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Linux Installation | Post-installation 1| Post-installation 2 | Source, binaries, rpms | Installing PHP and MYSQL | PHP and MYSQL tutorial |
Some Post-Installation Tasks (1)
When you run linux for the first time after typing linux at the lilo prompt, a series of text based messages will appear and finally you will be prompted with the login screen. Login as root and Gnome will start.
Sound Card
Configuration:
Start clicking on all the buttons on the bottom toolbar
and you'll soon get an idea of what linux is like. Then
start a terminal (one of the buttons) and run 'sndconfig'
to configure your sound card. This is one hell of a
stupid configuration tool. Firstly remember this - if you
mess it up the first time there are a lot of chances it
won't run properly (or at all!) the next time. There must
be a shell prompt based way to circumvent this but I don't
know this and hence I had to re-install linux since I
messed it up. The program probes for a sound card and
give its results. If it detects a sound card you're lucky.
If not, then well you'll have to try the many support
sites. There is the OSS program which has support for
some additional sound cards. You may have to download
that; but its a stupid shareware application which has to
restarted every 20 min or so to work. Opti sound cards do
not have inbuilt support but with OSS they can be
consigured. I have Yamaha OPL3-SAx. Sndconfig detected it
and asked me whether I could hear a sample. I couldn't; I
said no and I messed it all up. All because the default
volume level was absolutely low. Only after my friend
told me that he had configured the same card on his
machine did I turn up the external volume knob of my
speakers and discover the magic of music. After
configuring the sound, lets move on to mounting of
Windows partitions.
Linuxconf 1 (Mounting
local drives):
The first few times I ran Linux, I just clicked on
everything that I could and explored the whole start menu.
I took care I didn't change any settings but I did read a
lot of help files. One most important program is
Linuxconf which is a very powerful configuration tool (start
menu - system). To mount a particular drive click on
access local drives. You shouldknow what your windows
drive is called under linux (eg: My c: drive is hda1
under linux). So I will have to type /dev/hda1 in the
proper place. You can check in the /dev directory using
file manager as to the hda drives you have. If you have 2
hard disks then the second hard disk will have drives as
hdc1 and so on. Uusally hdx2, hdx3, and hdx4 will
beunused as they stand for primary partitions and usually
there is only 1 primary partition (the windows main C
drive - using windows fdisk you are not allowed to make
more than one primary partition). The logical drives (dos
and linux types) in the extended partition will be given
names as hdx5, hdx6, and so on. The type of drive is
umsdos for windows drives. The mount point is usually
given as /mnt/ehatevernameyouwanttogive. This will be the
sirectory within which the files present in the drive
will be placed. So to access the mounted drive I will
have to use file manager to access the above mentioned
directory. You can allow the drive to be mounted at boot
up if you're sure you aren't going to delete that
partition. If you do so and you delete the partition,
Linux will go on searching for that drive during boot up
anfd this may cause problems. If you do not tell
linuxconf to mount on bootup then you will need to
manually mount the drive everytime you want to access it.
You can mount and unmount a particular drive using the
disk management application in the system section of
start menu. If you want to access a cd-rom or a floppy,
insert it and then mount the appropriate drive (cd-rom
and floppy drives are by default present as mountable
drives /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/floppy - not mounted at boot
time)
Linuxconf 2 (Setting up users):
One most important thing in Linux is setting up users. It
is not good to use root unless for changing system
settings. If inadvertently system settings are changed,
that redhat installation cd could come into use again. To
set up users, click on the user accounts section. Add a
new user by giving a username and then specifying a home
directory (usually /home/username/). There are a lot of
preferences which can limit or extend the previlages of
the user to access system specific programs and
directories which you can set to your own satisfaction.
Finally you are prompted for a password after which the
account is activated. To log into this account, you have
to log out from linux, after which the login screen
appears again. Type the username and password of the user
and Gnome is started again.