DOC DATE
June 2000
This is about things that are frequently needed, but aren't configuration
things per se. You can try about or
apropos too. ALSO, here's a good thing to do to get your unix
bearings. cd command and then do every two-letter command,
namely ...
cc cp dd df du ed ls mv nc nl rm sh tr wc
and at least be aware of what they do. Unix command namespace is such
that the twofers are the old-school-est stuff. That and /dev is two things
I haven't fooled with in the cLIeNUX namespace. Most of them do something
useful when you do e.g. dd --help, and they all have seedocs. Then do ls
?? /command/background .
-
Rename a file
- mv
-
Remove a file
- rm
-
move a whole directory across filesystems
- cp -a
-
Convert a MIME document or a base-64 document
- metamail
-
Read a Postscript or PDF document
- The guts of that is in the Ghostscript package, which I usually
put in /suite.
-
Get or put my mail via POP or SMTP
- pmail/putmail
-
read Usenet News
- Lynx/browse, suck or slrn/news
-
Rename a bunch of files
- renames (ren)
-
Calculate floating-point math
-
spreadsheet, (sc)
awk,
forth,
calculate
-
Install an rpm or deb
- Gotta be a source package, first
of all. Then there are very few things around that are ONLY available as
"packages". That is, there IS a tarball available SOMEwhere. Except for
Red Hat DiskDruid maybe. THEN, rpmunpack, undeb, and THEN DSFHdir, then
read INSTALL, etc. ...
-
un-gzip a .gz or tar.gz or .tgz
- gunzip or gzip -d or tar
xzvf. Note the "f" switch to tar. Also note that
tar tzvf is a good thing to do to alien tarballs before possibly
smearing
them all over the current directory. Have a go with judge
too.
-
format a floppy
- What format? Low-level, or a filesystem? You make a Linux ext2 filesystem
with mke2fs. You make a Dos filesystem with
mkdosfs. You
can low-level format a floppy with fformat. The low-level
format
fformat will attempt is determined by the floppy device you
specify. If
you give it /dev/fd0 it does 1.44meg, but the other /dev/fd???
devices
represent other formats.
-
Read an email folder
-
mail
-
Fire off an email from the commandline, like just mail < file person
- mail < file person@host.domain I think. You may have to tweak pmail to catch
that as "sendmail".
-
change the console layout
- SVGATextMode
-
Print a text file
- depends on the printer. On my dot-matrix it's cat file > /dev/lp0.
Beyond that see the Ghostscript package.
-
Start the GUI
- Did you install XCORE? If so you should have an x or startx command.
-
Import a source package
- You get the tarball, unpack it, cd into the top directory of it, and run
DSFHdir. That chews on it for a while. Then you look for a README
or INSTALL file, or both, and read. When you get it built,
upload it to ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/incoming ;o)
-
Import a binary
- No other distro I know of is still libc5. You can run
static binaries. If you have a libc5 binary, like a Netscape 3 for example,
DSFHed works on most binaries. It doesn't work on X servers because they
have a "tmp" in them that DSFHed doesn't catch because it doesn't have the
slashes, i.e. it's not /tmp/, and rather than make DSFHed more risky, I
edit the binaries by hand with binedit. It's not hard. Use the
text string search. And let me know what binary doesn't DSFHed cleanly.
-
Get a whole FTP directory "recursively"
- Say the
directory you want is called "/pub/Linux/goodies" and you're cd'ed into
/pub/Linux. . Try
get goodies.tar
in ftp. Most FTP servers do that.
-
See if my ethernet card (or whatever) is recognized
- page /boot/messages. If that doesn't word try the "bootmessage"
or "dmesg" command. *Not* /boot/message.
-
Install my sound/ethernet/ham/video... driver
- Build a kernel. Get the kernel source, read the README. See the cLIeNUX
notes in /source/kernel. cLIeNUX REQUIRES a 2-line kernel patch.
-
Manage my files
- browse has directory editing
features, and the judge is handy for downloads and such. The judge,
BTW, is a good little scripting excercize. Be your own judge.
-
Report a bug
- email me. Better, upload the fix.
-
Add a com4 or other device
- special, mknod
-
Get system status
- do browse /Linux, or run status, or do df
or free or
memory or netface or route or....
-
Read a file's inode
- stat, statfs, ls -i
-
Shut down
- shutdown. NOT NOT NOT reboot.
-
try various VGA text mode fonts
- fonts
-
Have a login with a password at the console
- edit /configure/inittab to use getty instead of getvtsh.
-
Set my system date
- date, hwclock and netdate
-
Get ethernet working
- Not my strong suit. It involves netface/ifconfig, route, and the kernel.
-
Make my own rescue/travel disk
- read ramdisk.txt in the kernel sources.
-
Run a program at a certain time or times
- scheduler (cron, hc-cron)
-
make a particular program run at bootup
- edit /configure/inittab. Be careful.
scheduler might do that too.
-
Fix a filesystem that's corrupt
- e2fsck, or preen to run that on the whole box.
-
IT JUST SITS THERE UNTIL I HIT ^D?!?!?!
- YES!!!! ISN'T
THAT BEAUTIFUL?!?!?!? It's waiting for input on stdin! From you! You are
it's input file! And YOU can tell it something else. ANYthing else. Output
too! This is one of the very crucial things that makes unix so powerful.
EVERYthing in unix is an interoperable tool of the shell. Do not rest
until you understand this.
-
Run a .c file
- see C, see gcc
-
split a file
- split, splitcontext, dd, segment, head, tail, tar
-
Unpack a ".bla" file
- see suffixes, file file.bla for other clues.
-
get rid of a directory named *@^#$*^@#*$^#^$*$^*#^$*#@)@@)@)
- There's several things to try. Quotes get em sometimes, "*$&^@*^$*^" for example.
Then there's ./ . In bad cases, if it's not /, you can move everything else and then
rm -rf *. I was reminded to write this entry when I spewed junk all over / and
had a directory named as a single newline character. I put
rm -rf "
"
in a script and executed it. That got that one. Also, for file named
???????bla*@#$*^$#$ you can get it with *bla* as long as bla doesn't match anything
important.
-
Set a screen blank interval
- Edit /configure/profile. see console_codes.
-
Turn off the speaker beep
- Edit /configure/profile. see console_codes.
-
-