P1: KTU Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 1 C H A P T E R Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ In This Chapter L inux troubleshooting skills that were once useful only for hackers and ubergeeks have become necessities for computer professionals and serious technology enthusiasts.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight 4 WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going Once you have studied the troubleshooting techniques in chapters of this book, you may find that you want to spread those skills to other Linux distributions. For that reason, we provide two appendixes (Appendixes B and C) to help you understand the challenges you will face transitioning to two other popular Linux distributions: SUSE and Debian.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting ✦ Fedora is a path to Red Hat Enterprise—Some people like to use a freely distributed Linux as a means of showing a reluctant boss or IT department that Linux will work in their business. With Fedora Core 1, you can demonstrate many of the same features that are in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight 6 WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going Figure 1-1: Choose between GNOME and KDE desktops, based on the X Window System. Fedora comes with all the basic desktop applications you would expect to find on a Linux desktop: editors, web browsers, office productivity applications, music players, and graphics programs. Using yum and apt repositories, you can add to the hundreds of desktop applications that come with Fedora Core.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting Figure 1-2: Advanced network server software once in Red Hat Linux is included in Fedora. Most of the troubleshooting skills you will gain from this book are aimed at server troubleshooting.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight 8 WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going an eye toward security (Chapter 10 covers how to detect and deal with intruders), and then describe specific techniques to troubleshoot your firewalls (Chapter 11), domain name system server (Chapter 12), and modems (Chapter 13). Fedora Linux Workstation A Linux workstation is basically thought of as a desktop system used for software development.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting Whether you hope to build your own embedded or other specialty Linux system some day, the skills you learn in Linux Troubleshooting Bible will help you not only get your systems working, but understand the range of features that lie beneath the surface of Linux. Even if it’s just in the area of fun projects, such as those included with Linux Toys (www.linuxtoys.
P1: KTU WY025-01 10 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going ✦ Fedora Core 2 included many major new features and hadn’t been out long enough to know if all the major bugs had been fully shaken out yet. For these reasons, we felt that Fedora Core 1 made a more stable environment for those who wanted to use the skill taught in this book to set up and use reliable desktop and server systems.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting To learn about what is new in Fedora Core, especially if you want to know the differences between Fedora Core and Red Hat Linux 9, you can refer to the Release Notes document. That document describes the hardware requirements for running Fedora, provides notes on installing and using Fedora Core, and lists new and removed software packages.
P1: KTU WY025-01 12 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going (man5), games (man6), miscellaneous components (man7), and administration commands (man8). ✦ Info pages—Like man pages, info pages are text-based descriptions of components in Fedora. However, the info utility, which displays info pages, is more menu-oriented than are man pages. Checking Documents with man and info The man and info commands are used to display man pages and info pages, respectively.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting from the get-go, community involvement in other areas will, by their nature, take more time to develop. The Fedora Project has an active set of mailing lists that are available through Red Hat, Inc. To access the mailing lists (both archives and e-mailed versions are available to everyone), visit the following site: http://redhat.
P1: KTU WY025-01 14 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going ✦ Fedora development chat (#fedora-devel)—For chatting about problems and suggestions related to Fedora software development. ✦ Fedora problem reporting chat (#fedora-bugs)—To talk about bugs you encounter while using Fedora and find out if workarounds or fixes are available. There is also a Spanish language chat channel (#fedora-es) and other public and private channels associated with Fedora projects.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting want to be sanctioned to some extent by the Fedora Project, can be added to Fedora repositories in one of the following ways: ✦ Fedora Extras—These are additional software packages that don’t replace any of the basic Fedora Core packages. Eventually, the www.fedora.us site is slated to hold an official set of Fedora Extras packages.
P1: KTU WY025-01 16 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going Once you log in, check the frequently reported bug list and check the latest errata updates to see if your bug has already been dealt with. Then select Fedora Core to enter a new bug report by selecting the component (software package), severity, platform, priority, summary, description, and other information about the bug.
P1: KTU WY025-01 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Chapter 1 ✦ Introduction to Linux Troubleshooting a list of features that could benefit from a GUI. These include GUI tools for partitioning your disks, scheduling tasks, configuring more refined firewalls, and setting up boot servers (such as DHCP and NIS). To find out how you can contribute to the Configuration Tools Project, you can start by joining the fedora-config-list mailing list.
P1: KTU WY025-01 18 Bible Tight WY025-Negus-v2.cls June 28, 2004 22:29 Part I ✦ Getting Going ✦ X.org X server—The X server delivered with Fedora Core 2 changed from the XFree86 server to the X server software available from X.org.
