Newbie answers and newbie questions (was Re: Install problem)

[Richard Zitola <zee@join.com>]

Hi Charles,

At 05:23 PM 2/8/00 -0500, Charles O. Hartman wrote:
>But I can't get (for example) the man command to get installed. When I...

I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with dselect to answer that one, but...



>In case somebody's got a moment's patience for simplicities, I have
>three really basic questions about using Linux (which man might be able
>to answer if I could get at it!):
>
>1) How do I access other devices (for example the CD), such as to use ls
>to find out what's on them?

You have to 'mount' them.  For example, to access a CD:
  - login as root and insert a CD into the drive
  - create a mount point (simply an empty directory, try 'mkdir /cdrom'
       or 'mkdir /floppy' if they don't already exist)
  - mount the device using 'mount <raw device> <mount point>'
       (i.e. 'mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom' or 'mount /dev/fd0 /floppy')
  - you'll be able to see the contents - 'ls /floppy', etc.
  - to see another cd/floppy, you have unmount and repeat this process
       (i.e. 'umount /floppy'; 'mount /dev/fd0 /floppy')
  - don't forget to 'umount' when you're done - the command is 'umount'
       not 'unmount'... not a typo.
There may be better ways, but this should work on a freshly-installed
system to get you started.


>2) If I add another piece of equipment (such as an extra hard drive),
>how do I go about acquainting the system with that fact? Do I re-run
>install? But that's a DOS command and DOS has gone away now . . .

Have a look at:
   http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Multi-Disk-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.6
and other useful info nearby.  In a nutshell, to add a second IDE
drive you need to:
   - physically install the drive
   - prepare the drive - partition/format/mkfs
   - edit and specify mount points in /etc/fstab, these will be
     automatically mounted at boot time.


>3) What's the proper way to shut down the system? I can reboot (which
>does an orderly shutdown) and kill the power during the reboot, but that
>seems crude.

   machine$ sync
   machine$ sync; halt

Wait for "system halted" and then you can safely power off.

   machine$ shutdown -h now
 
does the same thing, but gives a nice little warning message to users.



And now for a newbie question of my own...

I've installed the base system and everything works fine, including
ppp, etc.   How can I use the "tasks" and "profiles" method of
package selection that was in section 7.23 of the install guide?
Is this even possible, or do I have to deal with picking out of
deselect by hand?  2000+ packages!  Yikes!


thanks,

-Rich Zitola
ZeePrime Technical Services
zee@zeeprime.com