🚀 go-pugleaf

News wrote:

> I'm trying to get my Linux machine to log onto a network .  I have never
> used a linux machine in a networked environment before. Can anyone pont me
> in the right direction
> Thanks
> Barry

Most distros come with netconfig to set up network connections. Read the docs
for your distro to find out what program you should use if you don't have it.

--
-Antipop
|antip0p at home dot com|

"The Linux philosophy is 'laugh in the face of danger.'
Oops. Wrong one. 'Do it yourself.' That's it."

  --Linus Torvalds

Read the Networking and Ethernet HOWTOs

ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/

News wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to get my Linux machine to log onto a network .  I have never
> used a linux machine in a networked environment before. Can anyone pont me
> in the right direction
> Thanks
> Barry

-- 

Kevin White
Remove anti-spam center segment from domain
kwhite@bcpl.center.net

I couldn't figure it out.
So I fired up my Mandrake 7.0 install CD and made all the same choices I had
before with 2 exceptions.  The first being that I selected "upgrade" instead
of "install".  Of course there was nothing to upgrade and no format was
done.  The second thing I did was choose to configure the network when I got
to that section.  The Mandrake install/config program figured out all the
host name etc. information I couldn't.  My system was none the worse for
wear except I had that old problem with the bad link to my CDRW.  An easy
fix.

"Kevin White" <kwhite@bcpl.net> wrote in message
news:39075440.706023EA@bcpl.net...
> Read the Networking and Ethernet HOWTOs
>
> ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/
>
> News wrote:
> >
> > I'm trying to get my Linux machine to log onto a network .  I have never
> > used a linux machine in a networked environment before. Can anyone pont
me
> > in the right direction
> > Thanks
> > Barry
>
> --
>
> Kevin White
> Remove anti-spam center segment from domain
> kwhite@bcpl.center.net

It was: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:15:22 GMT  and with STARTLING insight,  ""News"
<barryafink@yahoo.com>" 
  posted "networking and Linux" 
 to "alt.os.linux" :

-->I'm trying to get my Linux machine to log onto a network .  I have never
-->used a linux machine in a networked environment before. Can anyone pont me
-->in the right direction
-->Thanks
-->Barry

Some distributions use a program called " netconf " which is I believe a
part of " linuxconf " .  Both of these can be run from the command line or
from an Xterm in your gui environment if that is what you use.  Some
programs and scripts can also be accessed, once you have your networking up
and working, from a web browser, no kidding, on another machine.  Linuxconf
is one, so is SWAT for Samba, and Webmin, which has a module to configure a
pretty fair variety of things, and more coming....

linuxconf , while admittedly not quite perfect (what is?) gives you
choices, allows to fill in some blanks, then changes the wording of text
configuration files, most of which are somewhere in or under /etc .  It's
worthwhile to figure out what files are being changed and what values they
hold now and what each file affects.  Conversely, it's good to know that if
there is a program or aspect of the O/S that you wish to change or
particularize to your own specification, you usually can look here 
( /etc/....) and find a file to configure to effect your changes.  

Some of these files are 'script ' files, similar in concept to DOS batch
files (*.bat --autoexec.bat) (some are more like *.sys files, *.conf or
conf.*, etc -- config.sys).  Many of the files that make and restore
settings at the boot up of the machine are scripts files.  Fine tuning
these may require learning some rudiments of scripting AKA script
programming.  Not that difficult, but there are many many rules, syntax
must often be observed precisely, and it can be both arcane and abstruse.
But, one of the best ways to learn is to read the files, which are
inevitably plain text (as opposed to compiled into a binary form, the
defining difference between a script and a program, IMHO).  Question what
they do and how they do it.  Read man files: man bash or man bash2,  man
test, etc.  

Script and other executable files in Unix like operating systems don't have
to have any particular extension such as *.bat, *.com or *.exe.  Instead
they have an executable attribute associated with them in the filesystem:
-rwxrwxrwx where x means it can be executed by the shell.
(-r-xr-x--x , -rwx--x--x , etc.  where each group of 3 file permissions
follows in order of owner, group of the owner and world -- everybody, has
the permissions. So:  -rwxr--r-- means that the owner can read, modify or
write to, and execute the file, members of the owner's group can only
execute this file and everybody else logged into the system can only
execute this file.)  The same stuff about file permissions is true for
directories (and devices) as they are considered as another kind of file.
Some programs cannot use a file within a directory if the executable "bit"
of the directory is not set for the user or group that program is running
as, or has "world" executable permission bit set.... One such program is
Apache, the web server.  In general, the path to a file must allow the
user, his group or everybody read access, and to read, write or execute the
file, the file's permission bits must allow that action for the user,
group, or world....

Script files are actually "run" or "executed" by the system, usually in a
"shell"  -- subshell, run within or by the existing shell, thus another
"process" -- of their own.  Scripts are groups of commands that are
interpreted or executed by the shell.  The shell is the command
interpreter;  what you see on a text based screen (that is not gui).
Script files probably are run automatically at some point at bootup time,
in some certain order prescribed by the system.  This prescription is
probably based on the scripts' name and location in the filesystem.
/etc/rc.d/... on some systems.  This order has been predetermined and is
necessary for the proper operation of the system.  Somewhere there is one
or more files that setup and then start your network.  The result, the
state of your network, can often be viewd by  running these two commands:
route       (man route)
ifconfig   (or   ifconfig -a) (man ifconfig)

These two commands, used properly, can be used to make settings for network
devices and to activate devices (ifconfig) like your network card(s), which
are referred to as eth0 and eth(n) where n is 1 to however many cards you
have or can have in the one system.  Network scripts usually test the state
of things and then use the above and other programs, perhaps, to configure
and start your network.  Changes you make directly using route and ifconfig
may not be saved between boots because the scripts that setup and configure
networking have themselves not been modified to reflect your desired
changes.  Thus the need to modify or create proper scripts.  Which can be
difficult for a beginner.  Thus the need for a tool such as those mentioned
above.

The usual next step after making configuration changes is to restart
whatever program you have reconfigured, or deactivate and reactivate the
deivce in question, and check the effect of your changes.  This is done in
many different ways, so it's hard to say in general.  Sometimes you can
use:  killall -HUP <program>  sometimes:  <program> stop && <program> start
or <program> restart (notice the space after <program>).  In just about
every case the program will be restarted after you reboot the computer and
will read its configuration file at that time or it's started manually
instead of by the system or a script, when restarted will read its config
data.  Operating system changes and device setup can be seen this way as
well.


              tenox  @  home  dot   com