Re: Several Beginner Questions
John Shepherd wrote:
Hello Again,
Last night was nearly fruitless. Well, I
shouldn't say that; at least I have some specific
questions now.
My current situation is that I have installed
debian from floppy disks and can boot. I have created
a regular user and root. I'm learning the basic unix
commands, but just beginning. There are several
devices on my machine that I either do not know how to
access, or are not setup properly. I'm not even sure
which it is. For example, I assume the floppy drive
is working properly, and I have read that it is named
/dev/fd0, but I do not know how to access it. So,
here are my questions:
First, to access many devices as a regular user and not as root, you
must add the user to the appropriate group associated to the device.
For example, if you eventually want to access sound devices you will
need to be a member of the group associated to /dev/dsp which I believe
is audio, so you need to
"adduser user_name audio". The same is true for floppy disk and CDROM
access. Check the groups associated to /dev/fd0 and /dev/cdrom.
Acutally the latter should be a symlink to your actual device (maybe
/dev/hdc or /dev/hdd). Look at /var/log/messages corresponding to your
boot time, and you will see what devices are recognized and what they
are called.
How do I access /dev/fd0?
Well you need to know what filesystem is on the floppy. If you have a
msdos disk, you could say (as root)
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
And the floppy's contents will appear under /mnt
To unmount, get out of the directory and type umount /mnt
See man mount
How do I access my CD-ROM drive? (It is the slave on
the 2nd IDE).
If your symlink is established, you could type as root (for a data CD)
mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt
I have an adaptec SCSI card with a CD-Burner attached.
How do I know whether it is setup properly and how do
I access it?
Look at you /var/log/messages file to see what device it is (e.g. /dev/sda)
Then of course you will need appropriate modules loaded in your kennel
to access the device. You can put a data CD in the drive and try
mounting it as with your CDROM. To actually write to a CD, you will
need software like cdrecord or xcdroast. Look under
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO for instructions on CD Writing (and many other things)
My modem is an internal PCI modem; I do not beleive it
is a winmodem. How do I set it up?
Modems are a bit fussier. Try pppconfig or wvdial. Both will do some
autodetecting and setting up for you. Read the appropriate HOWTOs
My network card is a linksys pci card. How do I set
that up?
Again your /var/log/messages file will tell you if the card is
recognized. I am assuming you have installed potato, so you definitely
have a 2.2* kernel. I installed a linksys card, but had to use and
compile the drivers for linux that came with the card, since it was not
supported in the 2.2 series. You'll have to check. This will require
downloading the kernel source and building a kernel first.
Well, this should get you going a bit. The HOWTOs are a very important
resource.
--
Tom
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