Re: newbie question <VERY_LONG>
From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 03/15/05
- Next message: Cage: "Re: Modem recommendations?"
- Previous message: DHess: "Runnig programs when a certian user logs in"
- In reply to: boy_at_boywonder.com: "Re: newbie question"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:44:59 -0600
In article <kuj931tsc089n7lal76mo3hjam9m10d1j0@4ax.com>,
boy@boywonder.com wrote:
>Thanks for response but a lot of what you say is still beyond me.
That's what the Linux Documentation Project is for. See
http://tldp.org/guides.html amd the 480+ HOWTOs that should be on your
system.
>>My condolences, but whatever works for you ;-)
>
>I can laugh about it too, but there are methods in my madness. I use
>my system primarily for music and my feeling is that Linux can't give
>me what I need. I'm on the cutting edge of computer music and Linux
>can't run most of the apps I use.
As I said - "whatever works for you".
>I know there's a revulsion expressed by Linux users toward Micro$oft
>products,
I don't know about here at work, but at home, the only microsoft products I
have are two mice. The other mice are Logitech I believe. I haven't needed
any software from them in over a dozen years. At work, I'm not the
hardware guy, but none of the ~2000 systems use windoze, and I don't recall
seeing any 'Dove bar' mice, but that's not my job to notice that.
>so Linux can see the Windoze partitions? How does it read the
formatting?>
>
>>-t identifies the type of file system.
There's the answer right there. If you look at the 'mount' man page, you'll
see that Linux knows about lots of different file systems.
>you know, it's funny in that it's what you are used to. I've heard all
>sorts of put downs of DOS and it's 8.3 system, yet I find the Linux
>system totally perplexing.
How so? The file system is flat - with everything cantilevered off /. As
for file names, the only illegal characters are the slash (used as a path
separator) and the 0x00 (null) which is the character that marks the end of
the name (it's the string terminator character in C). This is not to say that
you should use all 126 other characters, as it's more hassle than it's worth,
but if you were obstinate, you could.
>One thing the 8.3 taught me was to be frugal with the use of longfilenames.
>I hate to see filenames that are short essays.
In truth, there is a 255 character limit on the names, but obviously the
naming convention is what you are used to. I do see an advantage in short
filenames, but not when the name doesn't tell me what it is.
>There's a big difference between bob.exe and bob.bat or bob.txt.
That's only because the original DOS used the name to identify the type
of executable. There was a difference between a .com and a .exe that had
something to do with size I think - and then the .bat was used to identify
shell scripts. With virtually all other operating systems, that's totally
meaningless. In *nix, the only important item identifying an executable is
the file permissions. For scripts that require an interpretor, the first
line in the script identifies the specific interpretor, but that's only
because we have so many different interpretors and languages.
>In the DOS environment, the directory structure is very important. I'm
>used to categorizing everything file-wise with directories and
>sub-directories. This may present a problem for me learning Linux, but
>I'll get there.
I suspect that's a matter of semantics. Directories in DOS were separate
sections on the disk, and didn't have handles you could grasp, but that's
about it.
>> The best advice is to avoid unnecessary spaces.
>
>yeah...I'm onto that one already, but my experience comes from Windoze
>and limited programming experience.
Spaces in names are not an uncommon problem. The simple solution if you
use them is to just quote the entire name - that's what the auto-completion
function in the shell does (type 'ls ab' and press the tab key - if there is
only one file that begins with the letters 'ab', the Bash shell will figure
out what you mean, and type the rest of the name for you - if there is more
than one that begin with 'ab', pressing the tab key a second time will show
all of the candidate names).
>In a DOS-based system (FAT), the C: drive is actually a logical
>partition, unless it occupies the entire disk as a primary partition.
>If there are other partitions present on the physical drive, C: takes
>on a unique requirement in that it has to be the first partition on
>the drive and has to hold the boot code , MBR, etc. for at least one
>operating system.
I don't have any windoze systems, so I normally don't care what they are
called. *nix has been using partitions (or slices) longer than microsoft
has been in existence (literally). Because we are likely to be working with
more than one, we name the partition completely. However, once the partition
is mounted, it's a part of the regular directory structure and is thus
irrelevant.
>For example, if a second physical drive is added, it 'should' be named
>drive D:. That goes back to times, I guess, when drives were small and
>partitions weren't an issue.
Limited experience here - I only used DOS 3.1, 3.3, and 5. The single
system we had at home that had DOS started with 3.3, and a single
42 Meg drive, divided into C: and D:. We later added a second 42 Meg
drive, and with DOS 3.3 the first drive held C: and D:, and the
second drive had E: and F:. When the box got updated to DOS 5, the drives
were silently renamed such that the first had C: and E:, and the second
had D: and F:. I was ever so glad to get rid of that system.
>After C:, things can get a bit hairy.
Yeah, I supported Novell for a while - local drives started from A and went
up, network drives started with Z: and worked down for applications, and
started above the last local drive for network data.
>There's a nasty habit in the DOS environement of refereing to
>partitions as drives. They actually mean 'logical' drives.
That's only an indication of the age and original limitations of the O/S.
The original MS-DOS didn't even support the concept of directories. ALL
files were in the root of the drive. That limitation actually goes back
to CP/M that was morphed into QDOS that Bill used initially as MS-DOS.
>What I was talking about above was adding a sub-directory called C on
>the XP partion D:. In DOS talk that would be:
>
>D:\C\
I am not speaking of doing anything to the DOS partitions at all. If you
want to access these partitions in Linux, you have to 'mount' the
partition somewhere. The Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (available
from http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) gives two mounting locations - /mnt/
for semi-permanent mounts and /media/ for transient mounts. Most people
don't even create a /media/, and use /mnt/* as the mount point for all
extra drives that are not part of the system.
[compton ~]$ ls /mnt/floppy
[compton ~]$ mount /dev/fd0
[compton ~]$ ls /mnt/floppy
-rw-r--r-- 1 ibuprofin users 30176 Aug 29 2004 /mnt/floppy/fhs-2.3.txt.gz
[compton ~]$ umount /dev/fd0
[compton ~]$ ls /mnt/floppy
[compton ~]$
NOTE: My /etc/fstab has an entry that allows users to mount the floppy
drive - otherwise I'd have to be root to do that. That entry and the one
that allows me to mount a CD reads
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0
In the above example, I first tried to 'ls' the /mnt/floppy directory. As
nothing was mounted there, 'ls' returned nothing. I then mounted a floppy
using the user level command (without the /etc/fstab entry, I'd have to be
root and use
mnt -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
and the files would have been owned by root). I then repeated the 'ls'
command, and lo - there be files there... well, there is one. I then
unmounted the floppy (notice that the command is spelled without the 'n')
and showed that nothing was there any more.
>I don't find a lot of difference between the DOS-based directory
>structure and that of Linux. Th main difference for me is
>understanding which type of file is which
[compton ~]$ whatis file | grep det
file (1) - determine file type
[compton ~]$ file papers/eth.collision
papers/eth.collision: English text
[compton ~]$
>and the permission. DOS files have permissions too such as system, read
>only or hidden.
Yes, but DOS is a single user file system, so the permissions in *nix
will be more complicated. The DOS 'system' and 'hidden' attributes were
needed because of the lack of directories in the original DOS. *nix tends
to use directory structure to separate system from userland files. The
hidden function is replace by naming file to be "hidden" with a leading
dot (such as .bash_profile that you'll find in your home directory if you
use 'ls -A' or 'ls -a').
>They are set by the attrib command.
[compton ~]$ whatis chmod
chmod (1) - change the access permissions of files
[compton ~]$
>I feel in a lot of ways that Linux needs to overhaul it's older stuff.
Unlikely to happen. Just because you haven't picked up on it doesn't mean
it doesn't have a reason for it's existence. If you want to debate that,
you'd best wander over to comp.os.linux.advocacy - but be sure to bring
the Nomex undies.
>I just had the horrific experience of trying to understand the emacs
>editor.
Then don't use it. I don't. There's an old joke in the *nix community
(do remember a LOT of this stuff comes from UNIX) that
"Emacs is a great OS. The only thing it lacks is a decent editor."
>I mean, this stuff was written for teletypewriters.
Oh, you mean like 'edlin' (which is actually a crappy derivation of the
Unix 'ed' editor)?
>It's a lot easier for me to get a GUI-type edit window in DOS than in Linux.
[compton ~]$ grep -ic editor rh7.1-package.lst
21
[compton ~]$
Red Hat 7.1 came with 21 different editor packages.
Old guy
- Next message: Cage: "Re: Modem recommendations?"
- Previous message: DHess: "Runnig programs when a certian user logs in"
- In reply to: boy_at_boywonder.com: "Re: newbie question"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
