PLD is a RPM based Linux distribution. RPM is a system of maintaining software resources of your computer. This system provides a command rpm which you can use to perform basic operations (install, upgrade, remove) on your set of packages. Every package is a collection of files which provides some functionality. For instance program which your humble author use to write this text is called vim.ispell. It is located in file /usr/bin/vim.ispell. I can check that my vim.ispell comes from package vim-ispell-6.1.063-1 using the command: dobrek:~> rpm -qf /usr/bin/vim.ispell vim-ispell-6.1.063-1 This package could by installed by downloading file vim-ispell-6.1.063-1.i686.rpm from PLD ftp site or one of the mirrors and invoking command rpm -i vim-ispell-6.1.063-1.i686.rpm. RPM can by also used for removing packages using command rpm -e vim-ispell . Sometimes already installed packages require upgrade. It can happen that new version has a expected new feature or the old one has a nasty security bug. If you want to upgrade package type rpm -U <package name> Upgrading package which conatins your kernel is usually very bad idea. Upgrade consist of removing the old package and installing the new one. With kernel it is usually safe to install the new one test and than id everything works fine remove the old one. After upgrade some packages you will note that there are some new files. It usually happens in the case of configuration files located in /etc. For instance if you upgrade your lpd daemon you will note that the file /etc/printcap hasn't been overwritten but the new file is created /etc/printcap.rpmnew. It is almoust always worth to look into this type of files to check out what are the differences between old and new version. configuring rpm (limit languages, etc)

Apt is powerful package installer/updater originally written for Debian and its .deb package system, adapted for RPM based systems by Connectiva people. Apt can be used to install packages from various sources (filesystem, cdrom, nfs, http). Here the net method is described (ftp or http). To use apt first make sure you have apt rpm package installed. Then you usually need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list (there are some examples in this file, in most cases it is enough to uncomment one of them). Example entry for i586 system: rpm ftp://ftp.pld-linux.org/apt PLD-1.0/i586 base supported You might also check some setup values in /etc/apt/apt.conf See sources.list 5 and apt.conf 5 for details. Apt is driven by apt-get command. First time you run apt, issue apt-get update (this command will only download list of packages from server). Then you can install/upgrade particular packages (and all packages they depend on) with apt-get install package1 package2 ... or upgrade whole system with apt-get upgrade. See apt-get 8 . Apt is very strict about dependencies. If you had ever issued --force and --nodeps options to rpm program, then you may get a lot of messages about broken dependencies when you run apt first time. That means your rpm database is messy. In that case it is wise to run apt-get check to see more details and then fix your database by hand, installing, removing or updating packages that cause problems. Once done, that cleaning is not necessary anymore as long as you use apt.

Poldek is batch-mode rpm package installer/updater written by Pawel Gajda as a part of PLD installer. It is software in beta stage. To use poldek you need poldek rpm package. Poldek can be used in full batch mode - every option can be passed in command line - or it can use config file, either /etc/poldek.conf (system wide config), or ~/.poldekrc (user config). Poldek can be run by ordinary user, installation of packages in that case can be done with sudo (can be set in user config). Running poldek from root does not require sudo. Program supports various sources of packages: filesystem, ftp, http, rsync. Simple config for source requires only one line, like that: source = ftp://ftp.pld-linux.org/PLD-1.0/i686/PLD/RPMS/ See example configs in poldek doc directory. You may install/upgrade selected packages with poldek -i package1 package2 ... or upgrade whole system with poldek --upgrade-dist. Run with no arguments poldek enters it's nice interactive mode (with TAB name completion and command history available). Try it. It's really cool! If you use poldek with remote source (e.g. ftp), it may be sometimes necessary to issue command poldek --update to reload poldek index files from server. See extensive man page for details: poldek 8 . If you use lilo, and do not use rc-boot, it is advisable to add hold = kernel to poldek config, otherwise it may happen during massive upgrade that kernel is also upgraded. If you didn't notice that it had happened, lilo wouldn't be aware of new kernel installed! If you use rc-boot, bootloader should be automatically upgraded.

Wuch is an interactive package manager written by Pawel Kolodziej. It has also some batch mode. The software is in beta stage. To run wuch you need wuch package. Wuch stores its configuration in /etc/wuch.conf. Example wuch.conf: root_dir=/ source=Primary PLD ftp server,ftp,ftp.pld-linux.org,/PLD-1.0/i586/PLD/,RPMS,inst For more details see comments in initial wuch.conf. Unfortunately, program is not very well documented (you may find some docs in program sources), nevertheless it has very simple and intuitive interface. Simply type wuch and enjoy.

PLD provides both standard useradd command (from shadow package), as well as interactive script adduser (from package adduser).

Occasionally, it may happen that system do not boot up correctly. Depending on the failure, some rescue steps might be necessary: Using rescue mini-system. Rescue mini-system usually comes on bootable diskettes or CD. As regards rescue diskettes, you can find plenty of them on the net, try to search e.g. on freshmeat.net. Good rescue CD can be found here: http://ftp.pld-linux.org/software/Rescue-CD/ Starting in another runlevel If the bootloader prompt is enabled, it is possible to give extra parameters to kernel. E.g. on LILO prompt, additionally to image name you can add runlevel parameter like that: LILO: pld runlevel=2 Runlevel 1 can be specified with runlevel=1 but also with single. Single mode is especially provided for system maintenance and emergency situation. But it can happen sometimes that even single does not work correctly. One can try to run system completely without init, e.g.: LILO: pld init=/bin/bash Above line causes that kernel attempts to run bash as a first user process instead of init that is invoked in normal case. System (if was able to run at all) boots in very "raw" state e.g. to be able to write on disk, one must remount the device into read-write mode first: mount / -o rw,remount Repairing filesystem When some serious error has been detected on root filesystem, init scripts invoke "emergency shell" and expect administrator to fix the problems manually. Usual reaction is using fsck program on root disk to check/repair disk data. After problem has been fixed, shell should be closed (with exit) or Ctrl-D), so the init scripts can continue boot-up procedure.

initrd etc, geninitrd etc

PLD comes with simple utility called rc-boot. This package provides an uniform interface to install and update bootloader. With rc-boot this task can be done with simple running rc-boot command; what bootloader should rc-boot use, and what are bootloader options, this is specified in uniform way in rc-boot config files instead of particular bootloader's config files. Basic rc-boot behavior is controlled by file /etc/sysconfig/rc-boot/config. To know what linux kernels or other systems should be available at boot time, rc-boot needs also image description files residing in directory /etc/sysconfig/rc-boot/config/. Newly installed system should contain at least one these file, that is, the file describing default system kernel, but in general it is possible to have more of them. Image description files can be written by the user, but the main idea of rc-boot was that they come with particular packages that need to be handled by bootloader. These packages are primarily kernel packages, but can be also other packages like memtest86 etc. It is used for easy kernel upgrades: as was just mentioned, each kernel rpm package comes with boot image description file. During kernel package installation, rc-boot is automatically invoked to ensure that newly installed kernel will be seen by bootloader at next boot-up. rc-boot support works only if rc-boot is installed (thats obvious), but it must also be enabled. This is done in it's main config file. For details refer to rc-boot 8 .