4. Using Red Hat Linux

4.1 Where are the printing commands (lpr, etc)?

Under 2.0, the printing commands are in with the networking packages. If you didn't install networking, you don't have them. This is easily remedied by installing the NetKit-B RPM off your CD-ROM or by FTP'ing the newer NetKit-B-lpr package from a 2.1 mirror near you (see above for a list).

Under 2.1 you are most likely just missing the NetKit-B-lpr package from your installation. Install that and everything will be fine.

4.2 Why does Red Hat `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:

You'd like to have a group of people work on a set of files in say, the ``/usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp'' directory. You trust a few people to mess around in there, but certainly not everyone.
So you do ``chown -R root.emacs /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp''. And you add the proper users to the group.
To allow the users to actually create files in the directory you do ``chmod 775 /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp''.
This is fine, but when a user creates a new file it gets the group of the users default group (usually users).
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.
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.
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).
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.

4.3 Why doesn't the xmh shipped with Red Hat work properly?

We only ship xmh because it is part of the standard X11 distribution. xmh is basicaly shipped as-is from the X11 distribution, and is most likely broken. We've found that there are several better alternatives. If you want to use mh mail, install the mh RPM and the exmh RPM. exmh is a much better GUI mail reader than xmh.

4.4 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. Red Hat 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 eval `dircolors` in your .bash_profile file. You also need alias ls="color-ls --color=yes" in there if you want it enabled by default..

4.5 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. Be careful doing this, however, as you will lose your old kernel. 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.

4.6 How do I make my own packages (RPMs)?

Simple. Read the RPM-HOWTO, available in the docs directory on any Red Hat Mirror.

4.7 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:


./hello

(dot, slash, h, e, l, l, o with no spaces)

For security reasons `.' should not be in your path.

4.8 Why does iBCS break when I recompile my kernel?

You need to answer '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.

4.9 Why does Netscape display a ton of errors when I start it?

You didn't read the Netscape installation instructions!

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.

4.10 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 make sure /usr/src/linux exists. You may need to make a symlink from /usr/src/linux to the directory with your kernel version.

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).

4.11 Where is Openwin?

There is currently no Openwindows package for RedHat 2.x. It is available in Redhat 3.0.3 in xview-3.2p1-2.i386.rpm

4.12 Where is package XYZ?

Before asking where some particular piece of software is (like diff for example), please see any RedHat mirror and look in current/i386/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.

Also check current/i386/{updates,contrib,non-free}.

4.13 Why doesn't xtexsh work?

xtexsh is based on older versions of Tcl/Tk than what we ship. Unfortunately, it has not been ported to the newer versions as of yet and it does not work at all.

4.14 How do I add nameservers in the netcfg tool?

netcfg is the victim of poor GUI design in the nameserver department. To add a nameserver:

Click the `Add' Button
Click on the `0.0.0.0' entry in the list (not in the entry box)
Edit the `0.0.0.0' in the entry box to your nameservers IP address
Hit Enter
That's it!

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