First meeting topics

[Matt Graham]

On Monday 07 January 2002 12:25, Jason Green wrote:
> I plan on being at the first meeting, and really just want to get a
> better idea of all the possibilities that Linux/BSD's etc. can offer
> on both the server and desktop levels (presently and in the future).

*All* the possibilities?  Whoa, that'd be a long meeting.  I will 
definitely bring my laptop with SuSE 7.3, tricked out with KDE2.2, so 
that should show at least a little bit of the desktop thing off.  
(KOffice looks seriously neat, though I've only used the word processor 
so far.)  There's not much high-level server stuff on the laptop since 
it's not meant to be a server, but I have Samba and Apache running.

> I want to learn more
> about basic navigation and system administration on these OS's.  I
> would be interested in helping to create step-by-step guides for
> re-installation of specific types of servers, too.

Basic navigation?  Hm.  Well, configuration files for system-wide 
non-GUI software typically live in /etc.  Exact locations vary 
depending on distro and OS.  /bin is for non-GUI programs that are 
essential for the OS to run.  (Things like ls, cp, mv, vi, tar, gzip.)  
/sbin is for the essential stuff that needs to be run as root.  
(ifconfig, mount, su, login.)  /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are all the 
nonessential things (emacs, smbd, nfsd, etcetera.)  /tmp is the 
system-wide temp directory.  /var is for variable data that may change 
a lot--typically, lock files, system logs, process state data, mail 
spools, news spools, and the like.

Some distros put large closely-related packages under 
/opt/$PACKAGENAME.  SuSE puts KDE under /opt/kde2, GNOME in /opt/gnome, 
Oracle in /opt/oracle if you install that, same thing for Netscape.  
Redhat doesn't do that.  The BSDs tend to jam a lot of stuff 
(everything you build from the ports tree, which is 90% of the programs 
you'd use normally) in /usr/local , while Linux distro package managers 
do not touch /usr/local and allow the user to put anything there.  
Linux keeps its users' home directories in /home by default, BSD uses 
/usr/home .  Lots of similarities, lots of little differences that can 
annoy you if you're used to only one system's way of doing things.

"Step-by-step guides for reinstallation of specific servers"?  Um.  If 
you suffer a massive hardware failure, you restore from your latest 
backup tape/CD set.  If you want to upgrade your entire distribution 
from X.Y to X.Y+1, the procedure is distro-specific, usually involving 
launching the distro's main setup tool and picking "Update everything" 
from the menu.  (Or "apt-get dist-upgrade" for those Debian folks.)  

Generally, individual pieces of software on a server don't suffer bit 
rot and need to be periodically reinstalled on a *nix system.  You 
might occasionally get the latest version of Apache or Samba or 
something since bugs and security flaws do get found.  (Grab the latest 
package, stop the service, install package using apt or rpm, start the 
service up--no reboot necessary unless you've changed the kernel or 
changed libc.)

-- 
Used to have a .sig, but I'm trying to quit.