Think! -- Linux Help

Be a part of a new revolution:
Linux Anyway.

OK. You've got Linux.
Now, you're in trouble.

I've taken some time to work on this page, which may become a set of pages, because documentation for Linux simply stinks. But it is getting better. I don't know why the documentation has been so bad for so long, but part of it is due to the fact there are different versions of Linux & one will often find documentation intended for a distribution other than the one you've installed. Another reason, I think, is because there are just as many Linux putzes as Windows putzes, & they feel that if you don't know how to do something they're not covering (such as the steps to obtain some result), "You can go to hell."

Naturally, one must know a few things about using a pc before one might find anything I put here of any use. More, let me stress, I am [was, at the time of the original writing] using RedHat 6.0. (Though I'd been running Mandrake 7.2 for a while, have been through many hells of differnt releases -- & even FreeBSD -- to return to RH 7.2 [&, for some time now, Slack 10.0], but the steps are pretty much [in many cases] the same -- you only will find some trouble administrating a Mandrake box in comparison, as some software won't install at all well & the command line is all too often useless in mdk.) Therefore, what you find here may not work for you, if you're using any other distribution. But if you're stumped, I may be able to help or point you in a helpful direction. Mail me here but be sure to check out my Fetchmail & Pine page. Or, you may find the answer -- such as how to do all this with a dial/up, as opposed to xdsl, connection -- on Scott's Configuring Pine page.

Aiiieee!

To begin, I'd had some trouble dealing with all the short comings of Netscape. I'd grown tired of it's inability to handle filtering as well as advertised, perpetual crashing on bad java, etc. First, I had to find a decent mail application.

Having used Unix & Linux off & on in the past, I'd found that I quite liked pine. While setting up pine isn't difficult (mostly because there's fairly extensive & clearly defined help), I'd found that there's a damn sight more to getting your mail than just setting up pine.

In my configuration, I've got fetchmail to check for & request the mail from the pop server; sendmail to accept the mail to my pc; procmail takes the mail sendmail has received & deposits it in my local mailbox (or I can set it up to actually process mail & deposit specific mail to particular folders); & pine for reading the mail. All this sounds complicated, & though it is, it's not difficult to set up.

Using linuxconf to do a whole bunch of things

RedHat (at least, older versions) Linux comes with a fantastic little configuration tool (which may or may not be installed on your pc - if not, you can either install it from your RedHat CD, or you can even download it from the Web by going to http://filewatcher.org/sec/linuxconf.html) -- called linuxconf (I've learned, in my time working with RH how to edit most everything you find in linuxconf & have found it becomes easier to edit things manually as time goes on -- but if you're new, this gui editor is one of the better ones). This allows the root or super user to configure most everything basic on their systems pretty quickly & easily. This can be opened either in or out of X at a bash prompt. In either case, as root, type /bin/linuxconf & there it is.

There's a lot to cover, so (for now) I'll assume you've already set this stuff up. Everything for sendmail & procmail to do their jobs is entered in linuxconf as a natural part of setting up your system, so we needn't really cover any of this. But I may find time to go into it in more depth later. Of course, you can also refer to my documents listed on my Nix page.

Any mail for me?

Getting your mail from a pop server is made pretty simple with fetchmail. This can be obtained either from your CD or from the Web ( http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail). With fetchmail, there are two complete ways to setup with /usr/bin/fetchmailconf. You can make it really easy by just setting up the Novice Configuration. Or, for more control (as well as more confusion), you could set up under the Expert Configuration. I'd found that fetchmail worked best when I set up both, but most of the confusion is displaced by the numerous Help buttons & some notation right on the screen.

And then there was pine.

Again, if you don't have it installed, & want to use it, either install from your CD, or download it from the Web: http://www.washington.edu/pine.

It's incredible, really. Some think of pine as a newbie mail reader (probably because it's so simple), but it does just about everything the usual readers do & though it requires actually entering fairly sophisticated options in Setup Config, it's not too difficult. Don't let any of this frighten you. It takes only a few minutes to get it up & running. Once you've got it working, you can go back & tweak the settings to your satisfaction.

The only thing you have to remember is if you'd set it up to connect directly to your pop server instead of your local mailbox folder on your pc, go in & remove what you'd typed in the Inbox-path line under Setup Config. Otherwise, naturally, you'll keep checking mail to find the mail box empty because fetchmail, sendmail & procmail have already done their jobs & pine is looking in the wrong place.

Notification

There are a couple of ways you can set up notification when mail arrives. If you have the KDE Internet utilities installed, there's something called kbiff (or just biff) get it either from your CD or from http://home.sprintmail.com/~granroth/kbiff. This too is simple to set up.

Though it's supposed to be able to use a wav file when it notifies, I've never been able to get that to work, so I opt for a system beep.

Getting it all to work

Now, to get the whole thing started, you need to tell fetchmail to actually check your pop server for mail. For this you need to set up a cron (CD or from the Web, but I couldn't find their site) job.

By entering man crontab at a prompt ($ man crontab), the first sentence of importance tells us this:

"A crontab file contains instructions to the cron(8) daemon of the general form: 'run 
this command at this time on this date'."

As the name implies, cron runs applications at specific times. To set this up, you use crontab. At a prompt, enter crontab -e ($ crontab -e -- the -e is necessary to tell crontab that you want to edit your existing crontab -- if you don't have one yet, crontab creates one in your home directory).

This opens in the vi editor. The vi editor is rather intimidating, but all one needs to know about it is the Insert command (i), delete line (dd), & the Save & Exit (Esc : x) commands. So, type crontab -e & open it up. It will likely be empty except for MAILTO=""^[ at the top followed by ~'s all the way down the page.

Don't get excited, now. I'll show you an easier way to do this after the hard way. What's more, for a more detailed explanation of cron, see my /dev/null 2&1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "/tmp/crontab.5044" 2 lines, 112 characters

Now, I'm hardly an expert at setting cron jobs (so, you might check out Nuintari's page for a better explanation: (http://www.erg-mad.com/linux/tricks/cron.shtml), but basically, it's composed of five asterisks, followed by the path to the application you want to run, then any options that application uses, & any other things you want to happen behind the scenes. So, for the first asterisk, I've entered those numbers separated by commas.

As this is the space concerning the minute interval, I've told crontab to run fetchmail at one minute, ten minutes, twenty minutes, etc, during the day. The other asterisks are for hour, day, month, & year (I think - I'll read up on this & fix it later, but refer to my Crontab page). This example means that every ten (except for that first being nine) minutes of every hour of every day of every month of every year, cron will "wake up" fetchmail to check my server (of course, I'm connected to the internet via DSL, & a modem connection would need some other configuration -- hey, I've never connected a Linux box to the 'Net with an analogue modem, so I dunno, but check out Scott's Configuring Pine page -- he may get you connected). The final bit, -s tells fetcmail not to write to /var/log/messages (though it does anyway), > /dev/null 2&1 I don't fully understand, but that tells cron not to send an e-mail to the user who owns the cron job. Otherwise, cron would e-mail me every ten minutes that it's doing what you've asked.

After you enter the info, to save & exit (trust me, it took me a long time to find this), press your Esc key, they type a : (that's a full colon), type x & press Enter. If there's anything not set properly, like a mis-type or spaces between the commas, crontab will tell you.

In addition, you'll find that you're probably still getting mail from cron. Even if you don't, you'll do well to do something more. Open a terminal window, enter su, & type the root password (if you're not in X, ignore that, or if you've opened X after logging in as root, just open the terminal window), type pico /etc/crontab & press Enter. For those who don't know, pico is a simple text editor. The crontab you've just opened is the system crontab & you'll probably find that there's a line near the top reading MAILTO=""^[. Remove the ^[ from it, hold your CTRL key & press x to save & close. Pico will ask if you want to save, press y & then Enter to save with the name crontab. You're done.

I've been told that there's a security issue with this /etc/crontab & that it may be best to delete it & any other crontab on the system but one. The one you keep could be /root/crontab or /home/your-user-name/crontab. If you choose to save the one in a user space, remember that some jobs may require super user permissions & you should decide appropriately.

Now, the easy way: Copy any existing crontab file you can find on your system to your home directoy with a name like "crontab-temp", or anything you like. Open that one in pico, edit it to only show what you want -- keeping the info at the top, of course -- your fetchmail job, etc. Then, save & close it. with ctrl-x & y, &, at the prompt, enter "crontab crontab-temp" ($ crontab crontab-temp ). Much, much easier. And you get to fool with your cron jobs witout fooling with emacs all the time.

And now...Zipping files

Ever try to figure out how to use the zip utility? I'll tell you this: It took me hours to find a combination of options which finally worked. Use this:

zip -mv ./each-file with-a-space-between-each-one /home/your-user-name/the-directory-where-you-want-it/

Change into the directory where your files are, type the command zip followed by -mv (these are your options: m=move into zipfile (deletes files) & v=verbose). Next is ./, this is shorthand telling the application, as most will understand it, that you want to use the current directory. Now type each file with a space between each one. Then, though a b in the options is supposedly necessary, type the path where you want the zip file put. You'll likely find, as had I, that the file rendered is simply ".zip". I'd told zip many times what to name it, but I couldn't find the file. Then I found the .zip file. Rename the file, & you're set. Eventually -- next I try to zip something -- I'll try to find the correct entry to get the file named properly & update this.

Here's another to tar & gzip a set of files:

tar czf /dest_path/a_directory.tar.gz /the_path_to/a_directory

Wanna make a variable mail signature from the fortune files? Open crontab & enter:

*/5 * * * * /usr/games/fortune -s > ~/.fortune; cat ~/.sig ~/.fortune > ~/.signature 2&1~
~
~
~
~

[Refer above in the fetchmail section, or my Crontab page if you have no other entries for the first line of crontab.] Then, in your home directory, & if you don't have a .signature file, touch .signature (touch is a command telling the system to create a file by the name you enter), & you're set. All you do now is go into your e-mail settings & tell it to attach .signature file as your signature -- assuming your e-mial reader supports this feature. Also, I've set my crontab to update this every five minutes (now one minute, as I get, & send, a lot of e-mail. If you don't get so much or have a rather taxed 'puter, you may want to change that to ten. And, of course, if you dont' have fortune installed, get it & install it. You can find it most anywhere on the Web.

Slack

As I'd not started this when I should have, I'll put in tips & things I know I won't remember, as they come to me. I'll organize it later.

Upgrading packages
For this, theres a nice app called upgradepkg. Say, you've either just installed Slackware 9.1 [or whatever Slack], or you've decided it's time to update things from Slackware's ftp patches. First, use wget to download the updates by entering this (though the path is subject to change -- particularly if you're running a different release than I -- & as I've just returned, after a year & a half, to my Slack box, running Slack 10.0, I'll have to update soon. I'll add a new line below for the 10.0 release later):

wget -r ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.1/patches/packages/*tgz

The -r, naturally, is for "recursive". This will download all (yes -- all of them) the patched updates in the above ftp directory to whatever directory you happen to be in when you enter the command (so, not only should you be sure you have plenty of time to download them, but you'll find it helpful to create a directory specifically for this & cd to it before you start). After all have been downloaded, you may have packages you don't have installed or, for many reasons, may not want to update. Remove any you simply can't use or don't want, but keep those new & old one's you do. But, as you want to install any new "patches" (which are full apps) as well as update existing ones, upgradepkg has a solution saving you the hassle of installing them seperately. Use the switch --install-new. This will update any existing package & install anything new it finds.

Now, upgradepkg is expecting to find your updates in /, but this is (IMO) sloppy & a waste of time to move them later. So, to get round the fact you may have stored the apps soemwhere else, you start your command with ROOT=/wherever/you'd/put/them. I like to store new stuff in a subdirectory of /usr/local called Apps. So, where I'd stored my updates is /usr/local/Apps/Patches/. My upgradepkg command would look like this:

ROOT=/usr/local/Apps/Patches/ upgradepkg --install-new /usr/local/Apps/Patches/*tgz

Depending on many factors, ie how fast your 'puter is, how much RAM your 'puter has, how much time you, personally, have to allow you 'puter to install &/or upgrade packages before you or anyone else who uses the 'puter have to do something on it, you might want to start this shortly before you go to bed, leaving the 'puter on, naturally. That way, assuming upgradepkg doesn't crap out immediately for some reason, you can leave the 'puter to do what you've told it to do & wake up in the morning to a set of fresh apps. Plus, this plan has the added advantage of not inconveniencing anyone.

Misc

Boot
Press Tab to pause system for anything special (ie lilo init=/bin/bash - only / will mount).

To purge mail
cat /dev/null > /var/spool/mail/username
because sometimes your mail spool will becom corrupt.

In pine
Inbox-path: {popserveraddress/pop3}INBOX
to have pine read mail directly from your isp's mail server.

To open X on one puter from another
export DISPLAY=ipaddressofotherputer:0.0
both 'puters, naturally, have to be running some form of Linux, though.

In Gnome [I forget when this changed, but esdctl may no longer work], turn on or off sound
esdctl on
~or~
esdctl off
it may become annoying, but add "esdctl on &" to your .bashrc that you don't have to worrry about it anymore.

Quick start sendmail
sendmail -bd

For a list of everything done during startup
procinfo -a (-a is "all")

If you edit /etc/shadow
pwconv (root::0:0:root:/:/bin/sh)

Wanna eat some CPU time? How about running a screensaver on your Destop in the background? As root:
# /usr/bin/kswarm.kss --inroot &
I prefer krock.kss, but do locate *kss & try them all.

html
To get out of frame
a href="http...." target=_top

Wanna make Mozilla show your own colorus? -All due credit to Cameron Simpson for the hard work of reading the scanty documentation & passing along his findings.
You'll have to create & hack this file:

/home/user-name/.mozilla/either-default-or-user-name/whatever-the-directory-name.slt/chrome/userChrome.css

You may have to create the chrome subdirectory as well.

Use whatever text editor you'd like & enter this info:

/*
* This file can be used to customize the look of Mozilla's user interface
* You should consider using !important on rules which you want to
* override default settings.
*/
/*
* example: make the UI look a little more like Irix (nice readable
* slanted-helvetical menus, funny pink color on text fields)
*
*
* menubar {
* font-family: helvetica !important;
* font-style: italic !important;
* font-weight: bold !important;
* font-size: 4mm !important;
* }
*/
/*
* For more examples see http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html
*/

* {
color: rgb(50,255,50) !important;
background-color: rgb(50,50,50) !important;
border: 1px !important;
}

menupopup {
color: rgb(0,0,255) !important;
background-color: rgb(50,255,50) !important;
border: 0px !important;
}

colorpicker, commonDialog, console, dialogOverlay, filepicker, formatting, global, linkTree, outliner,
popup, progressmeter, radio, scrollbars, scrollbox, spinbuttons, splitter, tabbox, textbox, titledbox, toolbar, tree,
wizard, wizardOverlay {
color: rgb(255,0,0) !important;
background-color: rgb(50,50,50) !important;
border: 0px !important;
}

.tabbox, input, navbar, menu* {
color: rgb(0,255,0) !important;
background-color: rgb(10,10,10) !important;
background: rgb(10,10,10) !important;
border: 0px !important;
}

/****

menulist { colour: cyan; }

window, navbar, statusbar, menubutton, menu {
color: rgb(0,255,0) !important;
foreground-color: white !important;
background: black !important;
border: 0px !important;
}

input, textarea {
border: 1px solid green !important;
}

toolbar, menubar, menuitem {
colour: yellow important;
border: 1px solid yellow !important;
}

scrollbar, slider {
background: blue;
color: cyan;
}

.status-data, .status-label, thumb, location {
color: yellow !important;
}
**/

Now, edit the colours to your heart's content, close Mozilla if it's open, & then open it up again. You should now have menus & various other things in colour combinations you like. If they're just not right, close it, edit the file a little more, & reopen Mozilla.

Mount other partitions & drives. Like:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /dos
mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /win
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/hd

This assumes you have a primary drive with dos installed, & a secondary drive either installed only with some form of Windows or has a Windows partition on it. My configureation has a 1.5GB dos drive as primary & a 27.5GB drive with a small Windows partition & a set of Linux partitions in ext2 format. the third entry is for mounting a thumb drive formatted, for ease, in vfat. The entry in /etc/fstab is this:

/dev/sdb1        /mnt/hd          vfat        noauto,user,rw   0   0

Is wuftpd not cooperating?

Error: Socket operation on non-socket

Are you trying to run wuftpd as a standalone daemon without specifying the -S option? Without that option, the daemon assumes that it was started by inetd and that its standard input and output are already connected to the remote host.

Here's my current fstab. At the moment, I'm running slack 10.0, but, considering its slackware, things may be pretty similar no matter the release. Also, the info here will likely be pretty close to any Linux config with the same stuff I have

/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrw iso9660 noauto,owner.rw 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb1 /home ext3 auto,rw 1 1 /dev/hdb2 /sda2 ext2 auto,defaults,umask=000,quiet,user,rw 1 1 /dev/sdb1 /Ext vfat auto,defaults,umask=000,quiet,user,rw 1 1 /dev/sda1 /zip auto auto,umask=000,user,rw 1 1 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/camera vfat auto,defaults,umask=000,quiet,user,rw 0 0

As in most any single boot system, the first partition on the first hard drive holds my /boot directory, followed by my swap (not shown) on /dev/hda2, the second partition. My / is on the third partition, /dev/hda3. Next is my cdrom drive, & then a cdrw drive, & my floppy. The devpts is a system entry as well, but nothing one has to concern themselves with, & the same goes for proc. Now, the (other) extras: I've put my /home directory on the first partition of a second hard drive. This is not just for extra room -- the drive's 80GB -- but for an extra measure of safety in case anything goes wrong with the first hard drive. Hey, things happen. Even putting /home on a second hard drive can be in danger of data loss or complete crash, but your personal files are a little safer on a drive other than the one with your system.

The second partition on the second drive is just extra storage space. Next is my 500MB usb thumb drive, mounted on /Ext. The next entry, for /zip, is for an external parallel Zip100 drive. I have an internal Zip250 drive as well, but it had experienced the supposed Klick of Death shortly after I got the 'puter, so it's not listed. Finally -- the main reason I've added this to my Linux Help file, my digital camera. Every time I go awhile without using it, I wind up, for whatever reason, without an fstab entry for it & have to take the time to find the fstab entry on the Web. I've mounted it on /mnt/camera, & I've set it to allow me to mount it as user, as well as to edit file names right on the camera before I move them to a subdirectory in my /home. You could use safer options, something like noauto,r, or something. But I like living on the edge.

Links

I haven't actually maintained this section, so I don't, just now, have any idea if any of the links below still work. If you're so inclined & want to save me some work -- assuming you take the time to find a site with a bad url here, send me the new one, eh? Meph.

Data forensics conversion and manipulation
http://www.sydex.com.

CP/M emulator
Kaypro/CP/M/WordStar2.0.

Unix/Linux help
RootShell.

Daytime
http://www.muss.cis.mcmaster.ca.
NASA.
Root-Servers.Net.

Time servers
http://www.esavax.esa.lant.gov.
BlackIce.

Unix Guru
Polaris.Net.

Jumpers
OnTrack.

Router project
LinuxRouter.Org.