Matt's Linux PageMatt's Linux PageA lot of this is copied from James Rickett's official SEP linux page.
Turning off and rebooting
Don't just switch the power on and off.
Instead su and use:
shutdown -r now to reboot.
shutdown -h now to halt everything so you can turn it off.
If the system is frozen:
If not in window display, hit any key between F1 and F9.
That should give you an alternative login session.
Try to login from another system and kill the disastrous job.
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the window system.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot.
Use cdroms
mount /mnt/cdrom to get a cdrom mounted on /mnt/cdrom.
When you are finished, cd out of the mounted directories and
unmount it with e.g. umount /mnt/cdrom.
Using floppies
fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 to format the disk.
mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0 1440 to create a filesystem of type ext2
(linux native).
mount /mnt/floppy to get a floppy mounted on /mnt/floppy.
cd /mnt/floppy to enter the filesystem.
cd /; umount /mnt/floppy to umount the floppy.
Linux commands mread, mdir, mwrite, etc.
manipulate files on a DOS/Windows floppy disk. See online man pages.
Run-levels
The system comes with 6 run-levels defined in /etc/inittab:
# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by SEP are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser w/o direct network connection ("Home dial-in")
# 3 - Multiuser w/ direct network connection ("Home ethernet")
# 4 - Multiuser w/ direct network connection + NFS, YP, etc. ("Office")
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
To choose any run level other than the default one, type
Linux 1at the lilo prompt for the single user mode.
Gateway support
You can call Gateway at 1-800-846-2301. Now they don't help you with
software problems, if you do not have Windows loaded. But disastrous
hardware problems they deal with if you don't tell them about Linux.
The problem has to be disastrous enough to exclude software causes.
The Gateway computers come with a 3 year warranty and Stanford bought
enough machines to be considered a Major customer.
Backup with dat tape drive
Assumes that the dat tape is scsi#0:
Make a networked machine independent from server
To make the machine independent of spur, oas, network, etc:
Check system messages 3 button mouse Printer Changing root device in a kernel Hard disk partitions ~1Gb Contains /, /usr and /home directory trees hda1 ~0.5Gb Contains /var and /scr directory trees. hda3 ~0.5Gb Initially empty and unformatted. hda4 32Mb Swap space.
hda2
We also have a few licenses for Windows NT for Workstations.
If people want to experiment
with that, then they are more than welcome to - after all, it
is the future.
The choice of Windows 95 over NT as a secondary OS, was made
because most of the home computers operate in a stand-alone mode, so
NT's extra client/server stuff is useless.
Also games run faster on 95 (or so I've heard).
Installing Windows 95 on your Linux machine
The following instructions are intended to be help people to install
Windows 95 on their home computers.
However, a little mistake with fdisk could cause your whole
hard disk to be reformatted, so follow these instructions with care.
Proceed with caution!
Getting the ethernet card to work under Windows 95 Getting the graphics card to work under Windows 95 Reinstalling windows from scratch To mount the windows partition under Linux
in/var/log/messages.
For boot messages check /var/log/dmesg.
Configuration
Make sure your mouse is PS2, not serial.
In /etc/X11/Xconfig change:
Buttons 2
Emulate3Buttons
to
Buttons 3
The printer needs a2ps installed to convert figures into postscript
format (I think a2ps uses ghostscript but I am not sure).
rdev /vmlinuz /dev/sda5 changes the root device.
Initially the hard disks have been divided into four partitions, as shown in
the table below. (NB exact specs may vary from computer to computer)
Note: /scr is actually a symbolic link to /var/scr
Left for Windows or more scratch space.
The idea of this is to keep things simple while keeping junk out
of the root partition, as filling up the root partition would be bad.
Resources
Reading Material
Software Sources
Redhat's Package manager
ftp ftp://ftp.infomagic.com
cd pub/mirrors/linux/RedHat/redhat-4.1/i386/docs/RedHat/RPMS
get foobar-1.7-8.i386.rpm
Then install with
rpm -ivh foobar-1.7-8.i386.rpm
rpm -ihv ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/linux/Java/JDK-1.0.2/linux.jdk.static-1.0.2-2.i386.rpm --nodep
The --nodep says not to check interpackage dependencies.
rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/foobar-1.7-8.i386.rpm
Windows
All the home computers come with licenses for Windows 95. If you want
to install it, you can. Soon there will be a little guide here to
take you through the installation, but after that you are on your own.
Note: this disk is
not an `emergency repair
disk' as it only has a kernel, not a root filesystem. It
needs your hard drive to be working for it to be able to
run Linux.
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1 261 1052320+ 83 Linux native
/dev/hda2 262 262 294 133056 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 295 295 425 528192 83 Linux native
/dev/hda4 426 426 767 378944 83 DOS 16-bit >=32
Double click on the internet icon on your desktop. It should guide you
through what you need to do. Have the info provided by your RCC handy
though, as you will need things like the domain name server etc.
This is a bit vague - so if you have something more concrete, put it here.
This is something you almost certainly will want to do at some stage
if you mess something up.
You should now be able to cd /win95 and access all your
windows stuff, although you will need to be root to write to it.
When you are finished, cd out of /win95 and
# umount /dev/hda4
Acknowledgements