Linux Questions Answered

[AMDave]

A good friend and fellow forum member asked me some interesting questions today and while I was responding I remembered that it has long been my intention to kick off this thread. Time to bite the bullet and jump in head first.

The intention of this thread is not to build a Linux FAQ (there are plenty of them all over the web already for every distro you can find) but to find answers to problems or questions that AMD Users members have come across that you did not find answers to when you went searching.

So:

If you have a question or a problem on Linux (or even Unix) post it here and AMDave will do his best to find the right solution for you or find someone else who has the "magic key".

(oh boy ... I hope I can answer the first question...)

[vaughan]

Question 1:

I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from the CD to my HDD. The primary OS is Win XP Pro SP2 and I let Ubuntu do the partitioning. The installation seemed to be flawless but ... when I try to look for updates or browse the internet I get a message that Eth0 is not working. I don't recall the exact message text.

How do you enable wired networking from the Linux PC to the cable internet on a Windows XP Pro PC? Windows is 192.168.1.1 but I don't know what the Linux PC's address is.


Question 2:

What is the Linux equivalent to the DOS command DIR?

[AMDave]

Question 1:

I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from the CD to my HDD. The primary OS is Win XP Pro SP2 and I let Ubuntu do the partitioning. The installation seemed to be flawless but ... when I try to look for updates or browse the internet I get a message that Eth0 is not working. I don't recall the exact message text.

How do you enable wired networking from the Linux PC to the cable internet on a Windows XP Pro PC? Windows is 192.168.1.1 but I don't know what the Linux PC's address is.

Go the tricky one first! LOL
I will answer this separately on a following message...

Question 2:

What is the Linux equivalent to the DOS command DIR?

A terrific quick reference guide when starting to use commands in the Linux Terminal can be found at Linux/Unix for DOS users But you will mostly find that the parameters that you normally put after the DOS command are different in Linux. Before you use the Linux command you need to find out what the different parameters are and what they will do. To do this, type

$ man {command} <ENTER>

where:

$ is the prompt at the command line. It will be different on your machine but I will stick to this format moving forward. The prompt is what you see when the terminal opens and is ready for you to enter a command.

man (short for "manual" as in Instruction Manual) is a command that will bring up a help-file called a "man-page". man-pages comply to a strict standard format that ensures that you get clear and concise information about the command that you are interested in.

{command} is replaced by the command that you want to use.

<ENTER> is the Enter or Carriage Return key. I wont be putting this in following examples. I will assume from now that everyone knows you have to press enter to complete a command line.

[AMDave]

...quick add to the last message

when using man and the page displays, the <ENTER> key will scroll the information page down 1 line at a time, the <SPACE> key will give you 1 page at a time and <q> or <Q> will exit back to the command prompt.

If you missed what you were looking for and want to look again, try pressing the up-arrow once. In most distro's this will scroll up one in the command-history and show the last command that you typed. Then hit <ENTER> again and the man-page will be re-displayed. You can scroll up and down the list. (In Unix, press <ESC><K>. In Unix the escape keys are H for left, L for right, J for down and K for up)

[AMDave]

Re: Vaughan's question 1 above.

Ubuntu is a brilliantly executed desktop distribution built on top of the work by the Debian developers. I have played around with a couple of Ubuntu distros and found it a pleasant experience. The official Unbunto forums are really well put together and cover jut about every thing, which is not surprising considering the huge uptake this distro has got and how fast it is developing.

I have to assume that the ethernet cable is working because it is probably working in your WinXP OS on the same machine. We need to know if you have more than ne network card active and how your distro has identified them and what settings it has given them. In Windows you would normally jump into the network settings and have a look, or at the DOS/CLI prompt you would type "> ipconfig /ALL". The equivalent here is ifconfig.

In most Linux distro's the general user is protected from running system command like this, so you would have to enter "su -" and enter the root password to gain those rights to do this.

However, in Ubuntu, the primary user can type "sudo " before running any commands that may be restricted to the Admin user "root" and the should run fine. So can you enter

$ sudo ifconfig -a

and PM me the results?

This will allow us to determine if the Ubuntu install has recognised the ethernet port properly and the DHCP address or dedicated IP address it has ended up with. Then we can determine if that fits with your sub net.

I'll look for your PM.

[AMDave]

...oooh. another useful observation add on.

When you select the text in a linux window with the mouse cursor it is automatically put into the clipboard. You can switch window and right-click where you want in (say) a text editor and the highlighted text will paste into that window at the cursor position. This is something you can get used to really quickly.

Vaughan - got a way of saving that text from that window onto a FD since you can't email it? It's probably too much to re-type. Does it recognise your USB key?

[AMDave]

This was bugging me as I knew I had seen a definative work on this a short while ago. Through playing with various distro's over the last year or two I have hapened across so many useful pages, so it is likely that I will have fun finding some of them again.

Vaughan,
rather than go through the hassle of finding a way of transferring info from a machine that won't network give this page a kick
Ubuntu Networking for Basic and Advanced Users

/ed- below the pictures for the "static" address setting you will find the heading "Configuring DHCP address for your network card" I think this is the one you need -ed/

I found it useful at least once (possibly more than that).
If following this procedure doesn't pin down the problem we can go into the h/w analysis on the CLI.

That's twice I have used "CLI" - short for Command Line Interface. A more generic term that includes both the traditional DOS prompt in windows as well as the Linux/Unix terminal command interface.

[AMDave]

Checking over that instruction, I realise that "vi" is something that needs a little explanation.

IMHO it is the worlds best command line editor. And I am not being biased
vi takes little learning to become very usefull and just a lttle more allows you to meld it right into your system or application scripts.

Generally I use a short reference when looking up a vi reference for a reminder on something not often used, but I decided to look for something more general that gives an easy-to-understand tutorial on getting to know vi quickly and simply. To my surprise, some Hawaii dudes (Aloha!) come up with the nicest one I can find today:
Mastering the VI editor
This is an excellent intro to vi. It introduces the concepts and commands as you see it on screen. One of the best I have seen.

vi is extremely handy as a command line tool and once you are proficient at it you can quickly implement scripts to make it do things for you.

[AMDave]

Vaughan advises that the networking question is surpassed by a useage change for that box. But if anyone else has a repeat of this issue, it would be interesting to go through the above article to see if it is solved.

For the old-hats, I intend to start a new thread shortly on building a Linux application server using the kind of software you would find in a corporate data-centre.

In the mean time I get a reprieve, awaiting the next interesting puzzle.

[daddygeek]

Will ATI/AMD ever fix the video drivers for linux?