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.