On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Rebecca J. Walter wrote:
>
> psyche -- i am rather new to this whole linux thing... ive been using it
> for about 2 years and i have this constant fear that i will make my
> puter blow up or something. my husband runs the network and is
> threatening slackware at me (we currently have red hat 7, my box is suse
> for work purpose)
> if there isnt already some kind of faq about what people shoudl send
> when they post, could you make one? i for one have no clue what
> thingies need to be typed in for diagnosing the system, let alone fixing
> it.
Hey, great idea for a FAQ--thanks. :) I'm inspired. Perhaps I can come
up with a "System Diagnostics Mini-HOWTO" or some such thing--that way,
people can read that to learn what they should do first, so they could
get the help they need easier when posting to a Linux forum. So often
with Linux, to get the help you need, you need to be knowledgable enough
to ask for the right kind of help for the problem. And after doing all
that work, the person needing the help has either given up in frustration
or figured out the problem themselves--that's what's always happened to
me!
I think Slackware is a really great system to learn on, since it's more
do-it-yourself, and you end up learning a lot more that way, I think, but
Red Hat is still Linux, and has a command line and the same
mysterious-sounding files and commands as other Linux distributions. I
think a great way to really learn Linux is to work at the command line a
lot, and just explore the system. The main logs are in /var/log, btw,
and /var/log/messages is the one to look at a lot when
troubleshooting. Different distributions name some of their config
files differently and handle them differently--I remember SuSE
really confusing me with that!
My general message to newbies (or semi-newbies, or even experienced
folks who are not used to working at the command line much) is--don't
be afraid to type in new commands just to try---just don't do it as
root! The things to be careful of are changing any file permissions (do
this only on test files you've written, when you're just practicing), and
rm'ing or overwriting anything. If you stick to these rules the worst
thing you're likely to do is make your console unreadable (setterm -reset
fixes that usually). Be a brave adventurer, and just play with stuff and
have fun. :)
psyche
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