Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

LINUX HELP

Welcome to my help page. The information displayed here has been gathered over the last 12 weeks. Which is how long I've had Linux installed.
This snippet of information is included to let the Newbie now it is possible to have a Linux system up and running without to much drama.

COMPILING THE KERNEL

This is probably one of the best thing about Linux, you can put what you want in the Kernel. The whole operating system can be tailored to suite your individual taste and hardware configuration. I have to point out that this only works for Kernel 2.0.*stable. Experimental 2.1.* and 2.2.* stable would be a little different.

These instructions may seem brief, but they are only a guideline.
First open an xterm, then change to this directory /usr/src/linux. Then type the following commands.

make mrproper (this sets things up)
make xconfig (this command will run xconfig)

Once xconfig is up and running you choose what support you require in your new KERNEL....making sure that if you are going to use ppp make sure you compile a modulised KERNEL.
Once you've chooen all you need click Save and Exit and return to your xterm and type the following.

make dep (short for dependencies)
make clean (cleans up the source tree)

Then we type:

make zImage (actually compiles the KERNEL)
make modules (self explainitory)
make modules_install (as above)

You can have a break now while KERNEL is being compiled, as this can sometimes take a while.

Once the KERNEL is compiled we can install it. So we change to the directory that contains the KERNEL normally it is in the /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot directory. Now we copy it to your boot directory.

cp zImage /boot

Now all that is left to do is update LILO to load the new KERNEL, so change to /etc directory, open vi and edit your lilo.conf

cd /etc
vi lilo.conf

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/zImage
label=linux
root=/dev/hdb5
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36-0.7
label=linux-old
root=/dev/hdb5
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label=dos
table=/dev/hda

What you see above is my lilo.conf.....yours should be pretty similar.....just make sure that you keep your old KERNEL loadable in case the new one doesn't work. When you've finished save the file and quit (:wq) Then just type lilo at the promt:

lilo

Congratulations you've just compiled your first KERNEL!!!!!!

NET CONFIG

I'm not even going to attempt this one.....if you need help with this go to my Linux Links page

I don't personally use it, I use xISP to get on the net and I found it to be much simpler than netconfig to use. It has a nice gui and very easy to configure. If you would like to have a look at it you can find their hompage here xISP Homepage

There are plenty of other alternatives as well, so just browse around till you find one that you are interested in or better yet are comfortable with.

Don't despair there is more help coming.....hang in there and don't give up.

Home

Help page 2 canon Printers and Permissions

Help Page 3 Netconfig

Help Page 4 rpms and tar

Linux Links

David Freshwater, dafresh@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Page 1