Replies interspersed below.
At 10:07 PM 12/29/99 -0800, Steven A. Ackerman wrote:
>I am using RH 6.1. I went through an interactive startup to see what was
>loading. I'm wondering if the following are necessary to load:
>linuxconf, local, sendmail and xfs. If one or all of them is not
>necessary, I do not know how to stop them from loading.
By "load", I assume you mean install (on your hard disk). The answer is
"maybe" or, to be more specific, "it depends". Depending on what you plan to
use the system for, you may or may not need these programs.
"linuxconf" is a setup utility that makes some configuration tasks
easier. I don't use it myself so can't say much about it, beyond noting that
there are other ways to do everything it does ... often not as simple, probably.
I only know "local" as a directory name, as in /usr/local, the
directory where a sysadmin typically installs add-in applications that are
specific to the host. It's a standard part of Unix/Linux filesystem trees,
so I'd leave it and its contents (/usr/local/bin, /usr/local/etc, and so on).
"sendmail" is a Mail Transport Agent or MTA. That is, is is a
program that sends and receives e-mail messages between your host and other
hosts on the LAN &/or Internet. If you send and receive e-mail on the host,
you need SOME MTA running. sendmail is the best known, but there are others
-- exim, qmail, smail, and probably more. The practice is for whichever MTA
you actually have to be invokable under the name "sendmail", because that's
the MTA name a lot of programs that use e-mail services expect to be able to
find.
"xfs" is the font server for your X Window system. If X is
configured to use it, you need it.
>A few other questions I have:
>
>Gnome starts automatically. I would like to stop that from happening and
>be able to use my programs (at this point that would primarily mean to
>dial my ppp connection and start netscape).
Do you want to stop *Gnome* or X itself? I assumed you really meant the
second, but Netscape requires X to run, so the following may not be what you
want.
As root, use a text editor to open the file "/etc/inittab" and look for the
line that says (approximately)
id:4:initdefault
Change the line to read
id:2:initdefault
Save the file. Either reboot the system or run (guys - is this right?)
"telinit 2" to switch from the current runlevel (which starts X) to the new
one (which starts at the command line).
>
>I installed Star Office 5.1 from the CD and I know where it is located,
>but I don't know how to start it.
Can't help with this one - sorry.
>
>I would also like to be able to monitor my system. I know that is a
>little generic, but I would like to tell what's happening with my ppp
>connection, how much memory is being used and what services are loaded
>and what they are doing.
A vague question elicits vague advice. Look at these programs and see which
ones tell you what you want to know:
top
free
ps
netstat
df
When I say "look at", you can either just try running them, read their man
pages ("man man" if you don't know how to use the man system), or read any
"info" pages that the system might have for some of them.
>The other thing I would like to do is tell what programs have been
>loaded on the machine. I don't even know where to begin. In case someone
>has loaded something that I do not want running, or modified something.
"loaded"? If you mean running, try the ps and top commands. If you man on
the hard disk, try find, locate, and which to find out about specific
programs that you know the names of, and ls to get directory listings of the
directories where user and system binaries are located (the main ones are
/bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin for user applications, and /sbin,
/usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin for system applications).
>
>Currently I'm using Netscape 4.61 and using Messenger for mail. I have
>more than one e-mail account through my ISP. It looks like it does not
>allow me to have multiple e-mail addresses. If it does, I do not know
>where to go. I checked preferences and it looks to me like I have to add
>another mail server and it won't let me do that unless it is IMAP.
I don't use Messenger, but this is believable. On the other hand, you can
have many users on a Linux system, and each should be able to set up its own
set of preferences for Netscape. So if you don't get a better suggestion
from someone else, try adding other user accounts for the other e-mail
addresses.
>
>Last question may be a little harder. When I dial my ISP using the RH
>PPP Dialer, it dials my connection, handshakes, hangs up, dials again,
>handshakes and then stays connected. Any suggestions?
The answers here are inevitably in the details. So look at your logs to see
what is happening. pppd and whatever dialer you use (chat? I don't recall
what RH uses) probably log to /var/log/messages .
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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