on Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 10:24:13AM +0200, Ian Balchin (fables@imaginet.co.za) wrote:
> Amazingly he replied that he had a book on Linux. You can guess which
> one that is! He had given it away to another dealer but hopefully
> will get it back for me. I looked at the Linux Bible on line by Steve
> Hunger and thought it looked comprehensive.
Matt Welsh's _Running Linux_ is going to be superior to both. There's
plenty of online documentation at both the Linux Documentation Project
(http://www.linuxdoc.org/) and the Debian Project, including older
versions of this book. You should be able to print either the
postscript or with a little more work, run the sgml sources to output.
This will give you a targeted set of docs in looseleaf (3-ring binder)
form, if you can access a good laser.
> With the local computer shop, who is right next door, we may set up a
> linux server for the local school, so that book could be of good use.
> Sadly, it will be a case of the blind leading the blind.
It's a slow, but excellent, way to learn. Online resources are, again,
plentiful.
> Last night I went through the info documentation system which i
> thought would be a good start. Then read and played with the ls
> command. I uncommented the lines in the .bashrc in root to give me
> colours for ls. I must also do that for my normal login shell. In
> directories where there are lots of files they whizz off the top of
> the screen but piping thru less or more strips off the color. If you
> add in a --color switch then more is OK, but less gives out hidden
> codes. Lots to play with there.
Setting:
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
...adds the color hints when writing to a terminal, but not when piping
output to another program. For a fairly easy to parse listing of a
large directory, try:
$ /bin/ls -CF /usr/bin
...which uses columnar output and identifies files by type:
- name* executable
- name/ directory
- name@ link
- name| FIFO pipe
- name= socket
> Have gots lots of paper, and printer ribbons. Found a whole box of
> ribbons for my printer free (what a luck) which the clothing chain
> store just down the road dumped when they bought a new printer. So
> have printed out a couple of HOWTO files - the Config-HOWTO and the
> Printing-Usage-HOWTO. Some good bedtime reading there.
;-)
If you can find one, a laserprinter may be more cost effective than what
sounds to be a line-printer (dot matrix). Not to mention faster. Just
keep it off when it's not in use to save on electricity costs. I've got
an HP LaserJet IV picked up second-hand.
> I print these out via the lpr command, having done gzip -d to undo
> them.
Try:
$ zcat file | lpr
> I see the .gz file is not there anymore, so did a gzip to zip
> up the .txt file again after printing.
Sounds like you're running this as root. Don't do that, it's a bad
habit.
You should also be aware of how different uses of gzip work:
$ gzip -d file # uncompresses file. Replaces zipped file with
# uncompressed version.
$ gunzip file # As above.
$ gunzip < file # reads file from stdin (standard input).
# Uncompressed data is written to stdout
# (standard output). Original file is not
# changed.
$ gunzip < file > file2 # As above, but stdout is written to file2.
$ gunzip < file | lpr # As above, but stdout is "piped" to the
# program "lpr", to print.
> Lots of work but zcat redirected to /dev/lp0 does nothing, either from
> root or my normal login
Your printer may need a few modifications to input, including CR/LF and
EOF to eject a print job. Better to print with the 'lpr' command.
> I also find that the lpr command does not accept the -i command to set
> a margin, perhaps that is my printer? I can try another.
There are better ways to address this, using formatting markup such as
groff, sgml, or a word processor.
> Several of you have been positively eulogic about emacs so have been
> having a look at the beginners guide.
Just remember -- you only need to know the parts you're using, not the
whole damned thing.
> Where has my floppy drive gone? I can find it nowhere. I can find no
> command in mc to change drive (come back PCTools, all is forgiven!)
> There is nothing in /floppy and nothing in /dev/fd
Is it mounted?
$ mount
...will list your mounted partitions. You should see /floppy or
/dev/fd0 listed if your floppy is mounted. If not, insert a floppy and
issue:
$ mount /floppy # works if your /etc/fstab is set up right, or
$ mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /floppy # supply all arguments.
There are also tools to directly manipulate floppy contents without
mounting the drive (the mtools package), and systems to automatically
mount the drive when you access it.
> I have 16Mb Ram. according to top I have 13.7 of which 11.8 is used
> and 1.9 free. Where has this all gone! I am not doing anything yet.
It's been put to good use ;-)
GNU/Linux automatically uses as much memory as you have available (in
your case, not much) to speed system operations. Your memory is being
used in shared libraries, to cache disk access, and other needs. As
programs require memory, the amount used to cache disks will fall, and
other programs will be moved to swap. If this happens repeatedly over a
short period of time (your memory demands are high relative to available
memory), your system is said to be "swapping", performance slows
dramatically (disk access is 1000 times slower than memory), and it's
highly recommended to either exit applications using large amounts of
memory, or buy more memory.
With your current configuration (16 MB RAM), you're likely to encounter
this situation.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free
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