🚀 go-pugleaf

John van der Veur wrote in message <36919530.6008548@news.melbpc.org.au>...
>
>Hi,
>
>Like many other I have decided to try Linux after buying the APC
>Pocketbook however I have not been able to start X.


Don't know much about X I'm afraid but the rest.......

>I have also had a problem accessing the cdrom.  The CD has been
>mounted but when I go to the /mnt/cdrom directory I stall can't access
>the CD despite the "cdrom" being listed in the /mnt directory.


All removeable media in Linux has to be mount-ed and umount-ed before you
will 'see' them. This includes floppy discs (when the have a ext2 filesystem
on them). Before mounting any removeable media, the directory within your
existing filesystem that you want to point to the media must already exist.
Thus you have a /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/floppy.

To 'see' the media you have inserted, type the following (probably have to
be root user for this):

    mount /mnt/cdrom

and before you remove the media:

    umount /mnt/cdrom

This works so easily because of the entries in the /etc/fstab file. On my
system (RH5) it has the following lines:

    /dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             ext2    noauto
0 0
    /dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              iso9660 noauto,ro
0 0

This tells the mount command the device and filesystem type as well as not
to automatically mount the filesystem at boot time. You can also specify
certain access rules like read only and I think also who can mount it. See
the mount man page (man mount) for plenty of details.

>Perhaps my mind is stuck firmly in DOS mode.


Shake that loose as soon as you can. linux is a _real_ multiuser OS and once
you understand it, you'll find that it can do _anything_ your heart desires.

>At the same time can anyone recommend a good user guide for Linux.  I
>have seen the boxed version of Red Hat 5.2 at swap meets for around
>$50 - does this include a printed manual and if so is the manual a
>reasonable guide.  I would sooner pay $50 for that than the $70 + many
>other guides sell for.

The manual in the RedHat release is good for installing and recompiling the
kernel. It also has some stuff on Xwindows configuring. I no longer use it
for a reference. SAMS publishing Unleashed series are not too bad to get
started with the basic system administration and configuration tasks. I
still use my 'Redhat Linux' title sometimes (two years into it now). You
will find that once you become familiar enough to be adventurous, you will
go for individual books for each facility (like sendmail, DNS and BIND,
TCP/IP network admin etc) and the best place to get these is from O'Reilly
Publishers ( http://www.ora.com/ ). You can buy off their web page or get
your favourite book store to get them in (usually expensive that way). They
are not the cheapest books around, but they _are_ the best IMHO.

Greyman
graham@gmcs.com.au