Red Hat Commercial Linux Frequently Asked Questions Donnie Barnes, djb@redhat.com V2.0, Sept 25, 1995 1. Introduction This is the second edition of the O-ficial Red Hat Commercial Linux FAQ. It is maintained by support@redhat.com and all comments or suggestions for this FAQ should be sent to that address. To get updates to this FAQ, send mail to faq@redhat.com for an automated reply, or look in the docs directory of any official Red Hat mirror. 2. Conventions RHCL = Red Hat Commercial Linux 3. General Questions 3.1. Where can I get information on Red Hat Commercial Linux? Contact the ACC Bookstore for ordering information. For other info, send mail to info@redhat.com for an automated reply (quite helpful...really). You can also poke around ftp://ftp.redhat.com and http://www.redhat.com for cool new announcements and product info. 3.2. What Media is Red Hat Commercial Linux Available on? It is available on CD and via FTP at this point. To find out where you can FTP it from, see the question on Red Hat Mirrors. 3.3. The Red Hat FTP site is slow. Are there mirrors? There are several Red Hat Official mirrors of the Red Hat FTP site: ftp://ftp.pht.com/pub/linux/redhat ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/redhat ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/linux/sunsite.unc-mirror/distributions/redhat/redhat-2.0 ftp://ftp.cms.uncwil.edu/linux/redhat ftp://ftp.wilmington.net/linux/redhat ftp://ftp.caldera.com/pub/mirrors/redhat ftp://ftp.lasermoon.co.uk/pub/distributions/RedHat ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/redhat ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat ftp://ftp.webnet.com.au/linux/redhat ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/distributions/redhat ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/redhat ftp://ftp.uoknor.edu/linux/redhat ftp://ftp.msu.ru/pub/Linux/RedHat ftp://linux.ucs.indiana.edu/pub/linux/redhat Either of these should provide you with a fast link to Red Hat upgrades or the entire distribution! The rest of this document has path references files on these mirrors. Just concatenate that file name to any of the above mirror locations to find the file. 3.4. How do I order from the ACC Bookstore? The ACC Bookstore can be reached at: phone: (203) 454-5500 (800) 546-7274 fax: (203) 454-2582 email: info@acc-corp.com WWW: http://www.acc-corp.com 3.5. How do I get new updates to RHCL as they happen? Keep your eye on: mothers-day-1.0/rpps/new mothers-day-1.1/rpps/new redhat-2.0/updates on any official mirrors. for any new packages we've made since your CD was pressed. Also check the non-free and contrib directories for packages that we can't distribute on CD or packages that users have sent to us. We will also make periodic announcements to redhat-list with updates. 3.6. How do I get support if all I bought was the Caldera CD? Please do not contact us unless you purchase Red Hat Commercial Linux only or Caldera and RHCL separately. Yes, if you have Caldera then you have Red Hat Commercial Linux, but you bought it from Caldera. If you would like support for Caldera, please see their web site: http://www.caldera.com for their support options. 3.7. What's the quickest and best way to get support for RHCL? You can search for answers to your questions first via http://www.redhat.com/mailinglist.html. This has a search engine to search the entire redhat-list. If you don't find what you need, you can join the redhat-list and then send mail to redhat-list@redhat.com with your questions. To subscribe to the list, send mail to redhat-list-request@redhat.com with the subject line reading: subscribe Due to relatively high traffic on that list, we also now have the redhat-announce-list. It is used only for announcements of major concern to the RedHat community and is low traffic. To subscribe to the list, send mail to redhat-announce-list- request@redhat.com with the subject line reading: subscribe We also have a new list for developers to converse. To subscribe to the list, send mail to redhat-devel-list- request@redhat.com with the subject line reading: subscribe 3.8. How do I report a problem? If you bought your CD from the ACC Bookstore (aka the Red Hat Retail Division), send mail to support@redhat.com. Otherwise, expect support from the company you bought it from. Be as detailed as possible!!! For example, if you can't get RHCL to see your SCSI drives, tell us: o What kind of SCSI card o what kernel o what SCSI id's are the drives o how many IDE drives do you have o specific details of the problem If you can't get your CDROM recognized, tell us: o make and model of CDROM o type of interface (IDE, SB, etc) o bootdisk version o hardware configuration Again, be as detailed as possible about your problem! 3.9. What versions of Red Hat are there, and which do I have? There have been several now. Here's a rundown: o Preview (or Beta) - Summer '94 o Halloween - Fall '94 o Mother's Day 1.0 - Summer '95 o Mother's Day 1.1 - Late Summer '95 o RedHat 2.0beta - Late Late Summer '95 o RedHat 2.0 - Early Fall '95 The biggest problem is knowing which Mother's Day one has. It's really easy. If you don't know, you have 1.0. You can upgrade to 1.1 by getting all the "new" rpps from the mothers- day-1.0/rpps/new directory on any official mirror ftp site. Those RPPs added to a 1.0 release will make what's on the 1.1 CD. We will continue to update 1.1, so if you have 1.0 upgraded to 1.1, you need to start checking the mothers-day-1.1 directory on the mirror ftp sites for new updates. 3.10. What hardware does Red Hat Commercial Linux support? We support all hardware that linux supports on the Intel platform. Nothing more. For more info on hardware compatibility, see the Hardware-HOWTO at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO This also includes the Adaptec 2940. 3.11. What other products do you offer for Red Hat Commercial Linux? o We now have the Red Hat Library CD. It is a searchable archive of over 40,000 pages of text. This is the most comprehensive compilation of linux and unix related documentation ever. It is also indexed for quick searching using our very own search engine and runs quickly right off the CD! o Another fine product is the Red Hat Tcl/Tk Reference Book. It is over 600 pages text! It is basically the man pages reformatted and indexed for your convenience. There is also a permuted index for you permuted types! o We also have the Red Hat Developer's Program. For more info on it, see http://www.redhat.com/program.html It is basically a year subscription (10 CD's) to RHCL and some extra technical support. We may also offer extra "deals" to Program members from time to time. These products are available from the ACC Bookstore (see question 1.02 for ordering information). Watch for announcements on comp.os.linux.announce on Usenet (and if you don't know how to use Usenet, LEARN IT! You'll be glad you did...) or email info@redhat.com or check our web site at http://www.redhat.com. 3.12. Does Red Hat Commercial Linux include source code? Soitenly! (That's "certainly" for those who don't watch "The 3 Stooges" :-) We include the exact source that we use to build from. In almost every case, you should be able to unpack the source for any package and follow the instructions in the source to build it without any snags. This does mean that the source we distribute may not be "pristine", but it works under RHC Linux. Our ELF release, however, will include a new packaging system that ONLY uses pristine source (the same as what you'd find at the author's ftp site) and an RHCL patch. If you use our tools to build, the RHCL patch is applied automatically to give you a nice package. If you like, you can also make your own patches and include those. Very nice system... 3.13. What version of X Windows is included with RHCL? XFree86 3.1.2 comes standard with a very nice configuration tool. 3.14. Are Accelerated-X and Metro-X easy to install? Yes. Both will install just fine on a Red Hat system with the exception that Metro-X needs an a.out linker. Because of this it does not work right now on Red Hat 2.0, but that will be fixed SOON. Contact Metrolink if you would like to see if it is fixed yet. 3.15. How do I contact RHS directly? Red Hat Software PO Box 4325 Chapel Hill, NC 27515 redhat@redhat.com 3.16. What packages do we ship in our latest release? For the sake of brevity, we can't put that info here, but you can find it easily on www.redhat.com. Set your URL to: http://www.redhat.com/rpms/rpms.html This will not only give you a list, but will allow you to find out in more detail what each of those packages actually has in it. We include not only a description of the package, but a complete file list for each package as well (binary only, however, are present on the web server). 3.17. What is the relationship between Red Hat and Caldera? Both are totally separate companies. Caldera has the right to use Red Hat Commercial Linux as the base operating system for their products. In addition: Red Hat Software, Inc. is pleased to acknowledge the support of Caldera Inc. towards the continuing improvement of the Red Hat Commercial Linux distribution. Caldera has also generously contributed to the development of various aspects of the Linux operating system that the Red Hat distribution uses. 3.18. Does RHCL support UMSDOS installs? In a word, no. It is not a good performance idea. Aside from that, you don't "need" DOS on your machine anyway :-) We will most likely support it soon. 3.19. Are there any known security holes? There are currently no known security holes in the Mothers Day Release or 2.0. There are, however, security holes in any xdm.ncsu package that might be on other versions of Red Hat Linux that is distributed by other vendors. If you have this package, it is a security hole. Please do not run it. Any user using it has his group set to 'root'. 4. Installation Questions 4.1. Do I need swap space? Yes! If you have 8M of RAM, you must enable at least 8M of swap during the install of RHCL. If you have more RAM, you should still enable swap, though it isn't mandatory. 4.2. How do I do a network install of Red Hat 2.x? Get the RedHat-HOWTO from the docs directory of any official RedHat Mirror. It will tell you all you need to know. 4.3. How do I run the install program again? Reboot your machine using the two disks that you made for the installation. You will most likely need to completely reinstall your system. 4.4. Why am I missing some programs? Try doing a 'df' at the shell prompt. If you have "/" or "/usr" showing up as 100% used, chances are your partition was too small for the entire install. Unfortunately, this does not result in any type of error messages unless you are watching closely (which most people don't when the thing tells you it is going to take 2 hours to install :-). You will most likely need to reinstall and do one of two things: a) make your root or "/usr" partition larger or b) install fewer packages. If the express install filled up your system and you can NOT make your partition bigger, you will need to do a Step-by-Step install and choose a fairly minimal setup -OR- don't let the Express Install choose your packages for you. 4.5. Do I need to reinstall if I didn't get a LILO prompt? Not necessarily. You should be able to use the boot disk that you made for the install to boot to your root partition on the hard drive. Insert the disk, reboot the machine, and at the boot prompt, type: linux ramdisk=0 root=/dev/xxxx where xxxx is the hard drive and partition number. If you installed to the first partition of your first IDE drive, this would be hda1. If you installed to the third partition on your second drive, this would be hdb3. The second partition of your second SCSI drive would be sdb2. If you don't remember, try what you think might work. The worst that will happen is a kernel panic or the machine will hang. In either case, reboot and try another partition. Once you get it booted, you need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and then run 'lilo'. For more info on how to do that properly, you need to mount your CDROM with redhat on it and install the howto-1995.05.21-bin.rpp (though the actual filename may differ due to newer versions) from the rpps directory on the CD. You can then read the LILO-HOWTO in "/usr/doc" on how to write a proper lilo.conf. An example lilo.conf to boot linux and DOS is below: ______________________________________________________________________ boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 image=/vmlinuz label=linux root=/dev/sdb2 read-only append = "boot_verbose=0" other=/dev/sda1 label = dos ______________________________________________________________________ You may also need a line in the "other" section with "table = /dev/hda" or whatever drive your DOS partition is on. The only lines from above that should change if you boot linux and DOS are "boot", "root", and "other". Some of what is there is optional, like the append and what YOU actually label the dos partition (some people prefer msdos). One caveat: Make sure the "boot" line points to your first IDE drive, OR your first SCSI drive IF AND ONLY IF you only have NO IDE drives. That is the only way the machine has to know where to find it. You need to also be sure that the partition in the "boot" line is marked "Active" by either the DOS fdisk, or the linux fdisk (or cfdisk). Here are the "rules" of where "/" must live: 1. If you have 2 IDE drives, your root partition MUST live on one of them, NO MATTER WHAT. This also includes any IDE CDROM drives on your PRIMARY controller. If you have one IDE hard drive, and one IDE CDROM on the PRIMARY controller, you must install your root partition on the IDE hard drive. 2. If you have 1 IDE drive and SCSI drives, your root partition MUST live on the IDE drive or the SCSI drive THAT IS AT ID 0. No other ID's will work. 3. If you have SCSI only, your root partition MUST live on a drive at ID 0 or ID 1. No other ID's will work. These rules are non negotiable. BUT I WANT DOS TO BOOT BY DEFAULT!!! Easy. Just change the above /etc/lilo.conf to: ______________________________________________________________________ boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 other=/dev/sda1 label = dos image=/vmlinuz label=linux root=/dev/sdb2 read-only append = "boot_verbose=0" ______________________________________________________________________ and then run `lilo` after saving the file. 4.6. How do I mount my CDROM? If you installed from CD, you should be able to do: mount /mnt/cdrom If you get an error that says the mount point does not exist, do: mkdir /mnt/cdrom If you did an install via NFS: You need to know what type of CD ROM you have. The best way is to watch the boot messages as you reboot, or look at /var/adm/messages (more /var/adm/messages). You most likely have an IDE CD ROM that will show up as /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd, or you have a Sound Blaster type that is /dev/sbpcd, or you have a SCSI that is /dev/scd0. In any case, you can do the following: mount -t iso9660 /dev/xxxx /mnt/cdrom and substitute xxxx for YOUR device. You can then: cd /mnt/cdrom and then: ls and you will be looking at the contents of the CD ROM. 4.7. Why does my Trident 9400 show up as an 8900? XFree86 3.1.2 currently doesn't support the advanced features of the 9400. The timing for the release of the 9400 was just bad for the release dates of 3.1.1, so they weren't able to add the support in. Now that the card is pretty popular and a new release is expected soon of XFree86, we expect to see direct support in the next version of XFree86. For now, you can run resolutions all the way to 1024x768 at 60 hz. If you have trouble using Xconfigurator to set it up, you will probably find that xf86config will do the job (it just doesn't look as nice doing it :-) 4.8. Why does linux only see part of my RAM? There are a couple things that could be wrong. On some 386's, you need to compile your kernel with "Limit memory to 16M?" enabled. Some AMI BIOS motherboards have a memory option to split memory into two segments. I'm not sure what the option is called, but it has something to do with "linear". You'll find it in your BIOS setup. You may need to specify the amount of memory to the kernel at boot time from lilo. To try this, type: linux mem=32M at the lilo prompt. If that works, you can add that line to the append in your /etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo. The example from above would be: ______________________________________________________________________ append = "boot_verbose=0 mem=32M" ______________________________________________________________________ Don't forget to run `lilo` after editing the file. 4.9. How do I install to my DOS partition? You can't. The Mothers Day release and 2.0 does NOT support UMSDOS installs. If you have one drive that has one big DOS partition with free space you want to use, you have two options. One is to backup all your DOS data somehow and then repartition the drive into smaller partitions and then restore the DOS data back to a DOS partition. You then have a free partition for linux. The second choice is to use fips. fips is a program that will let you change your partition size of a DOS partition without harming the data on it. It is STRONGLY suggested that you backup your data before using fips. Red Hat Software makes no warranties or claims as to the suitability of using fips for this purpose nor does Red Hat guarantee that data will remain unharmed. I haven't heard of anyone having a bad experience with fips, but I won't guarantee it either. 4.10. What does the boot disk message really mean? Okay, there are a lot of questions on this, so I'll go into it in better detail. Line 1: Our name and the version you have. Line 3-4: short description of what to do. The rest of the message is for lilo parameters. These should only be used if you have a Sony CDU31 or 33 -OR- if you are having problems with the auto detection of other hardware. Be sure that for every parameter you enter that has commas that you do NOT put a space after the comma. The only spaces on the command line should be after 'linux' and between multiple parameters (ie: mcd=0x340,11 bmouse=5). Line 6: This line is almost NEVER necessary and should be used only as a last resort. If your hard drives are not being recognized or giving odd errors, you can try these parameters. If your first hard drive acting up, you would enter: linux hda=xxx,xxx,xxx where the 'xxx' is your parameters from BIOS. Line 7: Use this if your Mitsumi CDROM does not get recognized properly. An example: linux mcd=0x340,11 Line 8: This line is required for the sony cdu31a or 33a. Use "cdu31a" for BOTH the 31 and the 33 (ie. do NOT use "cdu33a" as a parameter on the command line). An example: linux cdu31a=0x340,0 Line 9: If you have an Aztech CD268, try: linux aztcd=0x340 (or whatever your port is). Line 10: If your ethernet card is not recognized, you can try to use these parameters. For an ethernet card on base address 0x340 and irq 10, enter: linux ether=10,0x340 Line 11: If your bus mouse isn't recognized, try this parameter. Line 12: For an old Seagate ST0x controller, use this parameter. Line 13: For a Future Domain TMC-8xx controller, use this. Line 14: For a trantor T128, use this line. Line 15: For an NCR-5380, use this line. For a card at 0x330 and IRQ 11 and DMA 5, you would use: linux ncr5380=0x330,11,5 Line 16: Use this line for an Adaptec 1505, 1510, 1515, 1520, and 1522 (and Sound Blaster SCSI). The reconnect and parity are optional. For a CDROM hooked to ID 1 an a controller with base address of 0x330 and IRQ 11 you would use: linux aha152x=0x330,11,1,reconnect,parity (you can try it without the last two) Line 17: Use this if you are having problems with an Adaptec 1542 (rare). Line 18: Use this if you are having trouble with a Buslogic controller (also rare). Line 19: Use this for Pro Audio Spectrums and Pro Audio Studio cards that aren't recognized. Line 20: Use this if you have the "normal" Sound Blaster CD interface and it doesn't work. This is the regular ole run of the mill Sound Blaster type that controls the Panasonic 56x drives, Matsushta Kotobuki drives, TEAC CD55A, and a few others. If you have a Sound Blaster with something like the Panasonic connected using base address 0x240, you would use: linux sbpcd=0x240,SoundBlaster Line 21: If you have an IDE (ATAPI compliant) CDROM that is not getting recognized by the auto probe, you can use this parameter to tell it where to look. Normally, if you have IDE hard drives, they take up the first available drive letters. If you had 2 IDE hard drives, your CDROM would be hdc. If you had one IDE hard drive, it would be hdb. It's usually okay to just try them all. You would use: linux hdb=cdrom if you had one IDE hard drive. Line 22: A reminder that you must put a "0x" in front of all Hex values (such as base addresses). Line 23: Instructions on what to enter. 5. Using Red Hat Commercial Linux 5.1. Why does RHCL `adduser` put each user in his/her own group? It's called the user group scheme, and it's described in the manual. What it basically does is allow you to use groups to allow multiple people to use a common set of files and edit them, transparently. It goes like this: o You'd like to have a group of people work on a set of files is say, the "/usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp" directory. You trust a few people to mess around in there, but certainly not everyone. o So you do `chown -R root.emacs"/usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp'. And you add the proper users to the group. o To allow the users to actually create file in the directory you do `chmod 775 /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp'. o This is fine, but when a user creates a new file it gets the group of the users default group (usually users). o To prevent this you do `chmod 2775 /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp' which causes everything in the directory to get created with the "emacs" group. o This is fine, but the new file needs to be mode 664 for another user in the emacs group. To do this you make the default umask 002. o Well, this all works good, except that if your default group is "users", every file you create in your home directory will be writable by everybody in "users" (usually everyone). o To fix this, you make each user have a "private group" as their default group. At this point, by making the default umask 002 and giving everyone a private default group, you can easily set up groups which users can take advantage of without doing any magic. Just create the group, add the users, and do the above chown and chmod on the group's directories. 5.2. Why doesn't the xmh shipped with Red Hat work properly? We only ship xmh because it is part of the standard X11 distribution. It requires the mh mail package, which we do not ship. We haven't seen much need for it so far, so we haven't spent the time on it. If you have a need for it and would like to see it in future Red Hat releases, please let us know. I won't guarantee anything, but if enough people request it... 5.3. How do I get color ls to work? Some of you may be accustomed to other distributions and the fact that color ls is installed by default. RHCL does not do that, but it is possible. The best way to find info on it is to do: man color-ls man dircolors In short, you can probably put something like ``. `dircolors` '' in your .bash_profile file. You may also need alias ls="color-ls --color=yes" in there. 5.4. I rebuilt my kernel, but I got vmlinux instead of vmlinuz. Why? You need to do make zImage or make zlilo instead of just make. make zlilo is the best choice for most beginners as it will not only build the kernel, but also install it as the default for you if the make goes well. make zImage will build a compressed kernel and place it in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot. You must copy it to your root dir and run lilo yourself to use this one. If you used make, you got a file called vmlinux. This is an uncompressed kernel image, and will NOT work! LILO will only boot a compressed kernel. 5.5. How do I make my own packages (RPMs)? Simple. Read the RPM-HOWTO, available in the docs directory on any official RedHat Mirror. 5.6. Why are all those directories in /usr/local/src? Those directories are simply a template to use to organize your source code. It happens to be the same as the template we use in /usr/src. If you plan to keep your source in /usr/src as well, you can simply delete /usr/local/src. Red Hat does not use it for anything, it is only meant as a convenience for the user. 5.7. I compiled a program, but I can't run it. What gives? Lets say you do the following as root: gcc -o hello hello.c hello You'll get "hello: command not found" Why? By default, `.' is not in your path. You must run: (dot, slash, h, e, l, l, o with no spaces) This is for security reasons...`.' should be in normal user's path, but not in root's path. 5.8. Why does iBCS break when I recompile my kernel? You need to say 'y' to the line that asks: CONFIG_MODVERSIONS [n] If you didn't do that, you'll need to rebuild your kernel and enable it. 5.9. Why does Netscape display a ton of errors when I start it? When you untar the distribution of Netscape, you will get an nls directory. Depending on where you untar the distribution, you will need to set some environment variables. You should add lines similar to the following to your .bash_profile file: export XKEYSYMDB=${XKEYSYMDB-/home/foobar/lib/X11/XKeysymDB} export XNLSPATH=${XNLSPATH-/home/foobar/lib/X11/nls} Change the above paths accordingly to reflect the actual location where you installed everything. 5.10. Why are include files missing when I try and compile? You most likely didn't install the kernel sources. Find the sources for the kernel on your system and install them. Then go to /etc and make sure that linux-source is a symlink to /usr/src/kernel/linux- your.version.here. If not, make the symlink (something like ln -sf /usr/src/kernel/linux-1.2.13 /etc/linux-source). Then you need to cd /usr/src/linux and do: make config make and then you can hit control-C after a few seconds (it makes some symlinks that you might need right at the beginning). 5.11. Why doesn't printing work? It seems that the standards on what addresses to use for printer ports are a little fuzzy. Different manufacturers are using different addresses. To compound the problem, DOS probes for them in a certain order and assigns the first one it finds to LPT1. This leads people to believe that their printer port under linux must be /dev/lp0. It may not be. You may only have one parallel port and it could be LPT1 under DOS and be /dev/lp0, /dev/lp1, or /dev/lp2 under linux. To find out which it is, turn your printer on and connect it to your parallel port. Then do cat /etc/printcap > /dev/lpX where 'X' is 0, 1, and 2 until you get some output. When you do get output, you have found your printer device under linux. Now you just need to run the print-tool from the control-panel. To get it, do a 'startx' as root and double-click on the print-tool icon in the control-panel. Use the device you found to setup your printer with the print-tool. 5.12. Where is Openwin? There is currently no Openwindows package for RedHat 2.0. There are people who have asked for it, but we just haven't gotten to it yet. We should have a package sometime, so be patient. 5.13. Where is package XYZ? Before asking where some particular piece of software is (like diff for example), please see any official RedHat mirror and look in redhat-2.0/RedHat/rpm-contents.gz. This file has a query of all available RPMs and their contents. grep through it for what you want and it will probably lead you to an RPM that you don't have installed. Use glint or rpm -i to install the proper RPM off your CD-ROM. 6. Copyright Notice This document and its contents are copyright protected. Redistribution of this document is permitted as long as the content remains completely intact and unchanged. In other words, you may reformat and reprint or redistribute only.