Gary L. Allen wrote: > What's the "best" How To book on configuring and > troubleshooting RH 8.0?
There is no single book that will tell you everything you need to
do. And with Linux becoming more and more popular, I fear the
quality of printed material will decline.
That said, I recommend the following general sequence for any
given problem:
1) consult the printed manuals that might have come with your distro
2) man pages; to search for a man page that might be related, try:
$ man -k keyword
$ apropos keyword
They are equivalent, but the apropos alias may not be provided
on your system.
(GNU info docs would also come under this heading, if you are
so masochistically inclined) ;)
3) search the HOWTOs; they are probably present on your system
already; location is distro-specific. most of these you can
also find on tldp.org
4) search *both* google.com *and* groups.google.com;
5) if your question remains unanswered at this point, go ahead
and ask on any relevant mailing lists or newsgroups. even
elitist newsgroups can be very helpful if you demonstrate
that you've made a reasonable attempt to solve the problem by
RTFM.
> I'm looking for the kind of info that explains where the
> various config files are, and what some of the settings are
> for.
This can usually be found in manpages. A decent linux system
will install all manpages by default on a typical or automatic
install. ... Not all distros are "decent." :)
> Mostly just fumbling around with it until I figure out the
> directory structure or where config files are.
File locations and directory structure can vary widely among the
distros; and in my experience, the more mainstream a distro, the
more freedom they'll take. If you spend too much time with any
one distro you may find yourself, like several in RLUG,
institutionalized; much like a felon who's spent the better part
of his life in a prison and can no longer function outside his
accustomed cell. ;)
> I do this stuff all day long in Windows, and get paid for it,
> but I'm an idiot in this environment. :-P
Nothing you've shown so far indicates idiocy to me. You're
asking questions; you want to know how it works, not just what it
takes to get in and out; you're willing to do some footwork to
get where you want to be. These are all very valuable traits to
have, especially in this community.
Just don't start asking why vi can't be more like emacs and we'll
all get along just fine. :-D
Cheers,
Timmy Hammerquist
--
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one:
'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
-- Voltaire
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