Re: 8 Newbie Questions
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9?= Bell wrote:
>I just installed debian about three days ago and have several questions
>about navigating within debian and about accessing devices. If you can help
>me with one or more of these questions it would be greatly appreciated as I
>am growing a bit frustrated with not knowing what I am doing :)
Some documentation you will probably find very helpful is the Debian Tutorial
at http://www.debian.org/~hp/debian-tutorial.html.
You should also install one of the doc-linux packages and read the HOWTOs.
>1) How do I move from one partitioned drive to another? How do I know the
>drive letters to use too?
The first (boot) device is /. Any other devices are mounted on directories
under /, so that they all make a seamless whole.
For example:
/mnt is normally an empty directory. When you mount another device on it,
it suddenly contains all the tree in the filesystem of that device. As a
user, you don't need to know that it is on a different device.
>2) How do I copy files from my floppy drive to my partitioned debian drive?
That very much depends on how the floppy is formatted. I would guess that
you have a W95 formatted floppy, so:
# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /floppy
Now the directory tree on the floppy is under /floppy.
If the mtools package is installed, you can instead say:
# mdir a:
# mcopy a:* ...
and so on.
>3) Why does debian say 'only the root can do that' when I type the line belo
>w:
> $ mount /dev/fd0 (or any other floppy drive)
Remember that Linux is a multi-user system. Therefore disk-mounting is
one of the operations reserved to the administrator, so that other users
don't get the rug pulled out from under them without notice.
> I can't cd /dev/fd0 nor can I figure out how to access it.
/dev/fd0 is a device node, not a directory -
$ ls -l /dev/fd0
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 Oct 22 1998 /dev/fd0
b or c as the first letter says the entry is a device; directories have
d there and ordinary files have -. You can treat a device as a file, but you
had better not try to write to it! (you would destroy any data on the device)
>4) How can i get a network connection or simulated network connection
>between my win95 pc & debin pc via serial or via their modems? Windows
>allows direct connect with other windows pc, what can I use with debian?
Look at the Serial HOWTO; you can probably connect the serial ports and
start a telnet session from W95. You would have to have a getty running
on your serial port (getty is a program that waits for someone to try
to connect and sets up the session).
>5) How determine hardware which is functioning properly and how determine
>which kernels need to be removed or changed? I know with windows I had
>device manager and msd.exe. What do I have with debian?
/proc is a pseudo-filesystem that contains information about the running
kernel. /proc/interrupts, /proc/ioports, /proc/pci and /proc/scsi are
`files' that may prove useful.
If your hardware is working, leave your kernel alone until you have learnt
a bit more.
>6) How change kernels once I know the above? I'd like to remove the devices
>that I installed to the kernels during inital installation of debian but
>don't actually have in my system yet. I also want to add a new serial card
>since I never set one up when I installed debian. The new serial card is
>now in the pc. I don't know how to do this after the fact. I type
>'setserial' and a bunch of stuff scrolls by that doesn't make sense to me ye
>t.
To understand what you are seeing, start with `man setserial', which should
print an explanation of that command.
>7) Why can't I access my floppy after booting from it? I have /floppy on
>my system. I can see it by cd / and then typing ls. When I cd to /floppy
>and then try to write to it I get 'permission denied'. I read from it
>without error messages, it appears to be an empty directory. I can't
>access either of my physical floppy drives attached to my system when I
>read from it with ls commands and /dev/fd(x).
By default, you have read access only (except when you are logged in as root).
To change that, you need to add your own user name to the floppy group by
editing /etc/group (you must do that as root). In /etc/group you will see
a line that says
floppy:*:25:
Add your username immediately after the last colon (no spaces):
floppy:*:25:olly,dan
extra usernames are separated by commas, as you can see.
Log off and log in again; you should now have write access to the floppy drive.
(But DON'T write directly to /dev/fd0!)
>8) Do I have to regularly compile my own linux software? Aren't binaries
>available like with dos and windows? So much linux software on
>the net that I've seen isn't in binary format, it's rpm or plain source
>format. Is this standard for linux software? Can I use these with debian 2.
>1?
.rpm files contain compiled code, for Red Hat Linux. Debian packages also
contain binary files; they end in .deb. Files that are named *.tar, *.tar.gz
or *.tgz will probably contain source that you have to compile.
You can install .rpm packages on Debian, using alien, but it may cause you
problems with files being in the wrong place - you're probably not ready for
that yet.
>* I hope you don't think I just posted without looking for the answers
>online. I've visited over 500 sites online, I've downloaded 40+ apps but
>can't use them because they are stuck on my win95 system or floppies, tried
>to access 'man man' to read the manual (but get an error "can't open the
>manpath configuration file /etc/manpath.config"),
You will need to install the package man-db, which contains that file.
> I've read the help menu
>by typing 'help' and then hitting CONTROL-Z to stop it from scrolling off
>the screen and then type each command to see if I can figure out what they
>do, and still haven't found the answers to my questions.
help gives you information about the bash shell (the program you are using
while you are typing commands) and its built-in commands.
>I hope you can help. Thanks in advance!
>
>Andre
>p.s. I've already downloaded mtools but since I can't copy the mtools files
>from the floppy to my partitioned debian drive, I'm stuck!!!
Assuming you have a:\mtools_<version>.deb, mount the floppy as instructed
above. As root, do
dpkg -i /floppy/mtools*.deb
That will install the package. You can do the same with any other packages
on your floppy, though you may end up with some that need others and therefore
cannot yet be configured. You need to get your machine's modem up and running
so that you can use apt or dselect to download packages and maintain proper
dependencies.
You will probably have more than one floppy. Remember that you must unmount
the floppy (run `umount /floppy' as root) before you take it out of the
drive. Once you have mtools installed, you don't need to mount the floppy;
you can use it as you would in DOS, with mdir, mcopy and so on.
>My debian pc seems to be up and running just fine, I just can't do this or
>any other commands to the floppy:
> $ ls -a /dev/fp0
/dev/fd0, do you mean? That's right; that command reads /dev and returns
information about the entry fd0 (because fd0 is not itself a directory).
It would not even try to access the fd0 device. You need to mount the
disk as I described above. Then `ls -l /floppy' will show you the contents
of the disk, and pathnames beginning /floppy will access its files and
directories.
>The floppy disk drive light doesn't even light up on when entering
>commands. This indicates that maybe the drive is not mounted properly in my
>linux system (I'm guessing), though I boot into my linux system from floppy
>just fine. :(
Nothing wrong with the drive, and it probably isn't mounted; you're just
using the wrong command.
To see what is mounted, the command is df or mount:
olly@linda$ df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 146360 24060 114742 17% /
/dev/sda1 295474 115373 164841 41% /var
/dev/sda3 1779366 1471857 215537 87% /usr
/dev/sdb1 4292072 4003069 66906 98% /usr1
/dev/hda1 352608 328224 24384 93% /dosc
olly@linda$ mount
/dev/hda3 on / type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /var type ext2 (rw)
/dev/sda3 on /usr type ext2 (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /usr1 type ext2 (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /dosc type vfat (rw)
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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"Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which
no man shall see the Lord." Hebrews 12:14
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