A question about linux.

Sorry if I shouldn't have put this here, but I come to you guys for all my problems in this type of thing so! I am trying to put together a box, to run on fedora core 6, but I'm not all that familiar with linux, so I was looking for any references on linux commands, and things I should know about it.

A guide to installing it, or a general guide about linux? Here are some common commands:
http://www.ss64.com/bash/

Any kinda guides, I mean I have fedora core on disk already, dont really know how to install it, or really want kinda specs the machine should have for it.

Specs-wise you shouldn't have problems with Fedora or Linux in general, unless you're turning on the new 3d window manager features in which case you need a 3d-accelerated graphics card -- nothing fancy, really.

Installing it is generally a matter of burning to CD, popping in the CD and rebooting to CD, and then letting it do its thing.

Of course, I would suggest you do this on a new computer, or back up your data, because you wouldn't want your system to be all broken in case something goes wrong.

Are you trying to dual-boot Windows and Fedora? In that case make sure Windows is installed first; the Fedora installer can take care of setting up the boot sectors to let you choose which OS you want to boot into.

If you're looking for guides, the best thing you can do really is to search the forums for the distribution. Ubuntu is a distribution that has very good forum support. I'm not sure about Fedora, but there'll always be help around somewhere. Try Googling for the thing you're trying to do.

It's hard to give a comprehensive guide because the knowledge I have was picked up over a very long period of learning bits and pieces here and there, and searching the web for help when I got stuck.

Well I have about Nine boxes just sitting around, so I was just gonna clean one up, put a new harddrive in, and install linux on it, but I dont really have any kinda decent video cards, I think mine are all like 7-10 years old... *sigh* so anyway thats not a problem.

I also dont know how to reboot to cd... so.. that would be good to know too!

Booting to CD should be simple, that doesn't have anything to do with linux. Just insert CD and reboot. If it doesn't work, you need to have your CD boot in order first before the HD.

now a quick question, I am looking to play around with email, and web pages using this box, does it come with software that will let me play with these, or will I have to find one?

Apache should come with it, as long as you select the package. If not you can still DL it. Webmail, same thing.

I didn't touch anything dealing with mail on my server and it sends email out fine.

Can you recieve mail, thats one of my hopes a little bit.

Sure, receiving mail is pretty easy. You'll need to install a mail server, such as dovecot. If you tell Fedora to install it in "server mode", it should put all that stuff on it by default.

Note that to have your own email address with a domain and all that you'll need a registered domain, of course, and either a fixed IP address (to point the domain to) or a way to dynamically reset the domain to point to your server's IP address every time it changes.

And yeah, booting to CD is pretty easy, at least if the BIOS supports it (most do, from at least 10 years ago). Generally it's just a quick switch in the settings menu. If the BIOS doesn't support it, you have a bit of a problem, but it's still workable (e.g. using a net install).

So I should just have to place the new harddrive in, set up all the wires, start it up and place the cd in? and hope it starts installing?

Yeah. Assuming the computer is built correctly, it should boot to CD. If it doesn't, and complains about there being no bootable sector on the disk (or boots to whatever the disk had), just reboot, go to BIOS settings, and look for the boot order; set the CD drive to have greater priority than the hard drive, and you're set.

For the domain, you have to pay per month for it right? and where is a good place to register a domain? I've prolly got about 100 more questions to ask, but it will still be a few days before I can even try to install linux, evil sister.

You can register a domain at http://www.registerfly.com/ for example. Domains are very cheap.

You can install without registering a domain.

If you want to put your toe in the water with Linux, try Knoppix:

http://www.knoppix.org/

That (after a lengthy download) gives you an ISO images you can burn onto a CDROM. Then you can boot straight off the CD, you don't need to install anything onto your hard disk.

This is a pretty good way of seeing if you like Linux, and avoids a lot of frustration which might occur if you can't successfully install. The thing should just boot, auto-configure, recognise your monitor and video card, and start up into a GUI interface.

The reason he wanted a domain, I think, is to use email (back and forth).

Yeah, the domain was only to have an email server. Still Nick is right, you should try setting everything up before going and purchasing the domain.

If you do go purchase the domain, do you have a fixed IP address? That'll make things a lot easier.

(And I agree with Zeno that RegisterFly is a good place to get the domains.)

Its true that it might be easier, but I'd rather try with something thats abit more standard over "easier". And I believe I have a fixed IP address, use cox cable internet, so from what I know it is?

I'm not sure what you're referring to here?



As for Cox Cable Internet giving static IPs, I don't know. You could try writing down the IP address you get every time you connect over several days; if it's the same every time, you probably have a static IP address.

Was talking about knoppix. I dont really want place it on disk to use, a friend of mine suggested that way back when, but to me, thats just not what I want. But I'm pretty sure it is static, but I should probably test this to make sure.

And if it's not static you can always hit a site like dyndns.com or no-ip.com or whatever to get a dynamic dns link to your domain name so that it won't matter anyway.

Ok another dumb question, which verison of linux would work best on a pentinum two with like 128 ram, I'd like to go with a verison of fedora core, but I donno how well that'd work.

Most Linux distros do pretty well on older computers with limited resources. Especially if you don't use the GUI, you'll be fine for stuff like running a webserver or a MUD.

Yea, but when I try to install the unn fedora core 6, it gets so far... then kinda just stops doing anything and like locks up the pc...? Cant test anything right now cause I'm at work, but my pcs are right next together, so I can try again when I get home *sigh*

The server I have is pretty old, about 128mb ram. I use Slackware and it works fine.

You might have to boot the installer with kernel option "noapic". I had a similar problem while installing Fedora and Ubuntu, although my computer is much newer.

How do I do that exactly.

When it boots from CD, it should give you some kind of boot menu asking you to e.g. type "linux" or something like that. What you should do is add "noapic" before booting, and seeing if that works.

It says... press enter for graphical, or type linux text then enter, so I just type linux noapic ?

This is the third time I've tried to install it, and its frozen up earlier and earlier with every try *sigh*

Have you tried other distributions? Not every distro is perfect and it could be a bug in FC6. Also, how long have you let it sit? It's possible that it's doing something computationally expensive that just takes a while.

First time I let it sit for about 5 hours, and no I was thinking about trying slackware, but I've never used anything but fedora.

And I cant really make my own physical media, which makes it even harder.

Yeah, that makes it harder. Did you burn the first CD from somewhere else?

Not sure why your installation would just freeze. Have you tried googling for it? The Fedora forum people would probably be much more useful than us.

Nah, but I ordered the cds from somewhere else. I mean I can try to burn them on my dads pc, but I dont know how large the files are that are needed to be downloaded.

Usually the CD images are some 680 mb per image, and most distros I've seen have 2 to 4 CDs.

Slackware sells a package for 50 bucks for the cds...