Chapter 1 : Legal Notice

This manual (except appendix 21.0) is protected under MandrakeSoft intellectual property rights. This manual can be freely reproduced, duplicated and distributed either as such or as part of a bundled package under electronic and/or printed format provided however that the following conditions are fulfilled:

1. This copyright mention appears clearly and distinctively on all reproduced, duplicated and distributed copies.
2. This manual is kept in its entirety and without modification or/and alteration; and
3. Specifically for the printed format, that it is not reproduced and/or distributed for any commercial purpose.

For any other use, authorization must be requested and obtained from MandrakeSoft S.A.. Both "Mandrake" and the "Linux-Mandrake" brand name, design and logotypes are registered. All related copyrights are reserved.

Note: The appendix 21.0 is protected by a different license, as a derived work from a work written under the GNU GPL (which you can find on the Web at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).

Refer to the Copyright section for more details about this license.

The following people contributed to the making of this manual:

• Camille Bégnis
• Sébastien Blondeel
• Benjamin Drieu
• Francis Galiègue

Table of contents

Chapter 1 : Legal Notice

Chapter 2 : Typing Conventions

• 1. Snippets and the like
• 1.1. An example of a snippet
• 1.2. An example of a literal excerpt
• 1.3. An example of the syntax of a command
• 1.4. An example of user input
• 1.5. An example of computer output
• 2. Special fonts
• 3. Miscellaneous
• 4. Tools used in the making of this manual

Chapter 3 : Introduction

• 1. User Guide
• 2. Reference manual

Part I :User Guide

Chapter 1 : Basic Unix concepts

• 1. Users and groups
• 2. File basics
• 3. Processes
• 4. Small introduction to the command line
• 4.1. cd: Change Directory
• 4.2. Some environment variables and the echo command
• 4.3. cat: print the contents of one or more files to the screen
• 4.4. less: a pager
• 4.5. ls: listing files (LiSt)
• 4.6. Useful keyboard shortcuts

Chapter 2 : Using KDE

• 1. Is Unix ready for the desktop?
• 2. A short presentation
• 3. The panel
• 3.1. Configuring the panel
• 3.2. Disk Navigator
• 4. The file manager KFM
• 4.1. Using KFM to display files
• 4.2. KFM as a web browser
• 4.3. KFM as an FTP client
• 4.4. Configuring the HTTP and FTP navigator
• 5. Manipulating MIME types and applications
• 5.1. Editing and creating a MIME type
• 5.2. Editing and adding an application
• 6. The desktop and icons
• 6.1. Configuring the desktop
• 6.2. Icons and Drag'n'Drop
• 7. The KDE control center
• 7.1. Desktop/Theme manager
• 7.2. Desktop/DPMS
• 7.3. Information
• 7.4. Windows

Chapter 3 : Configuring an Internet connection

• 1. With Kppp
• 2. With LinuxConf

Chapter 4 : Adding and deleting user accounts

Chapter 5 : Installing and uninstalling RPM packages

• 1. On the command line: rpm
• 1.1. Installing or upgrading an RPM
• 1.2. Uninstalling an RPM
• 1.3. Obtaining information about RPM packages
• 2. With Kpackage
• 2.1. Installing a package
• 2.2. Uninstalling an existing package
• 2.3. Information on packages

Chapter 6 : Lothar

• 1. Introduction
• 2. How to use Lothar
• 3. Lothar SoundConfig
• 4. Lothar EtherConfig
• 5. Problems/TroubleShooting

Chapter 7 : Process control

• 1. More about processes
• 1.1. Process Tree
• 1.2. Signals
• 2. Information on processes: ps and pstree
• 2.1. ps
• 2.2. pstree
• 3. Sending signals to processes
• 3.1. Shortcut in X: xkill
• 3.2. kill, killall
• 3.3. top

Chapter 8 : Where to get documentation

• 1. Documentation included in Linux-Mandrake
• 1.1. The manual pages
• 1.2. info pages
• 1.3. HOWTOs
• 1.4. The directory /usr/doc
• 2. Internet
• 2.1. Websites dedicated to Linux
• 2.2. Newsgroups

Part II :Reference Manual

Chapter 1 : Introduction to the command line

• 1. File Handling Utilities
• 1.1. mkdir, touch: creating empty directories and files (MaKe DIRectory)
• 1.2. rm: deleting files or directories (ReMove)
• 1.3. mv: moving or renaming files (MoVe)
• 1.4. cp: copying files and directories (CoPy)
• 2. Handling File Attributes
• 2.1. chown, chgrp: change the owner and group of files
• 2.2. chmod: changing permissions on files and directories (CHange MODe)
• 3. Globbing patterns and regular expressions
• 4. Redirections and pipes
• 4.1. A little more about processes
• 4.2. Redirections
• 4.3. Pipes
• 5. Completion
• 5.1. Example
• 5.2. More generally
• 6. Handling background processes: job control
• 7. A Final Word

Chapter 2 : Text Editing: Emacs and VI

• 1. Emacs
• 1.1. Short presentation
• 1.2. Getting started
• 1.3. Handling buffers
• 1.4. Copy, cut, paste, search
• 1.5. Quit Emacs
• 2. VI: the ancestor
• 2.1. Insert mode, command mode, ex mode...
• 2.2. Handling buffers
• 2.3. Editing text and move commands
• 2.4. Cut, copy, paste
• 2.5. Quit VI
• 3. A last word...

Chapter 3 : Organization of the file tree

• 1. Shareable and unshareable, static and variable data
• 2. The root directory: /
• 3. /usr: the big one
• 4. /var: data modifiable during use
• 5. /etc: configuration files

Chapter 4 : The Linux filesystem: ext2fs

• 1. Everything is a file
• 2. Links
• 3. "Anonymous" pipes and named pipes
• 4. Character and block mode files
• 5. Symlinks and the limitation of "hard" links
• 6. File attributes

Chapter 5 : The /proc filesystem

• 1. Information about processes
• 2. Information on hardware
• 3. The /proc/sys subdirectory

Chapter 6 : Samba

• 1. What is Samba?
• 2. What is it able to do?
• 3. License
• 4. Samba Installation
• 5. Description of the file /etc/smb.conf
• 5.1. [global] section
• 5.2. Setting up a share
• 5.3. [homes] section
• 5.4. [printers] section
• 6. Checks
• 7. How to launch Samba
• 8. Some tools
• 8.1. smbclient
• 8.2. smbfs
• 8.3. smbtar
• 9. GUI tool: SWAT
• 10. Conclusion

Chapter 7 : MSEC

• 1. Introducing MSEC
• 2. Installation
• 2.1. Level 0
• 2.2. Level 1
• 2.3. Level 2
• 2.4. Level 3
• 2.5. Level 4
• 2.6. Level 5
• 3. Security levels features
• 3.1. "global security check"
• 3.2. "umask for users"
• 3.3. "umask for root"
• 3.4. "shell without password"
• 3.5. "authorized to connect to X display"
• 3.6. "users in audio group"
• 3.7. ". in '$PATH'"
• 3.8. "warnings in /var/log/security.log"
• 3.9. "warnings directly on tty"
• 3.10. "warnings in syslog"
• 3.11. "warnings sent by e-mail to root"
• 3.12. "suid root files check"
• 3.13. "suid root file MD5 check"
• 3.14. "writeable files check"
• 3.15. "permissions check"
• 3.16. "suid group files check"
• 3.17. "unowned files check"
• 3.18. "promiscuous check"
• 3.19. "listening port check"
• 3.20. "passwd file integrity check"
• 3.21. "shadow file integrity check"
• 3.22. "system security check every day at midnight"
• 3.23. "services not known disabled"
• 3.24. "boot password"
• 3.25. "grants connection to"

Chapter 8 : Auto Install

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The overall process
• 2.1. Generate the auto_inst.cfg.pl file
• 2.1.1. Perform a normal install on a machine
• 2.1.2. Perform a simulated install on a Linux box
• 2.1.3. Write the file from scratch
• 2.2. Boot disk creating
• 2.3. Modify the boot disk
• 2.3.1. Alter the syslinux.conf file
• 2.3.2. Add auto_inst.cfg.pl file
• 2.3.3. Add ks.cfg file for network install
• 3. Inside the auto_inf file
• 3.1. lang
• 3.2. autoSCSI
• 3.3. authentication
• 3.4. printer
• 3.5. mouse
• 3.6. netc
• 3.7. timezone
• 3.8. superuser
• 3.9. intf
• 3.10. keyboard
• 3.11. mkbootdisk
• 3.12. base
• 3.13. users
• 3.14. installClass
• 3.15. partitioning
• 3.16. partitions
• 3.17. isUpgrade
• 3.18. X
• 3.19. default_packages

Chapter 9 : The startup files: init "System V"

• 1. In the beginning was init
• 2. Runlevels

Chapter 10 : Filesystems and mount points

• 1. Principles
• 2. Partitioning a disk, formatting a partition
• 3. The mount and umount commands
• 4. The /etc/fstab file

Chapter 11 : Compiling and installing new kernels

• 1. Where to find kernel sources
• 2. Unpacking sources, patching the kernel
• 3. Configuring the kernel
• 4. Compiling the kernel and the modules, installing modules
• 5. Installing the new kernel, updating LILO

Part III :Appendix, Glossary and Index

Chapter 1 : Building and installing free software

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. Requirements
• 1.2. Compilation
• 1.2.1. Principle
• 1.2.2. The four steps of compilation
• 1.3. Structure of a distribution
• 2. Decompression
• 2.1. tar.gz archive
• 2.2. The use of GNU Tar
• 2.3. bzip2
• 2.4. Just do it!
• 2.4.1. The easiest way
• 2.4.2. The safest way
• 3. Configuration
• 3.1. Autoconf
• 3.1.1. Principle
• 3.1.2. Example
• 3.1.3. What if... it does not work?
• 3.2. Imake
• 3.3. Various shell scripts
• 3.4. Alternatives
• 4. Compilation
• 4.1. make
• 4.2. Rules
• 4.3. Go, go, go!
• 4.4. Explanations
• 4.5. What if... it does not work?
• 5. Installation
• 5.1. With make
• 5.2. Problems
• 6. Support
• 6.1. Documentation
• 6.2. Technical support
• 6.3. How to find free software
• 7. Acknowledgements
• 8. Copyright

Chapter 2 : Command Line Utilities

• 1. grep: General Regular Expression Parser
• 2. find: find files according to certain criteria
• 3. crontab: reporting, editing your crontab file
• 4. at: schedule a command, but only once
• 5. tar: Tape ARchiver
• 6. bzip2 and gzip: data compression programs
• 7. Many, many more...

Chapter 3 : Installation in text mode

• 1. Handling the interface in text mode
• 2. Choice of language and keyboard type
• 3. Installation method
• 4. Installation or upgrade
• 5. Installation class
• 6. SCSI adapters
• 7. Mount points
• 8. Formatting the partitions
• 9. Selection of packages
• 10. Mouse detection
• 11. Configuring a local network
• 12. Configuring the clock
• 13. Configuring services
• 14. Configuring a printer
• 15. root password
• 16. Adding a non-privileged user
• 17. Configuring authentification
• 18. Boot disk
• 19. Installing the boot loader
• 20. Configuring X
• 21. Completed

Chapter 4 : Glossary

Footnotes