getting the ball rolling.
Hi all,
I am taking responsibility for the "Troubleshooting and Problem
Solving" title. There have (so far) been two offers to work on various
chapters.
The chapter list (as it currently stands) is:
1. Introduction <already drafted>
Scope of this book.
Intended Audience
2. Overview of a Linux System <already drafted>
The Linux Kernel
System Tools
User Tools
init
The structure of /etc/rcX.d and /etc/init.d
getty
Networking
3. Accurately Diagnosing the Problem
Reading Errors
Reading Logs
4. Searching the Web
Search engines
Formulating queries for best results
5. Reading and interpreting manpages
6. formulating and testing hypotheses
7. basic troubleshooting tools
8. basic recovery tools
9. boot problems (lilo, grub) <Russell Coker is working on this (the
lilo section, a volunteer is still looked for to write about grub>
10. filesystem problems (fsck, undeleting?) <Russell Coker is working
on this>
11. Network problems
12. mail problems
13. Printing problems
14. package management problems (dpkg, apt, dselect) <Gerfried Fuchs
will work on this>
15. problems with file permissions <Gerfried Fuchs will work on this>
16. X11 (huge one this)
17. security
18. Setting up a self-maintaining system (cron, at, etc)
19. good backup regimen and how to set it up
20. Being effective asking for help online (mailing lists, newsgroups,
IRC) <I will write this (It is already partially done)>
If there are any of these that you would like then let me know.
If you don't feel that you can write all of a chapter, but are happy to
do part of it then that is fine. If I have the chapter marked as being
worked on then think of it as locked. If it has already been worked
on, but you wish to add to it then let me know and I will mark you as
working on it.
There have been concerns raised about having the text publicly
available until we work out licensing terms properly. For the moment
if you have access to Debian machines then the docbook sgml is
available from:
auric:~bagpuss/book.sgml
If you do not have access to Debian development machines but would like
to work on the book then let me know and I will privately email you the
current source.
If you wish to contribute but are not proficient in docbook sgml then
that is fine. Just send me your contribution in whatever format you
wish and I will convert it to sgml for you.
Any and all contributions are welcome. Even something as simple as
expanding a chapter title to include possible sections is a step
forward.
My personal contribution to this will probably be mostly editing and
coordinating. I will write any chapters which are not taken by anyone
else, but whilst I have experience of most of the subject areas, I am
not expert in all of them (for example, I have used lilo fairly
extensively, but my knowledge cannot compare to that of the lilo
maintainer's :)
I will post regular updates to here (debian-books@lists.d.o) and may do
the occasional post to debian-devel@lists.d.o asking for help for
chapters which have no takers yet. The sgml source in progress will be
sent to anyone who has contributed (or who is marked as in the process
of contributing). This will hopefully allow better integration of the
thing as a whole.
Division of any royalties are totally undecided as yet. I have no idea
how to go about this. Any thoughts anyone?
Please do not send me a list of 5 chapters which you "may be able to do
something for". I prefer you take one or two and actually do them.
Then come back for more.
Hopefully this can be a successful way of writing a book. I am looking
forward to learning my way around it anyway :)
Cheers,
--
Stephen Stafford
finger bagpuss@debian.org to get gpg public key
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