic library loader. Each binary using shared libraries used to have about 3K of start-up code to find and load the shared libraries. Now that code has been put in a special shared library, /lib/ld.so, where all binaries can look for it, so that it wastes less disk space, and can be upgraded more easily. ld.so can be obtained from [449]http://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/ and mirror sites. The latest version at the time of writing is ld.so.1.9.5.tar.gz. /lib/ld-linux.so.1 is the same thing for ELF ("What's all this about ELF? ") and comes in the same package as the a.out loader. _________________________________________________________________ 6.6. How Do I Upgrade the Libraries without Trashing My System? Warning Note: You should always have a rescue disk set ready when you perform this procedure, in the likely event that something goes wrong! This procedure is especially difficult if you're upgrading very old libraries like libc4. But you should be able to keep libc4 on the same system with libc5 libraries for the programs that still need them. The same holds true for upgrading from libc5 to the newer-yet glibc2 libraries. The problem with upgrading dynamic libraries is that, the moment you remove the old libraries, the utilities that you need to upgrade to the new version of the libraries don't work. There are ways around around this. One is to temporarily place a spare copy of the run time libraries, which are in /lib/, in /usr/lib/, or /usr/local/lib/, or another directory that is listed in the /etc/ld.so.conf file. For example, when upgrading libc5 libraries, the files in /lib/ might look something like: libc.so.5 libc.so.5.4.33 libm.so.5 libm.so.5.0.9 These are the C libraries and the math libraries. Copy them to another directory that is listed in /etc/ld.so.conf, like /usr/lib/: $ cp -df /lib/libc.so.5* /usr/lib/ $ cp -df /lib/libm.so.5* /usr/lib/ $ ldconfig Be sure to run ldconfig to upgrade the library configuration. The files libc.so.5 and libm.so.5 are symbolic links to the actual library files. When you upgrade, the new links will not be created if the old links are still there, unless you use the -f flag with cp. The -d flag to cp will copy the symbolic link itself, and not the file it points to. If you need to overwrite the link to the library directly, use the -f flag with ln. For example, to copy new libraries over the old ones, try this. Make a symbolic link to the new libraries first, then copy both the libraries and the links to /lib/, with the following commands. $ ln -sf ./libm.so.5.0.48 libm.so.5 $ ln -sf ./libc.so.5.0.48 libc.so.5 $ cp -df libm.so.5* /lib $ cp -df libc.so.5* /lib Again, remember to run ldconfig after you copy the libraries. If you are satisfied that everything is working correctly, you can remove the temporary copies of the old libraries from /usr/lib/ or wherever you copied them. _________________________________________________________________ 6.7. Has Anyone Ported/Compiled/Written XXX for Linux? First, look in the Linux Software Map--it's at [450]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/linux-software-map/, and on the other FTP sites. A search engine is available on the World Wide Web at [451]http://www.boutell.com/lsm/. Check the FTP sites ("Where can I get Linux material by FTP?") first--search the ls-lR or INDEX files for appropriate strings. Also look at the Linux Projects Map, [452]ftp://ftp.ix.de/pub/ix/Linux/docs/Projects-Map.gz. There's a search engine for Linux FTP archives at [453]http://lfw.linuxhq.com/. Also check out the Freshmeat Web site http://www.freshmeat.net, which is really cool, even if the logo does look like cat food. (" What online/free periodicals exist for Linux? " Freshmeat is basically a site index that continuously updates the notices of new or upgraded software for Linux. If you don't find anything, you could download the sources to the program yourself and compile them. See (``[454]How Do I Port XXX to Linux?'') If it's a large package that may require some porting, post a message to comp.os.linux.development.apps. If you compile a large-ish program, please upload it to one or more of the FTP sites, and post a message to comp.os.linux.announce (submit your posting to [455]mailto:linux-announce@news.ornl.gov). If you're looking for an application program, the chances are that someone has already written a free version. The comp.sources.wanted FAQ has instructions for finding the source code. _________________________________________________________________ 6.8. Can I Use Code or a Compiler Compiled for a 486 on My 386? Yes, unless it's the kernel. The -m486 option to GCC, which is used to compile binaries for x486 machines, merely changes certain optimizations. This makes for slightly larger binaries that run somewhat faster on a 486. They still work fine on a 386, though, with a small performance hit. However, from version 1.3.35 the kernel uses 486 or Pentium-specific instructions if configured for a 486 or Pentium, thus making it unusable on a 386. GCC can be configured for a 386 or 486; the only difference is that configuring it for a 386 makes -m386 the default and configuring for a 486 makes -m486 the default. In either case, these can be overridden on a per-compilation basis or by editing /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i*-linux/ n.n.n/specs. There is an alpha version of GCC that knows how to do optimization well for the 586, but it is quite unreliable, especially at high optimization settings. The Pentium GCC can be found on [456]ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/ALPHA/pentium-gcc/. The ordinary 486 GCC supposedly produces better code for the Pentium using the -m386, or at least slightly smaller. _________________________________________________________________ 6.9. What Does ``gcc -O6'' Do? Currently, the same as -O2 (GCC 2.5) or -O3 (GCC 2.6, 2.7). Any number greater than that does the same thing. The Makefiles of newer kernels use -O2, and you should probably do the same. _________________________________________________________________ 6.10. Where Are linux/*.h and asm/*.h? The files /usr/include/linux/ and /usr/include/asm/ are often soft links to the directories where the kernel headers are. They are usually under /usr/src/kernel*/. If you don't have the kernel sources, download them--see, (``[457]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') Then, use rm to remove any garbage, and ln to create the links: $ rm -rf /usr/include/linux /usr/include/asm $ ln -sf /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/linux $ ln -sf /usr/src/linux/include/asm /usr/include/asm /usr/src/linux/include/asm/ is a symbolic link to an architecture-specific asm directory--if you have a freshly unpacked kernel source tree, you must make symlinks. You'll also find that you may need to do `make config' in a newly-unpacked kernel source tree, to create linux/autoconf.h. _________________________________________________________________ 6.11. I Get Errors when I Try to Compile the Kernel. See the previous question regarding the header files. Remember that when you apply a patch to the kernel, you must use the ``-p0'' or ``-p1'' option: otherwise, the patch may be misapplied. See the patch manual page for details. ``ld: unrecognized option `-qmagic''' means that you should get a newer linker, from [458]ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/, in the file binutils-2.8.1.0.1.bin.tar.gz. _________________________________________________________________ 6.12. How Do I Make a Shared Library? For ELF, $ gcc -fPIC -c *.c $ gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libfoo.so.1 -o libfoo.so.1.0 *.o For a.out, get tools-n.nn.tar.gz from [459]tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/src/. It comes with documentation that will tell you what to do. Note that a.out shared libraries are a very tricky business. Consider upgrading your libraries to ELF shared libraries. See the ELF HOWTO, at [460]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/ _________________________________________________________________ 6.13. My Executables Are (Very) Large. With an ELF compiler (``[461]What's All This about ELF? glibc?''), the most common cause of large executables is the lack of an appropriate .so library link for one of the libraries you're using. There should be a link like libc.so for every library like libc.so.5.2.18. With an a.out compiler the most common cause of large executables is the -g linker (compiler) flag. This produces (as well as debugging information in the output file) a program which is statically linked--one which includes a copy of the C library instead of a dynamically linked copy. Other things worth investigating are -O and -O2, which enable optimization (check the GCC documentation), and -s (or the strip command) which strip the symbol information from the resulting binary (making debugging totally impossible). You may wish to use -N on very small executables (less than 8K with the -N), but you shouldn't do this unless you understand its performance implications, and definitely never with daemons. _________________________________________________________________ 6.14. Does Linux Support Threads or Lightweight Processes? As well as the Unix multiprocessing model involving heavyweight processes, which is of course part of the standard Linux kernel, there are several implementations of lightweight processes or threads. Recent kernels implement a thread model, kthreads. In addition, there are the following packages available for Linux. * GNU glibc2 for Linux has optional support for threads. The archive is available from the same place as glibc2, [462]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ * In [463]sipb.mit.edu:/pub/pthread/ or [464]ftp.ibp.fr:/pub/unix/threads/pthreads. Documentation isn't in the package, but is available on the World Wide Web at [465]http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/proven/home_page.html. Newer Linux libc's contain the pthreads source. The GNU Ada compiler on [466]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/devel/lang/ada/gnat-3.01-linu x+elf.tar.gz contains binaries made from that source code. * In [467]ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu:/pub/qt-001.tar.Z is QuickThreads. More information can be found in the technical report, available on the same site is /tr/1993/05/UW-CSE-93-05-06.PS.Z. * In gummo.doc.ic.ac.uk/rex/ is lwp, a very minimal implementation. * In [468]ftp://ftp.cs.fsu.edu:/pub/PART/, an Ada implementation. This is useful mainly because it has a lot of Postscript papers that you'll find useful in learning more about threads. This is not directly usable under Linux. Please contact the authors of the packages in question for details. _________________________________________________________________ 6.15. Where Can I Get lint for Linux? Roughly equivalent functionality is built into GCC. Use the -Wall option to turn on most of the useful extra warnings. See the GCC manual for more details (type F1-i in Emacs and select the entry for GCC). There is a freely available program called lclint that does much the same thing as traditional lint. The announcement and source code are available at on [469]ftp://larch.lcs.mit.edu/pub/Larch/lclint/; on the World Wide Web, look at [470]http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/larch/lclint.html. _________________________________________________________________ 6.16. Where Can I find Kermit for Linux? Kermit is distributed under a non-GPL copyright that makes its terms of distribution somewhat different. The sources and some binaries are available on [471]ftp://kermit.columbia.edu. The WWW Home Page of the Columbia University Kermit project is [472]http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/. _________________________________________________________________ 6.17. I Want to Use Linux with My Cable Modem. The www.CablemodemInfo.com and xDSL Web page at [473]http://www.cablemodeminfo.com/ has a section devoted to Linux. _________________________________________________________________ 6.18. Is There an ICQ Program That Runs under Linux? Several ICQ clients are available on metlab.unc.edu. (See Where can I get Linux material by FTP? .) ICQ itself does not have a Linux client, but there is a Java client at [474]http://www.mirabilis.com/download/. _________________________________________________________________ 7. Solutions to Common Miscellaneous Problems 7.1. PPP Connection Dies when Sending Large Files. This is due, apparently, to some form of buffer overrun (Fall, 1999) when uploading to Windows NT servers. Because MS Winmodems have parts of their firmware in the operating system, the protocols used in NT servers can be kept proprietary, even at the TCP/IP level. However, there's no information at this time to confirm this. In any case, users have been complaining more frequently about the problem. It doesn't seem to occur when downloading files, only when uploading longer files, past a certain, and not always determinable, size. The problem occurs with newer and faster hardware. Also, there have been reports that changing the mtu and mru to values much smaller than the default of 1,500 solves the problem. If anyone has had this kind of problem, and you have been able to solve it, please let the FAQ maintainer know. _________________________________________________________________ 7.2. Free Dumps Core. In Linux 1.3.57 and later, the format of /proc/meminfo was changed in a way that the implementation of free doesn't understand. Get the latest version, from metalab.unc.edu, in /pub/Linux/system/Status/ps/procps-0.99.tgz. _________________________________________________________________ 7.3. How Do I Keep Track of All My Bookmarks in Netscape? This probably applies to most other browsers, too. In the Preferences/Navigator menu, set your home page to Netscape's bookmarks.html file, which is located in the .netscape (with a leading period) subdirectory. For example, if your login name is ``smith,'' set the home page to: file://home/smith/.netscape/bookmarks.html Setting up your personal home page like this will present you with a nicely formatted (albeit possibly long) page of bookmarks when Netscape starts. And the file is automatically updated whenever you add, delete, or visit a bookmarked site. _________________________________________________________________ 7.4. The Computer Has the Wrong Time. There are two clocks in your computer. The hardware (CMOS) clock runs even when the computer is turned off, and is used when the system starts up and by DOS (if you use DOS). The ordinary system time, shown and set by date, is maintained by the kernel while Linux is running. You can display the CMOS clock time, or set either clock from the other, with /sbin/clock (now called hwclock in many distributions)--see man 8 clock or man 8 hwclock. There are various other programs that can correct either or both clocks for system drift or transfer time across the network. Some of them may already be installed on your system. Try looking for adjtimex (corrects for drift), netdate, and getdate (get the time from the network), or xntp (accurate, full-featured network time daemon). _________________________________________________________________ 7.5. Setuid Scripts Don't Seem to Work. That's right. This feature has been disabled in the Linux kernel on purpose, because setuid scripts are almost always a security hole. Sudo and SuidPerl can provide more security than setuid scripts or binaries, especially if execute permissions are limited to a certain user ID or group ID. If you want to know why setuid scripts are a security hole, read the FAQ for comp.unix.questions. _________________________________________________________________ 7.6. Free Memory as Reported by free Keeps Shrinking. The ``free'' figure printed by free doesn't include memory used as a disk buffer cache--shown in the ``buffers'' column. If you want to know how much memory is really free add the ``buffers'' amount to ``free.'' Newer versions of free print an extra line with this info. The disk buffer cache tends to grow soon after starting Linux up. As you load more programs and use more files, the contents get cached. It will stabilize after a while. _________________________________________________________________ 7.7. When I Add More Memory, the System Slows to a Crawl. This is a common symptom of a failure to cache the additional memory. The exact problem depends on your motherboard. Sometimes you have to enable caching of certain regions in your BIOS setup. Look in the CMOS setup and see if there is an option to cache the new memory area which is currently switched off. This is apparently most common on a '486. Sometimes the RAM has to be in certain sockets to be cached. Sometimes you have to set jumpers to enable caching. Some motherboards don't cache all of the RAM if you have more RAM per amount of cache than the hardware expects. Usually a full 256K cache will solve this problem. If in doubt, check the manual. If you still can't fix it because the documentation is inadequate, you might like to post a message to comp.os.linux.hardware giving all of the details--make, model number, date code, etc., so other Linux users can avoid it. _________________________________________________________________ 7.8. Some Programs (E.g. xdm) Won't Let Me Log in. You are probably using non-shadow password programs and are using shadow passwords. If so, you have to get or compile a shadow password version of the programs in question. The shadow password suite can be found at [475]ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin/shadow/. This is the source code. The binaries are probably in linux/binaries/usr.bin/. _________________________________________________________________ 7.9. Some Programs Let Me Log in with No Password. You probably have the same problem as in (``[476]Some Programs (E.g. xdm) Won't Let Me Log in.''), with an added wrinkle. If you are using shadow passwords, you should put a letter `x' or an asterisk in the password field of /etc/passwd for each account, so that if a program doesn't know about the shadow passwords it won't think it's a passwordless account and let anyone in. _________________________________________________________________ 7.10. My Machine Runs Very Slowly when I Run GCC / X / ... You may have too little real memory. If you have less RAM than all the programs you're running at once, Linux will swap to your hard disk instead and thrash horribly. The solution in this case is to not run so many things at once or buy more memory. You can also reclaim some memory by compiling and using a kernel with less options configured. See (``[477]How Do I Upgrade/Recompile My Kernel?'') You can tell how much memory and swap you're using with the free command, or by typing: $ cat /proc/meminfo If your kernel is configured with a RAM disk, this is probably wasted space and will cause things to go slowly. Use LILO or rdev to tell the kernel not to allocate a RAM disk (see the LILO documentation or type ``man rdev''). _________________________________________________________________ 7.11. I Can Only Log in as Root. You probably have some permission problems, or you have a file /etc/nologin. In the latter case, put ``rm -f /etc/nologin'' in your /etc/rc.local or /etc/rc.d/* scripts. Otherwise, check the permissions on your shell, and any file names that appear in error messages, and also the directories that contain these files, up to and including the root directory. _________________________________________________________________ 7.12. My Screen Is All Full of Weird Characters Instead of Letters. You probably sent some binary data to your screen by mistake. Type echo '\033c' to fix it. Many Linux distributions have a command, reset, that does this. If that doesn't help, try a direct screen escape command. $ echo 'Ctrl-V Ctrl-O' This resets the default font of a Linux console. Remember to hold down the Control key and type the letter, instead of, for example, Ctrl, then V. The sequence $ echo 'Ctrl-V Esc C' causes a full screen reset. If there's data left on the shell command line after typing a binary file, press Ctrl-C a few times to restore the shell command line. [Bernhard Gabler] _________________________________________________________________ 7.13. I Have Screwed Up My System and Can't Log in to Fix It. Reboot from an emergency floppy or floppy pair. For example, the Slackware boot and root disk pair in the install subdirectory of the Slackware distribution. There are also two, do-it-yourself rescue disk creation packages in [478]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/recovery/. These are better because they have your own kernel on them, so you don't run the risk of missing devices and file systems. Get to a shell prompt and mount your hard disk with something like $ mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /mnt Then your file system is available under the directory /mnt and you can fix the problem. Remember to unmount your hard disk before rebooting (cd somewhere else first, or it will say it's busy). _________________________________________________________________ 7.14. I Forgot the root Password. Note: Incorrectly editing any of the files in the /etc/ directory can severely screw up a system. Please keep a spare copy of any files in case you make a mistake. If your Linux distribution permits, try booting into single-user mode by typing ``single'' at the LILO: prompt. More recent distributions still require a password. In that case, boot from the installation or rescue floppy, and switch to another virtual console with Alt-F1-- Alt-F8, and then mount the root file system on /mnt. Then proceed with the steps below to determine if your system has standard or shadow passwords, and how to remove the password. Using your favorite text editor, edit the root entry of the /etc/passwd file to remove the password, which is located between the first and second colons. Do this only if the password field does not contain an ``x,'' in which case see below. root:Yhgew13xs:0:0: ... Change that to: root::0:0: ... If the password field contains an ``x,'' then you must remove the password from the /etc/shadow file, which roughly the same format. _________________________________________________________________ 7.15. I've Discovered a Huge Security Hole in rm! No you haven't. You are obviously new to unices and need to read a good book to find out how things work. Clue: the ability to delete files depends on permission to write in that directory. _________________________________________________________________ 7.16. lpr and/or lpd Don't Work. First make sure that your /dev/lp* port is correctly configured. Its IRQ (if any) and port address need to match the settings on the printer card. You should be able to dump a file directly to the printer: $ cat the_file >/dev/lp1 If lpr gives you a message like myname@host: host not found" it may mean that the TCP/IP loopback interface, lo, isn't working properly. Loopback support is compiled into most distribution kernels. Check that the interface is configured with the ifconfig command. By Internet convention, the network number is 127.0.0.0, and the local host address is 127.0.0.1. If everything is configured correctly, you should be able to telnet to your own machine and get a login prompt. Make sure that /etc/hosts.lpd contains the machine's host name. If your machine has a network-aware lpd, like the one that comes with LPRng, make sure that /etc/lpd.perms is configured correctly. Also look at the Printing HOWTO. "Where can I get the HOWTO's and other documentation? ". _________________________________________________________________ 7.17. Timestamps on Files on MS-DOS Partitions Are Set Incorrectly There is a bug in the program clock (often found in /sbin). It miscounts a time zone offset, confusing seconds with minutes or something like that. Get a recent version. _________________________________________________________________ 7.18. How Do I Get LILO to Boot the Kernel Image? >From kernel versions 1.1.80 on, the compressed kernel image, which is what LILO needs to find, is in arch/i386/boot/zImage, or arch/i386/boot/bzImage when it is built, and is normally stored in the /boot/ directory. The /etc/lilo.conf file should refer to the vmlinuz symbolic link, not the actual kernel image. This was changed to make it easier to build kernel versions for several different processors from one source tree. _________________________________________________________________ 7.19. I Upgraded the Kernel and Now My PCMCIA Card Doesn't Work. The PCMCIA Card Services modules, which are located in /lib/modules/version/pcmcia, where version is the version number of the kernel, use configuration information that is specific to that kernel image only. The PCMCIA modules on your system will not work with a different kernel image. You need to upgrade the PCMCIA card modules when you upgrade the kernel. When upgrading from older kernels, make sure that you have the most recent version of the run-time libraries, the modutils package, and so on. Refer to the file Documentation/Changes in the kernel source tree for details. Important: If you use the PCMCIA Card Services, do not enable the Network device support/Pocket and portable adapters option of the kernel configuration menu, as this conflicts with the modules in Card Services. Knowing the PCMCIA module dependencies of the old kernel is useful. You need to keep track of them. For example, if your PCMCIA card depends on the serial port character device being installed as a module for the old kernel, then you need to ensure that the serial module is available for the new kernel and PCMCIA modules as well. The procedure described here is somewhat kludgey, but it is much easier than re-calculating module dependencies from scratch, and making sure the upgrade modules get loaded so that both the non-PCMCIA and PCMCIA are happy. Recent kernel releases contain a myriad of module options, too many to keep track of easily. These steps use the existing module dependencies as much as possible, instead of requiring you to calculate new ones. However, this procedure does not take into account instances where module dependencies are incompatible from one kernel version to another. In these cases, you'll need to load the modules yourself with insmod, or adjust the module dependencies in the /etc/conf.modules file. The Documentation/modules.txt file in the kernel source tree contains a good description of how to use the kernel loadable modules and the module utilities like insmod, modprobe, and depmod. Modules.txt also contains a recommended procedure for determining which features to include in a resident kernel, and which to build as modules. Essentially, you need to follow these steps when you install a new kernel. * Before building the new kernel, make a record with the lsmod command of the module dependencies that your system currently uses. For example, part of the lsmod output might look like this: Module Pages Used by memory_cs 2 0 ds 2 [memory_cs] 3 i82365 4 2 pcmcia_core 8 [memory_cs ds i82365] 3 sg 1 0 bsd_comp 1 0 ppp 5 [bsd_comp] 0 slhc 2 [ppp] 0 serial 8 0 psaux 1 0 lp 2 0 This tells you for example that the memory_cs module needs the ds and pcmcia_core modules loaded first. What it doesn't say is that, in order to avoid recalculating the module dependencies, you may also need to have the serial, lp, psaux, and other standard modules available to prevent errors when installing the pcmcia routines at boot time with insmod. A glance at the /etc/modules file will tell you what modules the system currently loads, and in what order. Save a copy of this file for future reference, until you have successfully installed the new kernel's modules. Also save the lsmod output to a file, for example, with the command: lsmod >lsmod.old-kernel.output. * Build the new kernel, and install the boot image, either zImage or bzImage, to a floppy diskette. To do this, change to the arch/i386/boot directory (substitute the correct architecture directory if you don't have an Intel machine), and, with a floppy in the diskette drive, execute the command: $ dd if=bzImage of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 if you built the kernel with the make bzImage command, and if your floppy drive is /dev/fd0. This results in a bootable kernel image being written to the floppy, and allows you to try out the new kernel without replacing the existing one that LILO boots on the hard drive. * Boot the new kernel from the floppy to make sure that it works. * With the system running the new kernel, compile and install a current version of the PCMCIA Card Services package, available from metalab.unc.edu as well as other Linux archives. Before installing the Card Services utilities, change the names of /sbin/cardmgr and /sbin/cardctl to /sbin/cardmgr.old and /sbin/cardctl.old. The old versions of these utilities are not compatible with the replacement utilities that Card Services installs. In case something goes awry with the installation, the old utilities won't be overwritten, and you can revert to the older versions if necessary. When configuring Card Services with the ``make config'' command, make sure that the build scripts know where to locate the kernel configuration, either by using information from the running kernel, or telling the build process where the source tree of the new kernel is. The ``make config'' step should complete without errors. Installing the modules from the Card Services package places them in the directory /lib/modules/version/pcmcia, where version is the version number of the new kernel. * Reboot the system, and note which, if any, of the PCMCIA devices work. Also make sure that the non-PCMCIA hardware devices are working. It's likely that some or all of them won't work. Use lsmod to determine which modules the kernel loaded at boot time, and compare it with the module listing that the old kernel loaded, which you saved from the first step of the procedure. (If you didn't save a listing of the lsmod output, go back and reboot the old kernel, and make the listing now.) * When all modules are properly loaded, you can replace the old kernel image on the hard drive. This will most likely be the file pointed to by the /vmlinuz symlink. Remember to update the boot sector by running the lilo command after installing the new kernel image on the hard drive. Also look at the questions, How do I upgrade/recompile my kernel? and Modprobe can't locate module, "XXX," and similar messages. _________________________________________________________________ 8. How Do I Do This or Find Out That... 8.1. How Do I Know If My Notebook Runs Linux? There's no fixed answer to this question, because notebook hardware is constantly updated, and getting the X display, sound, PCMCIA, modem, and so forth, working, can take a good deal of effort. Most notebooks currently on the market, for example, use ``Winmodems,'' which often do not work with Linux because of their proprietary hardware interfaces. Even notebooks which are certified as ``Linux compatible,'' may not be completely compatible. Information about installing Winmodems in general is contained in the Winmodems-and-Linux HOWTO. (Refer to ``[479]Where Can I Get the HOWTO's and Other Documentation?'') You can find the most current information, or ask other users about their notebook experiences, on the linux-laptop mailing list, which is hosted by the vger.rutgers.edu server. (Refer to ``[480]What Mailing Lists Are There?'') A mailing list for Linux on IBM Thinkpads has its home page at [481]http://www.topica.com/lists/linux-thinkpad/. Another Thinkpad mailing list is hosted by [482]http://www.bm-soft.com/. Send E-mail with the word ``help'' in the body of the message to [483]mailto:majordomo@www.bm-soft.com. There is a Web page about Linux on IBM Thinkpads at [484]http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/tp-linux/. The Linux Laptop home page is at [485]http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/. For information about interfacing peripherals like Zip and CD-ROM drives through parallel ports, refer to the Linux Parallel Port Home Page, at [486]http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html. If you need the latest version of the PCMCIA Card Services package, it is (or was) located at [487]ftp://cb-iris.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/, but that host no longer seems to be available. Recent distributions are on [488]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/pcmcia/. You will also need to have the kernel source code installed as well. Be sure to read the PCMCIA-HOWTO, which is included in the distribution. _________________________________________________________________ 8.2. How Do I Install Linux Using FTP? Installing a major distribution can be impractical because of the size of the distribution and interdependence of many of the software packages. Installing a basic Linux system that doesn't have a GUI or the major applications, is possible with FTP, however. The main non-commercial distribution in use is Debian GNU/Linux, and this answer describes an installation of the basic Debian system, to which you can add other Linux applications and commercial software as necessary. You will need a system with at least a 80386 processor, 8 Mb of memory, and about 100 Mb of disk space. More memory and a larger disk is necessary however, for practical everyday use. * Connect using anonymous FTP to ftp.debian.org and cd to the pub/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/ subdirectory. * Retrieve the rescue disk, and the drivers disk Depending on the floppy drive installed on your machine, retrieve either the diskette images with "1200" in the names if you have a 1.2 Mb, 5.25-in. floppy, or the disks with "1440" in the name if the computer has a 3.25-in., 1.44 Mb floppy. Then retrieve the base system diskettes. Note that there are 7 base system images in the 1.44-Mb set (which have a "14" in their names) , and 9 in the 1.2-Mb set of images (which have a "12" in their names). You will use these to create the basic installation diskettes. If you have a Linux machine, you can use dd to write the images to the diskettes. If you are creating the installation diskettes on a MS-DOS machine, also download the RAWRITE.EXE MS-DOS utility, which will copy the raw binary images to floppy disks. Also download the install.en.txt document, which contains the detailed installation instructions. * Create the installation disk set on floppies using either the dd program under Linux (e.g.: ``dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/fd0''), or the RAWRITE.EXE utility under MS-DOS. Be sure to label each installation diskette. * Insert the rescue diskette into the floppy drive and reboot the computer. If all goes well, the Linux kernel will boot, and you will be able start the installation program by pressing Enter at the boot: prompt. * Follow the on-screen instructions for partitioning the hard disk, installing device drivers, the basic system software, and the Linux kernel. If the machine is connected to a local network, enter the network information when the system asks for it. * To install additional software over the Internet, be sure that you have installed the ppp module during the installation process, and run (as root) the /usr/sbin/pppconfig utility. You will need to provide your user name with your ISP, your password, the ISP's dial-up phone number, the address(es) of the ISP's Domain Name Service, and the serial port that your modem is connected to, /dev/ttyS0--/dev/ttyS3. Be sure also to specify the defaultroute option to the PPP system, so the computer knows to use the PPP connection for remote Internet addresses. * You may have to perform additional configuration on the PPP scripts in the /etc/ppp subdirectory, and in particular, the ISP-specific script in the /etc/ppp/peers subdirectory. There are basic instructions in each script. For detailed information, refer to the Debian/GNU Linux installation instructions that you downloaded, the pppd manual page (type man pppd), and the PPP HOWTO from the Linux Documentation project, [489]http://www.linuxdoc.org/. * Once you have a PPP connection established with your ISP (it will be displayed in the output of ifconfig), use the dselect program to specify which additional software you want to install. Use the apt [A]ccess option to retrieve packages via anonymous FTP, and make sure to use the [U]pdate option to retrieve a current list of packages from the FTP archive. _________________________________________________________________ 8.3. How do I resume an interrupted FTP transfer? Use the ``reget'' command of the ftp program. _________________________________________________________________ 8.4. How Can I Get Scrollback in Text Mode? With the default US keymap, you can use Shift with the PgUp and PgDn keys. (The gray ones, not the ones on the numeric keypad.) With other keymaps, look in /usr/lib/keytables. You can remap the ScrollUp and ScrollDown keys to be whatever you like. For example, to remap them to the keys on an 84-key, AT keyboard. The screen program, [490]http://vector.co.jp/vpack/browse/person/an010455.html provides a searchable scrollback buffer and the ability to take ``snapshots'' of text-mode screens. You can't increase the amount of scrollback, because it is implemented using the video memory to store the scrollback text. You may be able to get more scrollback in each virtual console by reducing the total number of VC's. See linux/tty.h. _________________________________________________________________ 8.5. How Do I Get E-mail to Work? For sending mail via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and receiving mail from an ISP's POP (Post Office Protocol) server, you can use a desktop client like Netscape Communicator or KDE kmail. You will need to enter the names of the SMTP and POP servers in the preferences of the respective application, as well as your E-mail address (username@isp's-domain-name), and your dial-up password. The same applies to Usenet News. Enter the name of the NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) server in your News client's preferences section. You may also have to provide the IP addresses of the ISP's primary and secondary name servers. If you have a traditional MTA (Mail Transport Agent) like Sendmail, Smail, or Exim, you'll need to follow the instructions in each package. Basically, configuration entails determining which host machine, either on your local LAN or via dial-up Internet, is the ``Smart Host,'' if you're using SMTP. If you're using the older UUCP protocol, then you'll need to consult the directions for configuring UUCP, and also make sure that your ISP's system is configured to relay mail to you. Information about Internet hosting, and News and E-mail in general, is available on the Usenet News group news.announce.newusers, and those FAQ's are also archived at [491]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/. _________________________________________________________________ 8.6. How do I prevent Sendmail from pausing for up to a minute at each command? Make sure that Sendmail can resolve your hostname to a valid (i.e., parsable) domain address. If you are not connected to the Internet, or have a dial-up connection with dynamic IP addressing, add the fully qualified domain name to the /etc/hosts file, in addition to the base host name; e.g., if the host name is ``bilbo'' and the domain is ``bag-end.com:'' 192.168.0.1 bilbo.bag-end.com bilbo And make sure that either the /etc/host.conf or /etc/resolv.conf file contains the line: order hosts,bind Caution: Do not change the ``localhost'' entry in /etc/host, because many programs depend on it for internal message-passing. _________________________________________________________________ 8.7. How Do I Switch Virtual Consoles? How Do I Enable Them? In text mode, press the left Alt-F1 to Alt-F12 to select the consoles tty1 to tty12; Right Alt-F1 gives tty13 and so on. To switch out of X you must press Ctrl-Alt-F1, etc; Alt-F5 or whatever will switch back. If you want to use a VC for ordinary login, it must be listed in /etc/inittab, which controls which terminals and virtual consoles have login prompts. The X Window System needs at least one free VC in order to start. _________________________________________________________________ 8.8. How Do I Set the Time Zone? Change directory to /usr/lib/zoneinfo/. Get the time zone package if you don't have this directory. The source is available in [492]ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/admin/time/. Then make a symbolic link named localtime pointing to one of the files in this directory (or a subdirectory), and one called posixrules pointing to localtime. For example: $ ln -sf US/Mountain localtime $ ln -sf localtime posixrules This change will take effect immediately--try date. If the system uses Red Hat-style configuration files, the respective time zone info files are /usr/share/zoneinfo and /etc/localtime. The manual pages for tzset or tzselect describe setting the time zone. Some programs recognize the ``TZ'' environment variable, but this is not POSIX-correct. You should also make sure that your Linux kernel clock is set to the correct GMT time--type date -u and check that the correct UTC time is displayed. (``[493]The Computer Has the Wrong Time.'') _________________________________________________________________ 8.9. How Do I Get Dial-up PPP to Work? This information is mainly for people who do not have a wrapper utility like kppp or pppconfig, or are not able to get those utilities to work correctly. If you need to manually configure PPP to dial in to your ISP, you will need the following information: * The port that your modem is connected to: /dev/ttyS0--/dev/ttyS3, which correspond to COM1-COM4 under MS-DOS. * The phone number of your ISP's data connection. * The user name and password that your ISP gave you. * The IP addresses of the primary and possibly secondary Domain Name Service that you will use when dialing in to the ISP. This assumes that you will not be using a DNS that you installed on your system. When you have all of this information, make sure that the programs pppd and chat, at the very minimum, are installed correctly. In most current distributions, they are installed in the /usr/sbin/ directory, and you will need to be logged in as root to use them. In addition, the following programs are also useful for configuring network connections, determini