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<title>Getting Started with Linux LG #35</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">Getting Started with Linux</font></H1>
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<P align="center"><i><b>Version 1.0 November 98</b></i></P>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:prakash@freeos.com">Prakash Advani</a></H4>
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</center>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<b>This document is written for people who have just installed Linux but don't
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know what to do next. Most of the commands discussed here should work on all
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distribution of Linux but since I use Red Hat 5.0 some of them may be specific
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to Red Hat 5.0. I have also used Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 and have included some
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Caldera specific information. If any of you have any suggestions or ideas to
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improve this document, they are most welcome. All commands are in quotes and
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you need to type them without the quotes. For example if you see type "ls" then
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you just need to type ls. You will also have to press the ENTER key after typing
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each of the commands. There are some useful commands in the document but for
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complete command reference you will need to refer to additional documents.</b>
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<P> <HR>
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<P>Let us begin with first booting into Linux. When you boot Linux, you will see
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a lot of messages coming up. You need not understand all of them right now but
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if you get some errors while booting, you may want to look at them. These help
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in understanding them and do any troubleshooting if required. First thing you
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must do is login in to your Linux system. At the login prompt type "root" (or
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whatever username you have created) and put in the password. The password is
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selected at installation. If you installed linux on your machine then you are
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the root user and you have supervisory access to the system. If you didn't choose
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any password then the system will not ask for a password, instead take you straight
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to the Linux prompt. You will now come to the Linux prompt. The prompt will
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be a # if you are root or will be a $ if you are some other user and have chosen
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the BASH shell. If you are new to Linux then you should use the BASH shell.
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Out of several shells under Linux, I prefer BASH because it is easy to use.
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BASH is also the default on most Linux Distributions. Your prompt may look something
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like.</P>
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<P>[root@yoom.com /root]#</P>
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<P>If you need to logout just type "exit".</P>
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<P>Once you have logged in type "dmesg" to see the bootup messages. You will see
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something like:</P>
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<P><code>Serial driver version 4.13 with no serial options enabled<br>
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</code><code>tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450<br>
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</code><code>tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16450<br>
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</code><code>Real Time Clock Driver v1.07<br>
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</code><code>hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL_TM2110A, 2014MB w/76kB Cache, CHS=1023/64/63<br>
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</code><code>hdc: CREATIVECD2421E, ATAPI CDROM drive<br>
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</code><code>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14<br>
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</code><code>ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15<br>
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</code><code>Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M<br>
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</code><code>FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077<br>
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</code><code>md driver 0.35 MAX_MD_DEV=4, MAX_REAL=8<br>
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</code><code>raid0 personality registered<br>
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</code><code>DLCI driver v0.30, 12 Sep 1996, mike.mclagan@Linux.org.<br>
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</code><code>Partition check:<br>
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</code><code> hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 ><br>
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</code><code>VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.<br>
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</code><code>Adding Swap: 16092k swap-space (priority -1)<br>
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</code><code>Soundblaster audio driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen 1993-1996<br>
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</code><code>SB 3.1 detected OK (220)<br>
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</code><code>sb: Interrupt test on IRQ5 failed - device disabled.<br>
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</code><code>YM3812 and OPL-3 driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen, Rob
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Hooft<br>
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</code><code>1993-1996<br>
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</code><code>sysctl: ip forwarding off<br>
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</code><code>Swansea University Computer Society IPX 0.34 for NET3.035<br>
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</code><code>IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.</code></P>
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<P>You will realise that the messages scrolled down before you could read them.
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To see them page by page type "dmesg | less" or "dmesg | more".</P>
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<P>The dmesg command provides valuable information about the hardware devices
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detected by Linux. It also helps in knowing if there was some problem somewhere.
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Like if you see the line: sb: Interrupt test on IRQ5 failed - device disabled.
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It means there was a problem with setting up of the Sound Blaster sound card
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at IRQ5. If you get such errors, it may mean that some of your hardware is not
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working correctly under Linux.</P>
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<P>The BASH shell has a lot of ease of use. If you like working a lot on the command
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line, you will find it very easy. The bash shell allows using the previous command
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by press the up arrow key. You can also search for previous commands by typing
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"CTRL-R" and typing some words from the previous commands. To clear the screen
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press CTRL-L or simply type "clear".</P>
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<P>Another important command is df. Just type "df" and you will see something
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like:</P>
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<P>
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<pre>Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on<br>/dev/hda6 388362 341804 26501 93% /<br>/dev/hda5 614672 572176 42496 93% /dosd </pre>
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<P>This gives information of all your mounted hard disk partitions, available
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space and used space. The space shown is 1024 blocks which is 1024 bytes or
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one Kilo Byte. It also shows at which directory the partition is mounted. Like
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in DOS and Windows partitions and devices are allotted drive letters such as
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C:, D:, E:; in Linux partitions or devices are mounted onto directories. For
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example /dev/hda5 is mounted on /dosd. Normally /dosc, /dosd, would be your
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mounted dos partitions. It could also be anything else. Which means you can
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access your Dos files through Linux by going through these directories.</P>
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<P>Another useful command is ls. Type "ls" and you will see something like:</P>
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<P><code>bin/ dev/ etc/ lost+found/ proc/ tmp/<br>
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boot/ dosc/ home/ mnt/ root/ usr/<br>
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cdrom/ dosd/ lib/ opt/ sbin/ var/</code></P>
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<P>Type "ls -l" to see a more complete list. This will show the owners, permissions,
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date and time of when last modified and file sizes. You will need to understand
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file permissions once you get the hang of the basic Linux operations. Permissions
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are useful for multiuser Linux system where you need to restrict or allow access
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to files or directories.</P>
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<P>
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<pre>drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Sep 17 12:49 bin/
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drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Oct 4 23:24 boot/<br>drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 2 17:32 cdrom/<br>drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 21504 Oct 22 12:54 dev/<br>drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Oct 2 21:59 dosc/<br>drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 21504 Jan 1 1970 dosd/</pre>
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<p>The cd command is used to change directories, you can try by typing "cd /"
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to go the root directory. Type "cd -" to return back to where you were. If you
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just type "cd" you will return back to your home directory.
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Installing softwares, opening compressed files under Linux.
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<P>If you download documents, utilities, softwares or anything else for Linux,
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you will find that a lot of them have extensions of .tgz or .tar.gz. In that
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case you will have to type the following command to extract the files. Replace
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filename.tar.gz with the name of the file. </P>
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<P>gzip -dc filename.tar.gz | tar xvf -</P>
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<P>If you downloaded some Linux files under DOS, chances are that the file names
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may get truncated. In that case you will have to rename your files before extracting
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them under Linux. To rename files just type "mv oldfilename newfilename". Replace
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oldfilename with what the current file name is and replace newfilename with
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what you want the file name to be.</P>
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<P>Several files are also in the .rpm format. These formats are for the Red Hat
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and Caldera distribution and they are also used by other distributions. To install
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rpm's type </P>
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<P>rpm -i filename.rpm</P>
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<P>If you are upgrading an existing software type</P>
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<P>rpm -U filename.rpm</P>
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<P>If your distribution does not support RPM's you can add that support by installing
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the RedHat Packet Manager (RPM). Similarly there is pkginstall under some distributions
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to manage .tar.gz files.</P>
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<P>Man Man! What's man man ? These are help pages or manuals to get some help
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on a specific command. To get help on man type "man man". Similarly to get help
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on rpm type "man rpm". To get help on ls type "man ls" and so on. You can get
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help on all the command using man. To begin with get help on commonly used commands.
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These commands will help you move around files and directories. Some commonly
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used commands are:</P>
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<P>
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<pre>cat To type the content of a file
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cp Copy files
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du	To check the disk space used
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pine	Email client<br>find Find files on the linux system<br>grep Search for keywords on a file or a command
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kill To kill any process, ps to see the process number
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less If you cat a file you can pipe it to less for page by page viewing
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ln Create or remove links between files or directories<br>lpr Print files or output to a printer<br>ls List files or directories
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mkdir	To create a new directory<br>more Similar to less but less is better than more!
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mount	See the mounted devices or mount additional devices
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umount	Unmount mounted volumes<br>mv Move or rename a file<br>passwd Change your password
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ps	To see the processes running<br>rm Remove files or directories<br>rmdir Remove directories<br>useradd Add a user to the linux system
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userdel Delete a user on the linux system<br>usermod Modify a user on the linux system<br>which Find where a program is located<br>who Displays the users logged in<br>zless To see the content of a .gz file (compressed)</pre>
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<P>Some more tips for bash users. If you know that the first letter of a command
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for example is a but don't know the rest type "a" and then press TAB twice and
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bash will show the list of possibilities. You can also press a single tab to
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complete a command if there is only one possibility. This saves a lot of typing
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time. Example type "mou" and then press TAB, bash will put mount on the command
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line.</P>
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<P>Pressing TAB twice shows all the Linux commands. It looks something like:</P>
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<P>There are 1212 possibilities. Do you really wish to see them all? (y or n)</P>
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<P>Type "y" and you will see all of them!</P>
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<P>Sometimes if you type a command, the screen may scroll by too fast for you
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to read, unless you are superman. In that case you can see the previous screen
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by pressing Shift and PG-UP keys together.</P>
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<P>If you type some commands, you can break by pressing CTRL-C or ESC. It may
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not work in man or less, in that case just type "q".If you need to edit some
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files try pico or joe. These are two easy to use editors. Joe works more like
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WordStar and pico is the editor for Pine. Power users may try vi or emacs. These
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two are very powerful editors but have a high learning curve. Examples would
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be type "joe filename". Replace the filename with the name of the file that
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you wish to edit.</P>
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<P>Most distrbutions install X-Window. To start X-Window type "startx". X-Window
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is a GUI for Windows. There are several flavours available which give you different
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look and feel. To configure a redhat system type "setup". If you are under Caldera
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type "lisa". You can also configure through a GUI interface under X-Window.</P>
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<P>Most users may want to use some dos floppies or partitions. You can type some
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dos commands under Linux without mounting your devices. Type "man mtools" to
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see a list of these commands. These commands start with m, example the dos copy
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command would be mcopy. Similarly there are several commands such as mattrib,
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mcd, mcopy, mdel, mdeltree, mdir, mformat, mlabel, mmd, mrd, mmove, mren, mtype,
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mzip, etc.To see some more Linux documentation's look under the following directories.
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If the files have .gz extension the to view them type "zless filename.gz" replace
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filename with the name of the file.</P>
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<P>/usr/doc/FAQ<br>
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/usr/doc/LDP/install-guide<br>
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/usr/doc/mini/usr/doc/HOWTO</P>
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<P> </P>
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<P><a href="mailto:prakash@freeos.com">Prakash Advani</a> is an Internet and Systems
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consultant based in Mumbai, India. Currently we are setting up a Web site dedicated
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on Free Operating Systems [<a href="http://www.freeos.com">www.FreeOS.com</a>]
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including Linux. Any help would be greatly appreciated.</P>
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<P> </P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Prakash Advani <BR>
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Published in Issue 35 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, December 1998</H5></center>
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