A Basic Linux Tutorial

John E. Floyd University of Toronto1 April 27, 2006

I would like to thank some local gurus who have helped me gure out enough about Linux over the years to enable me to write this. Thanks go to Dan Derkach and, in an earlier era, Adam Iles, as well as to Joe Porrovecchio, Do An Vu, Pete A St. Onge and my colleague John Maheu. I will gladly supply my L TEX code to anyone who wishes to extend and rene this document with a view to making the revised version also freely available.

Contents
1 Introduction 2 What Everyone Should Know About DOS 2.1 Using DOS FDISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Acquiring and Setting Up BasicLinux 4 Acquiring and Setting Up Toms Root Boot Diskette 5 Getting Around in The Linux File System 6 Making and Using Shell Scripts 7 Getting Connected to the Internet 8 Telnet: Reading Your Mail 9 Using Linux fdisk 10 Formatting a Partition 11 Mounting Partitions 12 Retrieving Debian Linux Base System 12.1 Using BasicLinux . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Using Toms Diskette . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Further Considerations . . . . . . . . . 1 2 7 8 9 9 14 17 22 23 26 26 Disks 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 31 31 32 42

13 Writing Boot Disk Images to Floppy Disks 14 Appendix A: Using the vi Editor 15 Appendix B: Setting Up Debian 3.1 Linux 16 Appendix C: Setting Up Debian 2.2 Linux

17 Appendix D: Getting on the Internet Using a Modem 18 Appendix E: Using Your Debian System 18.1 Some Tweaks and Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.2 Using the Editor joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.3 Using mtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4 Logging Into and Obtaining Files from Other Computers 18.5 Number Calculations, Spreadsheets and Graphs . . . . . . 18.6 Printing Text and Spreadsheet Files . . . . . . . . . . . . A 18.7 L TEX Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A 18.7.1 Including Graphics in L TEX Documents . . . . . . A 18.8 Using TEX Instead of L TEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.9 Spell-Checking Your Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57 59 59 61 62 63 63 67 67 69 72 73

ii

Introduction

This document provides a discussion of the basic features of the Linux operating system for individuals who have Linux on their computers and are in the process of learning how to use it and for Linux aspirants who are considering setting up Linux on their machines. Since, for practical purposes, Linux works the same as its distinguished ancestor UNIX and its cousin FreeBSD, the material here will be equally useful for people who nd themselves logged in over the Web to computers that use these related operating systems. You may nd it useful to temporarily set up a mini-version of Linux in memory on a computer that uses another operating system in order to experiment with some of the commands discussed here, or to copy les from the Web to a computer on which you plan to set up Linux. This can be done using either Toms Root Boot Diskette or BasicLinux without interfering with the operating system (or even having one) already installed on that computer. Toms Root Boot Diskette and BasicLinux are mini-distributions that t onto two oppy disks in the case of BasicLinux or one oppy disk in the case of Toms Diskette. You can boot either mini-distribution from Drive A on any IBM compatible computer with 8 megs or more of RAM. Both work entirely out of a RAM disk (i.e., a virtual disk they create in the memory of the computer). Because the operating system and associated RAM disk is merely a gment of the computers imagination, you can not do any damage to the le system or operating system actually on the host computer as long as you do not mount any of that computers actual disks with the le system in RAM or use the fdisk program to repartition or reformat those disks. Each of the two mini-distributions has its advantages. If you are going to set up your own real Linux distribution on an old discarded or virtually free computer and are going to have to access the Internet using a modem, the BasicLinux distribution is the one to use since it contains a relatively easy way to set up a connection to your ISP so that you can download the necessary les for your real Linux distribution from the Web. If your computer has an Ethernet card and can be physically connected to the Web through a network that supports DHCP, your best bet is to use Toms Root Boot Diskette. When you connect your computer and boot it with Toms Diskette it will in many cases automatically detect your Ethernet card and set up for you the Internet connection you will need to download the les required for the real Linux distribution you plan to set up on

that computer.1 BasicLinux includes a browser while Toms Diskette does not, and it also has a more easy-to-use editor than Toms disk. This entire document assumes that you have a oppy drive on your computer.

What Everyone Should Know About DOS

Before becoming acquainted with Linux, everyone should have a minimal working command over the original widely-used PC operating system, DOS. If you are working in some version of MS-Windows, you will know you are in DOS when you have on the screen a text window called MS-DOS Prompt, or Command Prompt or Terminal Window containing the prompt C:\> Alternatively, if you happen to have booted up DOS using a oppy disk in Drive A you will see the prompt A:\> From that point you can use the command C:\> dir to nd out what les or directories (called folders in Windows-speak) are on that disk. Or you can choose variants of the dir command such as C:\> C:\> C:\> C:\> dir dir dir dir *.exe *. /p /w

to respectively list all les that have the sux .exe, list all the les that have no sux, most of which are typically directories or subdirectories of the directory you are currently in, list the les and directories a screen-full at a time (/p), or list the les and directories in columns on the screen (/w means wide). Upper-case and lower-case letters can be used interchangeably in DOS. You can move from C:\> to a directory called, say, OLDWORK on the C: drive by entering
It nds the Ethernet cards on my two computers connected to the University of Toronto backbone as well as my home computer connected to Rogers cable through a router and establishes an Internet connection in every case.
1

C:\> cd oldwork and then to work you are doing for Bob by moving further down the directory tree to the subdirectory BOB by entering C:\oldwork>cd bob You can create a new directory called FINISHED and move to it using the commands C:\oldwork\bob> mkdir finished C:\oldwork\bob> cd finished To move back up the directory tree you simply type cd .. at the prompt. One dot by itself on the command line is a reference to the current directory you are in (the working directory) while two dots together refer to the directory above that current or working directory. For example, you can move back up from the directory FINISHED to the directory BOB and then erase or remove the directory FINISHED (provided you havent put les in it) using the commands C:\oldwork\bob\finished> cd .. C:\oldwork\bob> rmdir finished You can copy, rename, and erase les in a directory using the following types of commands C:\myfiles> rename newfile.txt newfile.jnk C:\myfiles> copy oldfile.txt C:\oldwork\bob\*.* C:\myfiles> copy C:\oldfile\bob\badprog.exe . A: A:\> erase bigfile.doc C: C:\myfiles> erase A:oldjunk.wp5 C:\myfiles> cd .. C:\> erase *.jnk The rst line above renames a le called newfile.txt as newfile.jnk. You are in the directory C:\myfiles when you execute this command. The second command copies a le named oldfile.txt from the current working directory C:\myfiles to the subdirectory bob of the directory oldwork. The third line copies the le badprog.exe from the subdirectory bob of the directory oldwork to the current working directory, referred to by the dot 3

at the end of the command line.2 The next command switches the working directory to the oppy disk in Drive A and the command that follows erases the le bigfile.doc on that disk. Then we switch the working directory back to C:\>, which puts us back in the directory C:\myfiles> where we were when we switched to A, and then erase the le oldjunk.wp5 from the oppy disk in Drive A. Then we move up the directory tree to the root directory C:\> and erase all les having the sux .jnk. To format a oppy disk in Drive A we execute the command C:\> format A: To format that disk and in the process make it into a boot disk, we enter the command C:\> format A:/s The /s switch tells the operating system to copy the le COMMAND.COM together with some hidden les to the oppy disk being formatted in Drive A. This will not work on some of the newer versions of MS-Windows, such as XP, which no longer are based on DOS. However, most old computers will have on them a version of DOS from which bootable oppy disks can be made. And all versions of MS-Windows contain a command prompt screen from which most of the commands in this section have the meanings here assigned to them. If you are working on a computer whose operating system is Windows-XP, you can still obtain a DOS boot disk using FreeDOS. Use Internet Explorer to obtain the les fdos1440.img and rawwrite.exe from my ftp site by entering the URLs ftp://islamey.economics.utoronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/fdos1440.img ftp://islamey.economics.uroronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/rawwrite.exe ftp://islamey.economics.uroronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/ne.com The last command obtains an old text editor that will work with FreeDos. Then put a fresh oppy disk in Drive A: and execute the command rawrite and follow the prompts to write the image on fdos1440.img to the oppy disk. After doing this, boot the system with the newly created oppy. A ram-disk called Drive A: will be created in the computers memory and the oppy Drive A: will be renamed Drive B:. Move to the FreeDos directory on the new Drive A: and, after putting a fresh new oppy in what is now Drive B:, execute the command sys b:. This will make this new oppy disk into a boot disk. Copy sys.com, format.exe, fdisk.exe and fdisk.ini
2

In DOS, this dot can be omitted although a comparable dot is required in Linux.

to your new boot disk in Drive B: and then move to the drivers directory on Drive A: and copy the le himem.exe. Your FreeDos boot disk will then be complete. You can add an editor to this disk by copying to it the le ne.com. If we then take the boot oppy disk and insert it into Drive A of any IBM compatible computer and turn that computer on it will boot the DOS operating system that is on the oppy and leave us at the prompt A:\> If we copy the le SYS.COM to the oppy disk from the computer we created it on, as was done in the case of FreeDos above, we can set up that version of DOS on Drive C: of a second computer by booting it with the oppy and then entering the command A:\> sys C: To check the quality of a oppy disk in Drive A and correct any errors on it we can insert that oppy into Drive A of a booted and properly congured DOS or MS-Windows computer and execute the command (in a DOS window) C:\> scandisk A: and follow the prompts. Sometimes we will need to create a text le using DOS. We do this by entering the command C:\> edit filename.txt to load the standard DOS editor and then typing in the appropriate text. The standard DOS editor can be operated by pressing the ALT key plus the rst letter of the relevant menu item. Of course, we could also make a text le using the program NotePad on a computer booted with Windows, version 95 or later. In FreeDos we would edit a le using the command C:\> ne filename.txt Text les are extremely important in working with computers at a very basic level. Not only can you read and create text les using a text editor, you can have the computer print a text le on the screen by executing the command C:\> type filename.txt

We usually name text les with the sux .txt although there are important exceptions. Text les with the sux .bat are called batch les. They are executable les that contain a group (or batch) of DOS commands of the sort outlined above which the computer will execute whenever we type the root name of the batch lei.e., the part of the lename that comes before the sux .bat. The most important batch le is the le autoexec.bat. Whenever the computer is booted into DOS (or a DOS window is opened) it looks for the autoexec.bat le and executes the commands that le contains if it is present. A typical autoexec.bat le will contain the following type of material: @ECHO OFF SET PATH=C:\;C:\utils;C:\rats;C:\shazam;C:\gnuplot;C:\wp; DOSKEY The line @ECHO OFF tells the computer not to print on the screen what is happening as the le executes. The line starting with SET PATH tells the computer where to look to nd les that the user is trying to execute. The rst place it will look is on the root drive C:\, and then it will look in the directory C:\utils, and then in the directory C:\rats, and so on. If you want DOS to look in a particular directory for executable les, you must load the autoexec.bat le into your text editor (create a backup copy of it rst!) and add that directory to the path command. The command DOSKEY loads a neat little program that allows you to access all commands previously made at the DOS prompt by pressing the up-arrow on the keyboard. Executable les in DOS all have one of three suxes.bat, .com or .exe. Files with the last two suxes are not text lesthey are binary les (i.e., les written in machine language).3 One other important text le on a DOS based computer is config.sys. This le contains information about how the computer is to be congured the computer always reads and follows the instructions in this le when it boots. A very important DOS program that you may need to use when setting up a Linux computer from a DOS partition is FDISK. You may need this program, which is contained in the le FDISK.EXE, to create a DOS partition on your target computer before setting up Linux partitions. Of course, you will set up Linux partitions using the fdisk program in Linux. You can use
3 If you are checking your mail using a DOS-Windows computer and someone sends you a le with one of the above three suxes, dont open it! It probably contains a virus which wreak havoc on your computer when you click on the le and open (i.e., execute) it!

BasicLinux or Toms Linux to copy necessary les from the Web to your DOS partition and then, if you choose that route, boot the computer into DOS and install Linux from your DOS partition. Subsequently, you can congure your computer to boot into either DOS or Linux. When you set up your DOS boot disk for booting other computers that may not have DOS installed on them, you should make sure that it contains the following les (in addition, of course, to COMMAND.COM and the hidden les): FORMAT.COM DISKCOPY.COM SYS.COM CHKDSK.EXE SCANDISK.EXE FDISK.EXE The rst of these les or programs is used for formatting oppy disks or partitions on a hard disk. The second is used for copying the of contents of one oppy disks to another. As noted above SYS.COM is used to copy the operating system from your boot oppy to a newly created C: Drive on another computer to enable that computer to boot into DOS o that drive. Both CHKDSK.EXE and SCANDISK.EXE are programs for checking and correcting errors on oppy disks and hard disks. We now turn to a discussion of how to use the program FDISK.EXE.

2.1

Using DOS FDISK

FDISK is a program for setting up and removing partitions on the hard disk on your computer. Every computer has at least one hard (or xed) disk and many have two or more. Before using disk formatting programs you must always back up any les that you want to keepwhen you remove existing partitions, any data on them will be lost! To use FDISK, make sure that you have the le FDISK.EXE on your boot oppy disk and then use that disk to boot the computer into DOS from Drive A. Then execute the command A:\>fdisk and the program will load. If you are booting with an MS-Windows boot disk you may be asked whether or not you want to enable large disk support. Answer no if you only want to create a small DOS partition and want it to be accessible by older versions of DOS and Windows95 boot disks. You will then be presented with a menu from which you can choose options. 7

From this point it will be obvious how to proceed, although there are a few things you should know. First, the active partition is the one you want the computer to boot o. Second, if you have more than one disk drive installed on the computer there will be a menu item called Change the current xed disk drive which you can choose to move to the disk you want to format (if it is not disk 1). Third, there are two types of partitions, primary and extended. You are allowed to have no more than four primary partitions. Alternatively, you can choose to set up as many as three primary partitions and one extended partition. Within that extended partition you can create a number of logical partitions. If you are going to set up Linux, you will need at most one primary partition. Leave the remainder of disk 1, and all of any additional disks unpartitioned. You will partition those with the Linux fdisk program.

Acquiring and Setting Up BasicLinux

An up-to-date version of BasicLinux can be obtained from the web-site http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/ You can download the zip le containing the distribution to the hard drive on any computer on which MS-Windows 95 or later is loaded and unzip it. You can run BasicLinux from there on that computer without doing any damagethough you should ask the computers owner rst! To set up the oppy disk version you need two clean formatted oppy disks. Just follow the instructions on the BasicLinux web-site. If you are setting up your BasicLinux disks from a machine whose owner doesnt want you unzipping les and running programs, you can obtain a somewhat older BasicLinux distribution o my web-site. You should also setup this older version o my web-site if you are going to be dialing in to the University of Toronto system to access the Webthe newer versions of BasicLinux cannot be congured easily for dialing into that system. To setup the older version, put the rst of your two oppy disks in the ADrive: of any DOS or MS-Windows machine and make it into a boot disk by executing the command format a:/s You then need to nd the le HIMEM.SYS on the same computer and copy it to the boot disk in Drive A. Next, use the text editor to make a config.sys le on the disk in Drive A containing the following single line of text 8

DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS Make sure that your second oppy disk is cleanly formattedit should not be a boot disk. Now point the browser at my ftp site ftp://islamey.economics.utoronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/ and download baslin1.zip and baslin2.zip and unzip them onto your rst and second oppies, respectively. You might want to rename the le boot.bat on the boot disk as autoexec.bat so that BasicLinux will boot up automatically when you start a computer with your new BasicLinux boot oppy in Drive A.

Acquiring and Setting Up Toms Root Boot Diskette

To obtain Toms Root Boot Diskette use a public or a friends computer with Internet access to go to the following Web location: http://www.toms.net/rb/ Click on the download URL and copy the le tomsrtbt-2.0.103.dos... to a temporary directory of the hard disk of the computer you are using. Then, after obtaining a fresh new oppy disk that must contain no bad sectors (check it with scandisk!), execute the command install on that computer. You will be prompted to insert the oppy disk in Drive A and Toms mini-distribution will be automatically written to that disk. The disk is then ready for use!

Getting Around in The Linux File System

The Linux le system extends outwardI visualize it as downwardfrom the root directory, commonly denoted as /. When you boot up with Toms Diskette you will be presented with a prompt /# from which you can enter a list les command ls, which is equivalent to dir or DIR in DOS. In contrast to DOS, upper-case and lower-case letters are perceived as separate letters in Linux. If you enter LS on the command line you will receive an error message. When you enter the command ls the screen will appear as follows:

/# ls bin cdrom dev /#

etc fl lib

mnt not proc

sbin tmp tomsrtbt.FAQ

usr var

You are in the root partition as indicated by the / character that precedes the # in the command prompt. All the above names except sbin and tomsrtbt.FAQ should appear on the screen in blue, with sbin appearing in turquoise and tomsrtbt.FAQ appearing in green. All of the blue words signify directories. tomsrtbt.FAQ is a text le that explains Toms distribution and sbin is simply a link to the directory bin. Links are les that are nothing but referrals to other les. A more detailed listing can be obtained by adding switches to the ls command as follows: /# ls -l /# ls -a /# ls -l -a Use of the -l switch will cause the ls command to present details about the les and directories and the -a switch will cause a listing of hidden les and directories, which start with a period (the only one in Toms distribution is the le .exrc). If you list the les in a directory like bin or dev using the -l switch you will get a list that will take up more than one screen. In this case you can send the list to a text le using the command /# ls -l > list.txt and then view that text le with the text editor. Alternatively, you can pipe the output from the list command to the program more which will present the list one screen at a time. The command to use is /# ls -l | more where the character that appears as a vertical line redirects (or pipes) the output of ls to the program more. In typical Linux systems you can also scroll through text les by using the command less. This commands diers from the more in that it allows you to scroll up through the le as well as down using the arrow keys. You could also learn about the details of Toms distribution by entering the command /# more tomsrtbt.FAQ 10

If you boot up BasicLinux you will be presented with the prompt ~<#> and upon executing the list les command your screen will look like this: ~<#>ls hotlist.html ~<#> mail netsetup

where mail is a directory which appears in blue and netsetup is a le that appears in green. The item hotlist.html is a le that appears in the normal white print. It turns out that since you logged in as root user you are immediately placed in the root users directory. You also log in as root in Toms Linux distribution but that distribution contains no directory for the root user. To get to the root directory (as distinct from the root users directory) in BasicLinux you issue the change directory command ~<#>cd .. and you will then presented with the prompt /<#> from which, if you list les, you will see # ls bin dev etc /# hd lib lost+found mnt proc root sbin tmp usr var

with all the items being directories and appearing in blue. Note the directory root. You can move to that directory using the command /#cd root and you will nd yourself right back in the root users directory where you started. Complete distributions of Linux, unlike Toms, also have root directories that are the home directory of the root user. They also have a directory called home, which contains the home directories of all users on the system other than the root user. You will probably want to set your Linux system up having two users, a root user and another regular user representing yourself, called john in my case. You will have separate passwords for each user and will always log in as yourself for doing your regular work. Only when you need to make changes in your Linux system or perform special 11

operations will you log in as root. As yourself you can only operate on les belonging to yourself as regular useryou cannot accidentally screw up the system les. As root user you can do a lot of damage if you are not careful. In all distributions you will nd a /bin directory which will include executable les that all users can use. The slash / in front of the word bin species that the bin directory is in the root directory /. You could have other bin directories such as, for example, /usr/local/bin which is three branches below the root directory on the directory tree. The directory /sbin usually contains executable les used by the Linux system itself. Linux systems have programs called daemons which lurk in the background and spring into action whenever appropriate conditions occur. For example, if a user issues a print command, the line-printer daemon goes into action and deals with it. The directory /etc contains conguration les for the whole systemnobody but the root user can write to or create les in this directory. The directory /dev contains les that activate all devices (printers, modems, disk partitions, etc.) that are present on the computerin Linux, these devices are treated the same way as ordinary les except that usually only the root user is allowed to read from and write to (i.e., use) most of them. The /lib directory houses library les containing code that many dierent programs will need to access. The directory /var is where system log les are kept. These les record everything that happens when you boot your computer or when anyone uses itthis is unlike MS-Windows where the comparable les are hidden from view. You can read these log les (as root user only) to see who is trying to break into your system or gure out why, for example, your system rebooted on its own in the middle of the previous night. The /tmp directory houses, as you might expect, temporary les and /usr is the directory, which typically contains subdirectories called local/lib and local/bin, where the programs created and set up to suit the particular tastes of ordinary users are normally housed. The other directories, such as /mnt (meaning mount), /hd (probably meaning hard disk), and /cd or /cdrom are usually empty and available to mount on hard disk partitions, oppy drives, or CD-ROMs. In Linux the le system is not organized according to Drives such as C: or D: as in DOS or Windows, but can be mounted in pieces and distributed across various hard disk partitions in many dierent ways. In linux, the rst hard disk is known as /dev/hda and the second as /dev/hdb. The rst partition on /dev/hda is known as /dev/hda1, the second partition as /dev/hda2, and so forth. On some Linux systems the CD-ROM drive is known as /dev/cdrom. On others, it is denoted simply as an additional hard diskfor example, /dev/hdc on a computer that contain two hard disks. 12

As previously noted, you can switch focus between directories using the cd command. In Linux you copy les using the cp command as follows: /<#>cp root/hotlist.html . /<#>cp -i hotlist.html usr/bin/ /# cp tomsrtbt.FAQ tmp The rst line copies, in BasicLinux, the le hotlist.html from the root users directory to the current working directory, denoted by the period at the end of the command line. The second line, also in BasicLinux, copies that same le from the root directory of the system to the subdirectory bin in the directory usr. The parameter -i species that a prompt be given if the le is going to be copied on top of another le of the same name. The third line, in Toms distribution, copies tomsrtbt.FAQ from the root directory / to the directory tmp. If you are copying les to some subdirectory far down the tree from the root directory, the easiest thing to do is to cd yourself to the directory in which you want to place the le and then issue the copy command from that directory as follows: /home/john<#>cp -i /usr/local/lib/libfile.so . Here you specify that the le to be copied is libfile.so in the directory /usr/local/lib. The / in front of the word usr is necessary to specify that the path to the le starts from the root directory of the system (when working from the root directory you do not need to include this), and the . at the end of the line separated by one space from so species that the le is to be copied to the current directory. And we can see from the command line prompt /home/john<#> that the current working directory is the directory of user john which is a subdirectory of the directory home that is a subdirectory of the root directory /. To remove les we use the command rm as follows /<#>rm -i root/hotlist.html /<#>rm -i * /<#>rm -i .* where the switch -i species that you be asked for conrmation before that le is deleted. The rst command, when executed from the root directory /, removes the le hotlist.html from the root users directory root. If the working directory is not the root directory, a / would have to be placed at the beginning of the word root. Of course, the user issuing the command will have to be the root user. Nobody else can delete the root users les. 13

The second command removes all les in the current or working directory while the third removes all hidden les. Always use the -i switch because it forces you to be stupid twice in a row in order to delete a le you really wish to keep. To create and remove directories, do the following: /<#>mkdir junk /<#>rmdir junk

Making and Using Shell Scripts

All of the commands above are called shell commands. The shell on a Linux computer is a program that takes commands from users and passes them along to the core of the operating system, called the kernel, which then gives appropriate directions to the computers hardware. There are many dierent alternative shells that can be used in Linuxthe default one in most Linux distributions, including Debian, is the bash shell. This is in contrast to DOS where the shell and the operating system are completely integrated. In DOS we had .bat or batch les that executed a batch of commands in sequence. In Linux we do the same thing with shell scripts. A shell script is simply a text le containing shell commands that we want the computer to execute (or, more correctly, the shell to tell the computer to execute) when the name of the shell script is entered on the command line. Suppose that we want to construct a silly message that will appear on the screen in BasicLinux or Toms Linux whenever the user types the letter a by itself on the command line. First we construct a text le called, say, message.txt containing the message we want to deliver. Then we need to construct a program to deliver the message. In BasicLinux we create a text le using the default editor on the system by executing the command /<#>edit message.txt Then we type on the screen the line Love Linux!! Hate Microsoft!! and save the le and exit the editor by pressing simultaneously the Ctrl key and the letter x as indicated by the help lines along the bottom of the screen. In Toms Linux we have a problem. If we type the above edit command we will get an error message. Tom requires that we edit les using the venerable old UNIX editor vi which some people think one has to be a masochist to 14

use. You will have to consult Appendix A to this document to learn the minimal things you need to know about vi. Actually, it is useful to learn the basics of how to use this editor because it is found on every Linux and UNIX-type system in existence (except BasicLinux!). If you have an account on any of your Universitys computer systems you will be able to use that editor to do anything you might need to do. Since we dont want our user to see the le message.txt on boot-up, we move it to the directory lib using the command (from within the root directory) /<#>mv -i message.txt lib The mv command has another use that we should mentionto rename a le by moving it to a dierent name. Now we need to make the program that will run when the user presses the letter a by itself on the command line. Obviously, we will have to call this program a. So enter the command /<#>edit a to begin constructing a text le with this name. We essentially want the shell to type the contents of the le message.txt on the screen when this program is called (i.e., when the letter a is typed on the command line). In Linux, the command that types the contents of a text le on the screen is called cat (as opposed to type in DOS). So our program le should contain one line cat /lib/message.txt This tells the shell to write the contents of the text le message.txt, to be found in the directory lib, to the screen. In order for this le to be executed when the user types its name on the command line two things need to be done. First, the le must be copied to a directory on the PATH along which the shell will look to nd executable les. To nd out what directories are in the PATH we execute the command /<#>echo $PATH to which we will receive the reply in BasicLinux /sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:usr/bin: The reply in Toms will be similar but shorter. Obviously, a suitable place to put our executable le is in the directory /bin. We do that using the command 15

/<#>mv a bin The second thing we have to do is make the le a executable. We do this (always as root user in a real Linux distribution) by executing the command /<#>chmod +x a We can tell that the le a is executable by looking at the information presented when we apply the list les command to it with the -l switch. The screen will look as follows: /<#>ls -l a -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 21 May 24 21:52 a

Reading from the extreme left along the second line, the one representing the shells response to the ls command, the - character signies that a is a le. If it were a directory there would be a d in this position instead of a -. The next three characters rwx tell us that the owner of the le can read, write to it, and execute it. The next three characters r-x tells us that the group of users that has access to this le can read and execute it but not write to it. The nal r-x tells us that everyone else (i.e., all other users) can read and execute the le but not write to it. The number 1 tells us that there is one occurrence of this le (i.e., no links to it), the left-most word root tells us that the owner of the le is the root user, and the right-most word root tells us that the group of users having access to the le consists only of the root user. The number 21 tells us that the size of the le is 21 bytes. This is followed by the date and time the le was created, and by the name of the le. Now let us see what happens when we go to the root directory on the le system and type the letter a on the command line. /<#>a Love Linux!! Hate Microsoft!! The program works! You can change the ownership of a le, say to user john, by executing the following command the shell prompt chown john filename and the group allowed to access the le can be changed using the command chgrp john filename 16

assuming that, as in the case of most personal computer systems, there is only one user john and therefore only one relevant group john to which that single user belongs. In Linux systems containing only one human user there will typically be additional virtual users such as staff and mail as well as, of course, root. To give write permission on a le to those having group access, enter the command chmod g+w filename and to give read or execute permission substitute the letters r and x, respectively for w. To give a permission to everyone, change the letter g in the above command to an o. To withdraw permission, change the symbol + to the symbol -.

Getting Connected to the Internet

If you are thinking about setting up a Linux distribution for yourself, the most important hurdle will be setting up a dial-in connection to access the Internet. The connection will use the Point-to-Point Protocol, otherwise known as PPP. If your computer is hardwired directly to a network, you should have been using Toms distribution thus far if it automatically detects your ethernet card and establishes a connection. In Debian Linux you will be prompted to establish this connection in the process of setting up the system. If you have to work through a modem, setting up an Internet connection is less transparent and can be quite dicult if you are dealing with a university network whose service may be free and not-for-prot, with the result that university personnel have no incentive to support anything but MS-Windows operating systems. It turns out that an Internet connection can be established rather easily in BasicLinux. After the system loads, execute the command /<#>pppsetup and you will be presented with a screen giving a number of options. Choose 2. Edit your PPP settings. You will be prompted to modify a number of les. The rst one will appear on the screen as follows:

17

#!/bin/sh # # substitute your ISPs telephone number for 087304484 # # if your ISP uses PAP/CHAP then remove the last two lines; # otherwise, substitute your username/password for ichi/xxx exec chat TIMEOUT ABORT ABORT TIMEOUT OK OK CONNECT ogin word \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

3 \nBUSY\r \nNO ANSWER\r \rAT 30 ATS11=55 ATDT087304484 ichi xxx

If your Internet Service Provide uses either the PAP or the CHAP protocol your task is dead-easy. Simply do as instructed and press the Ctrl and x keys simultaneously to save your changes and exit the screen. If your ISP requires a text dialogue, as do the University of Toronto Systems, things can get quite complicated. To proceed, you must be using the version of BasicLinux obtained from my website. On the above screen you will notice the line exec chat. This tells us that the shell is being asked to execute the program chat, which will in turn execute the chat script represented by the lines that follow. Through this, your computer is going to have a chat with the computer that is being dialled into! The chat program reads in the rst three lines and stores them in memory for future use. Henceforth, if the other computer is busy or gives no answer, it will abort the session. Chat then sends the modem a hard return \r and then, on the same line, asks for its attention with the command AT. The TIMEOUT command tells the chat program to abort the session if nothing happens for 30 seconds. After the Modem answers OK, chat sends it a setup string. Then after the modem answers OK on the next line chat sends to the modem the telephone number that is to be dialled. The letters DT tell the modem to use tone dialling. You will have to change the telephone number to correspond with the one used by your ISP. After a connection has occurred, chat waits until the other computer sends a word 18

ending in the four letters ogin. This is consistent with a login prompt where the word login begins with either an upper case or lower case letter. When the chat program receives that prompt it relays back to the other computer your username which, of course, you will have replaced the word ichi with. Then chat waits to receive from the other computer a word ending with the four letters word. It then passes to the other computer your password, which you must replace the xxx in the script with. Within 30 seconds the PPP connection will be made. It turns out that, as noted at the top of the script, you can delete the login and password lines if your ISP uses PAP or CHAP. This information will be sent to the ISP in subsequent les. Unfortunately, some ISPs (like the University of Toronto Systems) require not only these two lines, but a more complicated dialog between the two computers. If you are a University of Toronto student (or faculty member) and have a CHASS (Computing for the Humanities and Social Sciences) account you have to edit the above script as follows: #!/bin/sh # # substitute your ISPs telephone number for 087304484 # # if your ISP uses PAP/CHAP then remove the last two lines; # otherwise, substitute your username/password for ichi/xxx exec chat TIMEOUT ABORT ABORT TIMEOUT OK OK CONNECT ogin serid word \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

3 \nBUSY\r \nNO ANSWER\r \rAT 30 ATS11=55 ATDT4169463393 ppp ichi xxx PPP

where you again replace the word ichi with your user ID and xxx with your password. If you are a student or faculty member at the University of Toronto with a UTORID account (obtained through the Information Commons), 19

the required script is even more complicated. You should edit the le as follows: #!/bin/sh # # substitute your ISPs telephone number for 087304484 # # if your ISP uses PAP/CHAP then remove the last two lines; # otherwise, substitute your username/password for ichi/xxx exec chat TIMEOUT ABORT ABORT TIMEOUT OK OK CONNECT name word dialin \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

3 \nBUSY\r \nNO ANSWER\r \rAT 30 ATS11=55 ATDT4169780449 01394417 xxx ppp default

Here, your username, represented above by 01394417, must be replaced by appropriate digits from your library card number and xxx must again be replaced by your password. When you are nished editing this le and save it by pressing Ctrl key and the x key simultaneously, and follow the resulting instructions, the le will be saved as /etc/ppp/ppp-on-dialer and you will then be presented with a second le to edit. This le is

20

# edit /dev/ttyS2 (if necessary) to match your modems comport # note: com1= /dev/ttyS0 com2= /dev/ttyS1 com3= /dev/ttyS2 # # edit user line only if your ISP uses PAP/CHAP authentication /dev/ttyS2 57600 lock crtscts modem 0.0.0.0: defaultroute # user [your_username] connect /etc/ppp/ppp-on-dialer If your ISP supports PAP or CHAP you must replace the word in rectangular brackets, and the brackets as well, with your username and remove the # from the beginning of the line. (That character, when appearing in a program rather than in a command prompt, tells the program not to read the rest of the line that follows it.) Otherwise, you just have to change the last character in the line /dev/ttys2 to correspond to the Com (or communications) port to which your modem is attached. In Linux the Com ports are called ttyS0, ttyS1, and so forth, rather than Com1 and Com2, etc. When you save and exit this le in the usual fashion the program will save it as the le /etc/ppp/options. Next you will be presented with a le that you will need to edit only if your ISP uses either PAP or CHAP authentication. # edit this file only if your ISP uses PAP/CHAP authentication # name in 1st field, asterisk in 2nd field, password in 3rd field [your_username] * [your_password]

If you need to edit this le you should insert your username and password appropriately and remove the brackets. Upon saving/exiting this le, (it will be saved to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets) you will then be presented with the le nameserver 203.29.160.4 nameserver 203.29.160.2

21

Replace the numbers in this le with the ones given you by your ISP and save the le in the usual fashion. The program will save this le as /etc/resolv.conf. After you have nished editing these les the same menu that appeared on your screen when you started pppsetup will reappear. Choose the option 3. Save your PPP settings to floppy disk. Then choose the option 4. Exit. To connect to the Internet, enter the command /<#>ppp-on and to end the connection, enter the command /<#>ppp-off You will nd the shell scripts ppp-on and ppp-off in the /usr/bin directory. As a matter of interest, have a look at them using the text editor (but dont change anything!).

Telnet: Reading Your Mail

When you are connected to the Web and have the appropriate privileges from your ISP you can use the telnet command log on to your ISP and work as an ordinary user on that machine. If the ISP has the program pine installed you can use it to check your mail. Suppose, for example, that you have a CHASS account. Log into CHASS using the command /# telnet chass.utoronto.ca and reply to the prompts with your username and password. To read your mail, enter at the % command prompt the word pine: /homes/username % pine It will be obvious how to proceed from the options on the screen and the help menu along the bottom of it. If you are a University of Toronto student or faculty member and have a UTORDIAL account you can read mail you receive at that address by executing the command /# telnet log.agent.utoronto.ca

22

and responding to the login prompt with the relevant digits of your library card and typing your password when asked. Then select the option 1. UTORmail via Pine by pressing the 1 key but do not press ENTER. You will be asked to enter your password a second time. After that you use pine in the same way as in the CHASS account.

Using Linux fdisk

To nd out what partitions exist on a computer and to modify those partitions you need to use the Linux fdisk program. To start fdisk enter the command (I again ignore the command prompt) fdisk /dev/hda where hda refers to the rst hard disk drive on the computer. To work on the second disk drive, change this to hdb. You will receive the reply Command (m for help): and after typing m your screen will appear as follows: Command (m for help): m Command action a toggle a bootable flag b edit bsd disklabel c toggle the dos compatibility flag d delete a partition l list known partition types m print this menu n add a new partition o create a new empty DOS partition table p print the partition table q quit without saving changes s create a new empty Sun disklabel t change a partitions system id u change display/entry units v verify the partition table w write table to disk and exit x extra functionality (experts only) Command (m for help): 23

To nd out what the existing partitions are on the hard disk, press p. Your screen will appear as follows. Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 789 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot /dev/hda1 * /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3 /dev/hda4 Start 1 383 551 568 End 382 550 567 789 Blocks 3068383+ 1349460 136552+ 1783215 Id b 83 82 83 System Win95 FAT32 Linux Linux swap Linux

Command (m for help): You should not run this program on anyone elses computer and you should use use it only to determine the layout of the drives on your own computer unless you have backed up all your les! To exit fdisk without doing damage, enter the command q. The discussion below assumes that you want to modify the partitions or create new ones on a computer on which you plan to install a real version of Linux. Before proceeding further, you should copy down on a piece of paper the above information not only for the disk you are planning to restructure but for all disks on the computer. You can nd the total size of the disk in bytes by multiplying 16065 by 512, in the above case, to obtain the number of bytes per unit (or cylinder), and then multiply that number by the number of cylinders. To nd the size of any partition, multiply the number of cylinders in the partition by the number of bytes per cylinder calculated above. To delete a partition press d and then, when prompted, the number of the partition, where /dev/hda1 is the rst partition and /dev/hda2 is the second partition, and so forth. Deletion of any partition marked extended in the right-most column of the partition table will automatically delete any partitions associated with the blocks that are in that extended partition. If you are going to set up Linux on the disk you should delete all partitions unless you are doing the initial install from a DOS partition. In that event you should leave as is an appropriate DOS partition that you or someone else should have previously set up using DOS FDISK. Indeed, you can even have on that partition MS-Windows 95/98 which you can install Linux from

24

and then keep and use on occasion for browsing the Web, etc.4 To add a partition press n. You will be asked whether you want to add a primary or an extended partition. Press p to create a primary partition. You will then be asked the number to give the partition. Start with 1, assuming that your previously created DOS partition is not partition 1. You will be asked to specify the rst cylinder of the new partitionyou can usually use the default here and press ENTER. You will then be asked to specify the last cylinder or the size in either cylinders, kilobytes, or megabytes. To pick the last cylinder, just enter the number of the cylinder. Alternatively, to set the size in cylinders and let the program nd the last cylinder, enter +nnn where nnn is the number of cylinders. To set the size in megabytes, enter +nnnM where nnn is the number of megabytes. Set the partition on which the root system will be mounted rst. If you are going to use my Debian 2.2 setup you should set its size at 300 megs, more if you have lots of disk space. If your are installing Debian 3.1 from http://www.debian.org over the web, this partition should be set at 500 megs or more. Next you will need to create a swap partition. For Debian 2.2, I would recommend giving this partition at least 32 megs of space, or 64 megs if you have room, and certainly no less than 16 megs. Set it at 128 megs for a Debian 3.1 setup. Make both it and the next (and nal) partition, which you will use for your research les, primary partitions. Then create the third partition, using the remainder of the space on the disk, by selecting the defaults at the prompts. Next you want to change the ID of the second, middle, partition to specify that it is to be a swap partition. To do this press t, choose partition 2 at the prompt, and enter the code 82. You should now have three partitionsa Linux swap (82) partition with Linux (83) partitions on each side of it. If everything is the way you want it, press w to write the revised partition table to the disk. If you have screwed something up you can exit fdisk without any changes taking eect by pressing q. You should use the partition /dev/hda3 (assuming that you are setting up Linux on the rst hard disk on your machine) to house the les you will need to set up your Linux system. Before you can copy les to it, however, you must format it to house a Linux le system. You must rst reboot the
Linux can also share a computer with Windows XP. In this case, however, you will have to set Linux up from a Linux partition. If Windows is initially occupying the entire hard disk, you can downsize the Windows partition using the program ps, which you can obtain from my ftp site. Download fips20.zip and fips.txt from the place where you obtained FreeDos. The latter le is a manual giving intructions on how to use the ps program.
4

25

computer for the partition changes you made to take eect. Simply turn the computer o and then back on if you are using BasicLinux or Toms Diskette. If you happen to be operating on a real Linux system installed on the computer, and are modifying partitions on that computer other than the one containing your operating system, press the Ctrl., Alt. and Del. keys simultaneously. When the computer has rebooted you can format partitions by following the instructions set out below.

10

Formatting a Partition

In BasicLinux, use the following command to place a Linux le system a partition /dev/hda3 and determine if the partition has any bad sectors. mke2fs -t /dev/hda3 In Debian Linux 2.2 and 3.1 the equivalent command would be mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hda3 The BasicLinux command mke2fs automatically makes a Linux le system while it is necessary to tell mkfs in Debian that we want a Linux (i.e., ext2) le system. In BasicLinux you can make and mount a second 4 meg ramdisk (again, solely in the computers memory) using the commands mke2fs /dev/ram2 4096 mount /dev/ram2 /mnt This will give you practice without damaging the le systems on the computers actual hard disk(s).

11

Mounting Partitions

You can use either BasicLinux or Toms Linux to read from and write to the hard disks on any computer you boot with them. This can be useful when you need to make repairs to get the computer to boot on its own. It is also useful for setting up a computer on which you wish to install Linux. To mount a new directory called, say, newdir on the partition /dev/hdb3, we need to rst create the directory with the command (henceforth I will ignore the command prompt) mkdir newdir 26

and then mount it with the command mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3 /newdir The command line parameters -t ext2 tell the computer that the partition is formatted for Linux. In fact, if the partition /dev/hda3 is an ext2 Linux partition with les on it you should be able to mount any empty directory on the partition using the command mount /dev/hda3 /dirname and the operating system will automatically detect that the le system on the partition is ext2. The les on the newly mounted partition can be accessed with the standard Linux shell commands. Simply cd to /dirname to access the les on that partition. To mount a MS-Windows 95/98 partition, create a directory called win using the command mkdir win and then mount it with the command mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /win where /dev/hdb1 is the partition you are mounting the directory win on. You can then use the standard Linux shell commands to access the les on that partition. If you want to mount a standard DOS partition (pre-Windows 98) you would use the word msdos instead of vfat in the above command. Being able to mount DOS-Windows partitions will be essential if you wish to install the base of a Linux system from a DOS partition to avoid having to use oppy disks in the installation process. To mount the directory /cdrom on the CD-ROM drive of a computer with two hard disks and the Linux operating system Debian 2.2 or 3.1, execute the command mount /dev/hdc /cdrom You can determine what partitions have le systems mounted on them by executing the command df.

27

12

Retrieving Debian Linux Base System Disks

If you are going to install Debian Linux 3.1 you might want to use either BasicLinux or Toms Diskette to move the necessary les from the Internet to the computer on which you want to make the installation. For Debian 3.1 that computer should have at least 24 megs of ram and 1 gigabyte of hard disk space. For a Debian 2.2 installation the target computer should have at least 16 megs of ram and 500 megs of hard disk space. To run a purely text-based system, with no graphic user interface, you would need only 12 megs of ram for either Debian 2.2 or 3.1. If you are going to use graphics, I would not recommend Debian 3.1 for computers older than a Pentium IIyou should use Debian 2.2 in that case.

12.1

Using BasicLinux

After running pppsetup in BasicLinux, mount mnt (or any other empty directory) on the appropriate Linux or DOS partition on the hard drive of the computer you are going to set up Linux on. You should have already created the appropriate partition with DOS FDISK or with the Linux fdisk program. Then make that directory the working directory. To retrieve les to that directory with the web browser, load the Links browser by entering links on the command line. Press the key G (meaning go to) to obtain a request-for-URL. In the text box enter the URL ftp://islamey.economics.utoronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/debian30/ if you are going to set up Debian 3.1. Actually, you will be setting up the Debian 3.0 base and then upgrading to Debian 3.1 over the Internet. Move the cursor to basdebs.tar and press D to download that le to your working directory. You can now take a snooze for a few hours, as the size of this le is 28 megs! This is the kind of download you want to do overnight! After this download is complete move the cursor to the le drivers.tgz, press D again and relax again while this le downloadedalthough it is only 5.4 megs in size, it will still take quite a while for the download to complete. Then select and download the two les rescue.bin and root.bin. These two les will download quickly as compared to the earlier ones. Now download the two manuals install.en.txt and fdisk.tex. If you are going to install the Debian 3.0 base from a Linux partition, these are all the les you will need. If you are going to boot the installation from DOS, you will need to download three additional les, linux.bin, install.bat and loadln.exe. 28

Should you choose to set up the older and less resource hungry Debian 2.2 distribution, you can obtain all the les for the simple version I use on my computers from my ftp site using the same URL as above but leaving o the part debian30/. The required les have the same names as the Debian 3.0 les above with one exception. The exception is that the Debian 2.2 base le is called base2_2.tgz instead of basedebs.tar. If you are going to do the installation from a DOS partition, you can obtain all the required les in the self-extracting zip le debbasuz.exe You will also have to obtain from this same place all the additional les required for the distribution I use for my research. These are basutils.tar.gz textprgs.tar.gz X11prgs.tar.gz netsc476.tar.gz extras.tar.gz uslocbin.tar.gz usloclib.tar.gz The latter two les contain some useful shell scripts and programs that I use on my system together with a group of template les to use with various programs. You should also obtain these latter two les if you are going to set up Debian 3.1. If your system has no more than 16 megs of RAM, and you are therefore going to set up Debian 2.2, you might want to use an older, less resource hungry version of Netscape. In that case replace netsc476.tar.gz with the two les oldnets.tar.gz and netsc304.tar.gz. Of course, it will be possible to add a few programs later by downloading selected les from the Debian archives.

12.2

Using Toms Diskette

If you are using Toms Diskette you will not have a browser to work with. Nevertheless, Toms has a program called wget which you can use to download les. Boot your system with Toms Diskette, mount the directory on your hard disk to which you are going to download the les, and make that directory your working directory. Then, to obtain the les from my ftp site, simply enter the command wget ftp://islamey.economics.utoronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/debian30/filename for each le you want to obtain for the Debian 3.0 base setup or

29

wget ftp://islamey.economics.utoronto.ca/pub/jfloyd/linux/filename for each le required for the Debian 2.2 setup.

12.3

Further Considerations

After you have installed the base system and established an Internet connection, you will have to set up the rest of a Debian 3.1 distribution over the Internet from the Debian website using the apt-get program. Further details on how to do this are contained in Appendix B to this document. As noted above, to complete your setup of Debian 2.2, you will only need tar.gz les noted above, although you may want to add some additional programs later. For details, see Appendix C below. If you are operating in a country where you pay by the minute for usage of your telephone line or ethernet connection, or if you have an ethernet card but no modem and Toms Diskette will not recognize your card and get you connected to the Web, you will have a serious problem. The cost of downloading even the smaller Debian 2.2 les over a telephone line will be very substantial and the cost of setting up Debian 3.1 over the Internet will clearly be prohibitive. In the case of Debian 3.1 you have two options if Toms Diskette fails to access the Web. You can go to a friends place or an Internet cafe and download the base les to a computer there and burn them to a CD. Then you can copy those les, using BasicLinux or Toms Diskette, from the CD to the directory from which you are installing the base system. Alternatively, you can pay a small amount (possibly as little as $5 U.S.) to order a single CD from a site recommended by Debian. Point your browser at http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/ to nd an appropriate vendor in your country. If you are operating over a phone line for which you are paying by the minute of usage, this is really the only option open to you. In this case, you can set up the whole system from the CD. In the case where you want to set up Debian 2.2, your only option is that of obtaining the relevant les from my website using another computer and burning them to a CD. Then you would copy all les to the partition from which you are setting up Debian 2.2 and then proceed in the same way as if you had downloaded them directly to your computer from the Web. If your computer has no CD-ROM drive, it will probably be cheaper to upgrade it by installing one than to pay for a costly download of the whole system from the Web over a telephone line! 30

13

Writing Boot Disk Images to Floppy Disks

To set up either the Debian Linux 2.2 or 3.0 base system you will need rescue and root oppy disks to initiate the installation unless you are doing a diskless install from a DOS partition. To set up these disks, use the commands dd if=rescue.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 dd if=root.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 in BasicLinux or Toms distribution to write the images to fresh new disks in Drive A.

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Appendix A: Using the vi Editor

To start vi to edit a particular le, enter the command vi filename The vi editor has two modescommand mode and insert mode. You get into command mode by pressing the Esc key until the machine beeps. In command mode you can use the following keystroke commands: l moves the cursor one character to the right h moves the cursor one character to the left j moves the cursor down one line k moves the cursor up one line x deletes the character under the cursor r replaces the character under the cursor by the next character typed dd deletes the line the cursor is on yy copies (i.e., yanks) into memory the line the cursor is on u undoes the last deletion p inserts (puts) the last copied line on the screen i switches to insert modeanything subsequently typed is inserted starting at the cursor position 31

a switches to insert modeanything subsequently typed is inserted starting to the right of the character the cursor is on : shifts command focus to a command line along the bottom of the screen following which :w saves (i.e, writes the current le) :q quits the current session :wq saves and quits :q! quits without saving To delete or copy N lines including the line the cursor is on and N - 1 lines below it enter Ndd or Nyy. To search for a phrase, enter the command :/phrase To copy a le into the current le at the cursor position, enter the command :r filename To insert the line numbers along the left margin, enter the command :set nu To copy, say, lines 20 to 35 to a temporary le, enter the command :20,35 w tempfile Use w! in the above command to overwrite an existing le with the same name.

15

Appendix B: Setting Up Debian 3.1 Linux

Before attempting an installation on any computer you should determine the type of monitor and video card installed on it, most particularly the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of the montor, and make sure that your ethernet card is compatible with Linux. You can do the latter by checking the compatibility requirements from the Debian site or by insisting that the company selling you the computer install an appropriate card. You should know the type of mouse you have and the port to which it is connected. If you are using a modem, you should know what port it is connected to 32

and make sure that it is not a so-called win-modem that only works under MS-Windows. If you have a sound card you should also make note of the driver for it. Finally, you should have a printer that can use a driver listed in the group below: x11 x11alpha x11cmyk x11mono x11cmyk2 x11cmyk4 x11cmyk8 x11rg16x x11rg32x x11gray2 x11gray4 bbox bff bit bitcmyk bitrgb bmp16 bmp16m bmp256 bmp32b bmpa16 bmpa16m bmpa256 bmpa32b bmpamono bmpasep1 bmpasep8 bmpgray bmpmono bmpsep1 bmpsep8 ccr cfax cgm24 cgm8 cgmmono cif dfaxhigh dfaxlow epswrite faxg3 faxg32d faxg4 inferno jpeg jpeggray mag16 mag256 mgr4 mgr8 mgrgray2 mgrgray4 mgrgray8 mgrmono miff24 pbm pbmraw pcx16 pcx24b pcx256 pcx2up pcxcmyk pcxgray pcxmono pdfwrite pgm pgmraw pgnm pgnmraw pkm pkmraw pksm pksmraw plan9bm png16 png16m png256 pnggray pngmono pnm pnmraw ppm ppmraw psgray psmono psrgb pswrite sgirgb sunhmono sxlcrt tiff12nc tiff24nc tiffcrle tiffg3 tiffg32d tiffg4 tifflzw tiffpack alc2000 alc4000 alc8500 alc8600 ap3250 appledmp atx23 atx24 atx38 bj10e bj10v bj10vh bj200 bjc600 bjc800 bjc880j bjccmyk bjccolor bjcgray bjcmono cdeskjet cdj1600 cdj500 cdj550 cdj670 cdj850 cdj880 cdj890 cdj970 cdjcolor cdjmono chp2200 cljet5 cljet5c cljet5pr coslw2p coslwxl cp50 declj250 deskjet dj505j djet500 djet500c djet820c dl2100 dmprt dnj650c epl2050 epl2050p epl2120 epl5800 epl5900 epl6100 eps9high eps9mid epson epsonc escp escpage escpc fmlbp fmpr fs600 gdi hl1240 hl1250 hl7x0 hpdj1120c hpdj310 hpdj320 hpdj340 hpdj400 hpdj500 hpdj500c hpdj510 hpdj520 hpdj540 hpdj550c hpdj560c hpdj600 hpdj660c hpdj670c hpdj680c hpdj690c hpdj850c hpdj855c hpdj870c hpdj890c hpdjplus hpdjportable ibmpro imagen iwhi iwlo iwlq jetp3852 jj100 la50 la70 la75 la75plus laserjet lbp310 lbp320 lbp8 lex2050 lex3200 lex5700 lex7000 lips2p lips3 lips4 lips4v lj250 lj3100sw lj4dith lj4dithp lj5gray lj5mono ljet2p ljet3 ljet3d ljet4 ljet4d ljet4pjl ljetplus ln03 lp1800 lp1900 lp2000 lp2200 lp2563 lp3000c lp7700 lp8000 lp8000c lp8100 lp8200c lp8300c lp8300f lp8400f lp8500c lp8600 lp8600f lp8700 lp8800c lp8900 lp9300 lp9400 lp9600 lp9600s lq850 lx5000 lxm3200 lxm5700m m8510 md1xMono md2k md50Eco md50Mono md5k mj500c mj6000c mj700v2c mj8000c ml600 necp6 npdl 33

oce9050 oki182 oki4w okiibm paintjet pcl3 photoex picty180 pj pjetxl pjxl pjxl300 pr1000 pr1000_4 pr150 pr201 pxlcolor pxlmono r4081 rpdl samsunggdi sj48 st800 stcolor t4693d2 t4693d4 t4693d8 tek4696 uniprint xes cups ijs omni stp nullpage After you have downloaded the base les to a Linux partition on the computer on which you plan to install Debian 3.1 and created the rescue and the root oppy disks, insert the rescue disk in Drive A and turn on the computer. Alternatively, if you are booting the installation from DOS, execute the command install from the DOS directory to which you copied the base les les. In either case, simply follow the instructions on the screen, choosing the defaults unless it is clear that you need to do something else. Use the Arrow and Tab keys to move among menu items. After indicating the partition from which you are installing the base les, let the installation program Choose from a list of all likely directories. When conguring device-driver modules, choose ide-oppy in the block devices section, and under net select the correct driver for your ethernet card. If your computer has a sound card and speaker, go to the misc devices and install the driver for that card. These are the only drivers you should need to install. Congure the network using the option DHCP if you are connected through Rogerscheck with your systems administrator if you are operating from a university backbone and with the cable company if you are using one other than Rogers. Then proceed to install the base system. As the installation proceeds you should denitely Make a Boot Floppy when asked and if you are not also using MS-Windows you should also Make Linux Bootable Directly from the Hard Disk. You should denitly install shadow passwords when asked, remove the PCMCIA packages (assuming you are installing the system on a desktop), and choose not to congure PPP at this time. You will be asked to select the methods by which the program apt-get will retrieve software packages for installation. Choose http and at the subsequent prompt pick the mirror site closest to your location. Include all types of packagesnon-US, non-free, and contrib when prompted. If the installation program has trouble connecting to a particular site and starts timing out, press the keys Ctrl+C (the keys Ctrl and C simultaniously) to abort the choice and then pick an alternative site. When prompted, choose a second site, following the same procedure as in the case of the rst.5 Answer Yes to the inquiry as to whether you want
Note that if you choose the http method you may nevertheless obtain your packages by http from ftp sites that are included among the indicated mirror sites.
5

34

to install security updates. Choose not to run tasksel and also choose not to run deselect. Then you can press Y to proceed with the updating of packages. When asked to congure your mail system, select option (5). If you cannot do your mail using pine through an account with your University (or ISP) you can do it using Mozilla, which you will set up in due course. You will eventually be asked to set a root password and set yourself up as a user. When prompted about the key-map, select the option dont touch keymap to simply keep the one set up when you installed the system. Also, choose not to have man and manb installed setuid man. To save space, choose to erase any previously downloaded deb les. You will then have a functioning Debian system on which you can use either vi or nano to edit les. The latter editor is easy to use because the functions performed by various key combinations are shown along the bottom of the screen. If you have an ethernet card on your machine you will already be connected to the Internet. Otherwise, you will have to set up your modem to access the Internet over the telephone line. To do this, follow the instructions in Appendix D. You should now upgrade that your Debian 3.0 system to Debian 3.1 over the Net by logging on as root and, using the root directory / as the working directory, entering the command apt-get upgrade At the prompts, simply select the defaults. Before installing the packages for the programs you will need for doing your research you should, as originally planned, move your \home directory to the partition on which you copied your base les for installation. If you have installed from a DOS partition you should have left a separate partition at the end of your hard drive to house your personal and research les. Rename the directory /home to /home.bak using the mv (move) command and then make a new directory called /home and mount it on the partition /dev/hda3 (or /dev/hda4 if you have kept a DOS partition). The relevant commands are mv /home /home.bak mkdir /home mount /dev/hda3 /home Then copy all data from your old home directory /home.bak to the new directory /home. There should only be a few hidden les and/or directories to copy. To identify these use the command (from within that directory) 35

ls -a * Finally, you need to ensure that your new home partition is correctly mounted when the computer is rebooted. To do this you need to edit the le /etc/fstab (after making a backup copy!), adding to it the following lines (the lines beginning with #, which instructs the computer not to read them, are comments you might put in to remind yourself later of why and how you set up the uncommented line). # Addition to /etc/fstab # Mount /dev/hda3 as /home into the file system /dev/hda3 /home ext2 defaults 0

Now you are ready to install the packages for your system. Log in as root. You can do this in either of two ways. First, you can simply type root at the login prompt and enter your root password when asked. Alternatively, if you are logged in as yourself you can become root by entering the letters su at the command prompt and then following with your root password when asked. You can also run two or three separate sessions at one time either as root or as yourself. After you have logged in, you can press Alt+F2 to activate a second terminal to which you can log in. A third terminal can be activated by pressing Alt+F3. To move back and forth between the three terminals, simply press Alt+Fx where x is either 1, 2, or 3 as desired. Install your packages over the Internet using the program apt-get. Additional packages required by any package you select will be installed automatically. To set yourself up for printing documents excecute the following four commands to install the programs lpr, gs, magicfilter, and a2ps: apt-get apt-get apt-get apt-get install install install install lpr gs magicfilter a2ps

The program lpr is the line-printer daemon that lurks in the background and sends les to the printer when the appropriate command is issued. Ghostscriptdenoted by gsconverts postscript and other les to a form that your printer can print. The magicfilter program translates material sent to the printer using the command line instruction lpr filename into language that your printer understands and a2ps (anything to postscript) converts ordinary text les to postscript form for saving to le or automatic translation into machine language and printing using the program 36

magicfilter. You will be asked to congure magicfilter when you set it up. If your conguration turns out not to work you can redo it with the command magicfilterconfig --force Some instructions on how to use a2ps are included in Appendix E. Now proceed to install the other text-based programs you will need by substituting the program names in the above apt-get commands with the ones below. Install the text browser lynx (you could alternatively choose links which is the browser used in BasicLinux), the editor joe, which can handle easily more sophisiticated tasks than either vi or nano, the program mtools that enables you to read les from and write them to oppy disks in much the same manner as you can do with DOS, and the two programs ispell and ibritish for spell checking documents. Instructions on how to use joe and mtools are included in Appendix E. Next, you A will need the venerable TEX/L TEX typesetting program, tetex-bin, and a companion program dvipdfm which converts les generated by TEX and A L TEX into PDF les. The program octave is a useful MatLab-like program for manipulating matrices and doing matrix calculations. You will also need a statistical program. For simple tasks and for learning basic statistics xlispstat will prove very useful. I have prepared A Short Manual for Xlispstat, minmanls.ps (minmanls.pdf), which can be obtained from my ftp site, where you previously obtained all the les referred to above. If you are going to do heavy-duty statistical work you should obtain Ox. The basic Debian package le for this program, ox3.30-2.i586.deb, can be downloaded from my ftp site and installed using dpkg with the command dpkg --install ox3.30-2.i586.deb Once you have installed the program, you will nd a manual oxintro.pdf in the directory /usr/local/lib/ox-3.30/doc/ and, in the same directory, a help link that can be accessed with either the lynx or links browser using one of the commands lynx -nocolor /usr/local/lib/ox-3.30/doc/oxfnmenu.html links /usr/local/lib/ox-3.30/doc/oxfnmenu.html To avoid insulting your University or your ISP by logging onto it with telnet, a program that allows your password to pass over the lines unencrypted, you should set up the secure shell program ssh using the standard apt-get command. 37

apt-get install ssh Next you need to install and set up your graphic user interfacecommonly known as the X-Window System or, simply, X. To do this, execute the commands: apt-get install icewm apt-get install x-window-system The rst command installs the Ice Window Manager, which is much easier to use than the default one that will automatically be installed. (The window manager takes commands from the mouse and the keyboard and draws the appropriate windows on the screen.) Once you get your system installed you can choose from a wide variety of dierent window managers. The second command retrieves and installs the X-Window system which, since icewm is already installed, will use the Ice Window Manager as the default. As the X-Window system is being set up you will be asked about your mouse and about some of the features of your monitor. Choose the simple method of conguration if possible. Use the default suggestions if they do not seem inappropriate. If you happen to make some wrong choices you could end up with a mess on the screen, or a complete failure of the graphic installation. If this happens you should reboot the system and recongure it using the command dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 This will install a new XF86Config-4 le in the directory /etc/X11. You can also edit that le using your text editor (after backing it up under a new name). Running the command XFree86 -configure will create a version of this le called XF86Config.new in the directory /root which will contain what the conguration program thinks the specications of your mouse, video card, monitor, etc. are. This information might be useful in replying to the questions asked when you run the dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 command. To reboot the computer when you have a graphics screen in place, press Alt+Ctrl+F1 to access a text terminal and reboot from there by pressing Alt+Ctrl+Del. To return to the graphics screen after switching to a text screen, press Alt+Ctrl+F7. When the X-Window system is properly set up, a log-in screen with a small text terminal in the bottom right corner should appear on boot-up. 38

Simply type your username, press Enter, and then enter your password and the basic Ice Window Manager screen will appear. Click on the icon in the bottom left corner or press Ctrl+Esc and a menu of the available programs and options will appear. Click on the computer-terminal icon, or use the arrow keys and press Enter, to activate a terminal window in which you can enter commands just as you would on a text terminal. The little squares numbered 1 through 4 represent alternative workareas to which you can move by clicking on the relevant square with the mouse. Upon boot-up you are initially in the rst of these four work areas.6 You can pretty-up the background color on your window-manager screen as follows. Go, as root, to /etc/X11/icewm and load the le preferences into the text editor (after backing up the le under a dierent name). Go to the line that contains the word DesktopBackgroundColor and change the code fragment /00/20/40 to /00/20/900. Then remove the # character from the beginning of that line so that the program will read and process it rather than use the default. You can then change the toolbar along the bottom of the screen by pressing simultaneously the Ctrl and Esc keys to bring up a menu in the bottom left corner of the screen and then scrolling down to Themes and then choosing the theme "nice". Next time you boot up the window manager you should be presented with a beautiful blue screen with a much nicer toolbar along the bottom and should nd the text terminals in which you will be working much more pleasing to the eye. If, by chance the toolbar does not change, become root user again and go to /etc/X11/icewm/ and load the le toolbar (after backing it up under a dierent name). Go to the line that starts with Theme= and change the code fragment "Infadel2/default.theme" to "nice". Also, you may nd the log-in screen presented on boot-up to be unattractive, and you may wish on occasion to boot directly to a text terminal rather than have xdm (the X-Display-Manager) run automatically. To accomplish this, go to the directory /etc/init.d (which contains links to the programs that boot automatically) and (as root user) make the le xdm non-executable using the command chmod -x xdm
6 It is common among Linux users to use sophisticated X11-based graphical user interfaces such as KDE or GNOME, which are built on top of window managers and have many MS-Windows-like drag-and-drop features that minimize the need to use keystroke commands. I nd that I can get things done faster by simply using the window manager aloneon those of my machines in which KDE and/or GNOME are installed, I nd that I rarely use the extra features that these constructs provide.

39

Thereafter, when you boot the computer you will be presented with a text screen in which to log in. You then have the option of working in the text screen, either as yourself or as root user if some administrative tasks have to be performed, or loading X. To load the X-Window System, enter the command startx You can tweak your system to list directories in blue, executable les in yellow, links in turquoise, and zipped archives in red by adding a line to the /etc/profile le (after backing it up under a new name). Between the lines export PATH PS1 and umask 022 add the line alias ls=ls --color=auto Thereafter, when you log in as yourself and execute the command ls directories and le names will appear in appropriate colors. Now you can install the additional graphics programs you will need using the apt-get command as above. To view postscript and PDF les created A by TEX and L TEX you will need the program gv. A useful alternative program for viewing PDF les is xpdf. And you will need gnuplot, a useful program for viewing and creating printable charts. My tiny manual for this program, minmangp.ps (or minmangp.pdf) can also be obtained from my ftp site. Also, you will need the program xfig for drawing graphs. All of these programs work o a command line in a text terminalsimply type the program name (gv, xpdf, etc.) followed by the name of the le on which the program is to operate. Finally, you will need a good browser for surng the Web. I recommend Mozilla, which you can set up using the commands apt-get install mozilla-browser apt-get install mozilla-psm As things stand you can only access Mozilla by opening up a text window and typing the command mozilla in it. To add access to Mozilla to the toolbar along the bottom of the screen, edit the le (as root) /etc/X11/icewm/toolbar (after backing it up under a new name). Replace the line referring to Netscape with the line 40

prog MOZILLA mozilla mozilla The next time you boot the computer you will observe a Mozilla button on the toolbar. Click on it to load the browser. If you want to bring your mail to your home computer to read and manage instead of leaving it on your University or ISPs server to be accessed by webmail or the program pine on that server, you will need to also obtain and install mozilla-mailnews using the apt-get command. You can congure this program easily to enable you to read, save, and send mail. Those who are paying by the minute for their Internet connection can then dial in, retrieve their mail, then hang up and reply to their mail, then dial up again and send their outgoing mailmoney is not dribbling away while they puzzle about what to say when writing replies. Install gnumeric to obtain a graphic spreadsheet program which which you can view (at least some) Lotus and Excel les. I nd the venerable old UNIX spreadsheet program Sc much better than modern graphic spreadsheets for the work I do. You can obtain this by downloading the le sc from my web-site and copying it to the directory /usr/bin. As is, this version of sc will refuse to run on the grounds that it cannot nd the library le libncurses.so.4. That library has been superceded by libncurses.so.5.2 which remains compatible with older versions. So you will have to create a link called libncurses.so.4 to the actual le libncurses.so.5.2 in the directory /lib using the command ln -s libncurses.so.5.2 libncurses.so.4 where the rst lename is the actual le being linked to and the second le name is the name assigned to the le that is merely a link. You can download my little manual for this program, minmansc.ps (or minmansc.pdf), from my web-site. Alternatively, you can obtain a slightly more modern version of Sc in the usual way using apt-get, but I nd the older program (which is the one covered in my manual) easier to use. You might also want to have on your computer a more conventional word processor for writing memos and letters and other simple documents. For this purpose you should obtain the program Abiword using the commands apt-get install abiword apt-get install abiword-doc When you re up this program (by simply typing abiword on the command line) you might get a warning about the programs inability to install certain fonts. You can usually ignore this warning. To suppress it, load abiword 41

and click on Tools, then Preferences and then Preference Schemes and deactivate the option Show font warning at start-up. For viewing graphics les you will need to add the program Gqview. And if you have a sound card and want to listen to CDs while you work you can install the program Workman. Use the commands apt-get install gqview apt-get install workman There are many programs you can add to your system should you choose. You can browse through the alternatives on the debian site. Point your browser at http://www.debian.org and click on the link Debian Packages.

16

Appendix C: Setting Up Debian 2.2 Linux

Before proceeding you must know the name of the video card on your system and your monitors horizontal and vertical refresh rates, whether your monitor supports SVGA, rather than just VGA, the name of the driver for your ethernet card (if you have one),7 the type of mouse you will be using and the ports to which your mouse and modem (if you have one) are connected.8 Your printer must connect to the parallel port on your computer and it will have to support one of the following drivers: t4693d2 t4693d4 t4693d8 tek4696 appledmp ccr lp2563 lbp8 lips3 m8510 necp6 cp50 oce9050 oki182 okiibm r4081 sj48 xes ln03 la50 la70 la75 la75plus sxlcrt deskjet djet500 laserjet ljetplus ljet2p ljet3 ljet4 declj250 paintjet pjetxl cdeskjet cdjcolor cdjmono cdj550 cdj500 djet500c dnj650c pj pjxl pjxl300 hpdj uniprint epson eps9mid eps9high epsonc lq850 lp8000 st800 stcolor ap3250 ibmpro bj10e bj200 bjc600 bjc800 ljet3d lj4dith lj5mono lj5gray lj250
If you are purchasing an Ethernet card, make sure you obtain one for which a driver is available in Debian. A list of suitable cards and their drivers can be found in Appendix D of Bill McCartys book, Learning Debian Gnu/Linux, OReilly and Associates, Inc., 1999. You can read (and buy) this book on the Web. Point the browser at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/book/appd 06.html and click on the section entitled Using Loadable Ethernet Drivers. 8 In selecting a modem for your computer you should choose a fast one (this is no place to scrimp) and an external one that can subsequently be used on another computer should you choose later to upgrade. Make sure you dont get stuck with one designed only for MS-Windows, a so-called win-modem!
7

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Start by setting up the base system. In what follows I will assume that a Linux swap partition /dev/hda2 has been created, that the les base2_2.tgz and drivers.tgz are in /dev/hda3 and that Debian 2.2 is to be installed on /dev/hda1. The procedure for an install from a DOS partition is the same as outlined below after the system is booted from the DOS partition by entering the command install. In that case the DOS partition would be /dev/hda1, the swap partition /dev/hda3, the partition containing the installation les /dev/hda4, and you will be setting up Debian 2.2 in /dev/hda2. Boot the machine from a cold start with the Debian 2.2 rescue disk. Remove that disk and insert the Debian 2.2 root disk when prompted. Press ENTER after the rst screen and then again on the subsequent screen to congure the keyboard. Select Qwerty U.S., provided of course that you are in an English-speaking country. Press ENTER again to congure and initialise a swap partition. You will be prompted with the name of partition /dev/hda2 which you should already have given type 82 (linux swap) designation. Select that partition, pressing ENTER as required and then choose to either scan or not scan the partition on the next screen. If you are unfamiliar with the hard disk on your computer you should probably choose the scan option. Next, initialise a linux partition, choosing /dev/hda1 as planned when you set up the partitions. Press ENTER when prompted to retain Linux kernel 2.0 (an earlier version) compatibility. Then choose to scan or not scan the partition and press ENTER when asked to conrm your choice. Then press ENTER at the prompt to mount /dev/hda1 as the root lesystem. Now proceed to install operating system kernel and modules. You will be asked to select the medium you will use to install the system. Use the down-arrow-key to move the cursor to the harddisk entry and press ENTER. You will then be asked to select the partition where your Debian archive resides. Choose /dev/hda3 as planned.9 When you are asked to choose the directory on which your installation les reside select Choose from a list of all likely directories. You will be given the directory /instmnt which you should select by pressing ENTER. Now proceed to congure device driver modules. At the prompt, skip the step of loading device drivers from a oppy disk. (assuming that you are using standard equipment). Next you will be asked to select the modules (loadable device drivers) you want supported by the kernel. Start by selecting block. On the screen that pops up when you select block devices,
9

Or the DOS partition if you are installing the base using DOS.

43

select ide-oppy, press ENTER and at the prompt choose not to enter a command line (again, assuming that you are using standard equipment). When a black screen appears press ENTER to signify that you are ready to continue and then select the item Finished with these modules. As long as the CD-ROM on your machine is standard you will not need to make any selection with respect to the cdrom option. Skip the fs option. If you have an Ethernet card connected to your machine, scroll down and choose net next. Use the down arrow to scroll down to the driver for your card (mine happens to be rtl8139) and press ENTER. Again, do not enter a command line. Now exit the module selection screen entirely and select the Congure the Network option. You are required to give your machine a host name. If you have an Ethernet card you might need to follow instructions of your network administrator concerning the host name you can select. You will then be asked if you want DHCP to congure the interface? Select yes if your network allows it. Otherwise you will have to input some numbers provided by your network administrator. Now select Install the Base System. Select the harddisk option and then select Choose from a list of all likely directories which will again call forward the suggestion /instmnt. Press ENTER to conrm that choice. Now proceed to Congure the Base System. You will be asked to select a time zone. Choose your country and your time zonefor Toronto that will be Canada and either EST or EDT, depending upon the time of the year. In making your selections you can use the TAB key to switch between the two menus. Next you are asked whether you want to Make Linux Bootable Directly from the Hard Disk or to Make a Boot Floppy. Choose the latter. Insert a fresh new blank oppy disk in the oppy disk drive and press ENTER. If you are using only Debian 2.2 Linux on your computer you can then choose to make Linux bootable directly from the hard disk by scrolling down the menu to the option Make Linux Bootable Directly from the Hard Disk and selecting it. You should always make a boot oppy. Now select Reboot the System at the prompt. When the system reboots, press ENTER to not enable md5 passwords, and then ENTER again to install shadow passwords. Next you are asked to enter your root password and then enter it again to verify. And then you are asked to create an account for yourself, entering a username of your choice, your full name and your password (the latter twice to verify). Finally, press ENTER to remove the PCMCIA packages. Also, you should choose not to congure PPP at this time. You will then be asked what 44

medium you will use to install packages. Use the TAB and ENTER keys to sellect cancel. When you are asked about the installation method, choose Simple. The installation will crap out at this point (You dont care because you are going to install your packages later). Choose n to not continue and then press ENTER when abort appears on the black screen that comes up. Press ENTER to bring up the login prompt and you are ready to log into your new system. At this point you have a functioning Debian system. You will have two text editors, ae and vi, to choose from with which to edit les and make executable scripts. The ae editor is easiest to learn, since it has a help display that always appears across the top of the screen, but every person who interacts with UNIX systems, of which Linux is a representative, should know how to do a few basic things with viall UNIX systems have the vi editor installed. Appendix A of this document will provide you with the minimum you will need to know about vi. You can now install the additional software that will make your system useful in your research. I recommend that you simply install the packages in the tar.gz les you should have already copied to /dev/hda3 from my ftp site. The basic package installation tool is dpkg. After unzipping the tar.gz les, a simple but time consuming way to proceed is to install the packages one-by-one using dpkg. Give yourself root-user privileges by executing the command su and typing your root password at the resulting prompt. Then create a new directory o the root directory using the command mkdir debs and mount that directory on /dev/hda3 by executing from the root directory the command mount /dev/hda3 /debs Move to /debs and list the les there using the commands cd debs ls -l * and you will see a listing of the zip-les you previously copied to /dev/hda3 (on which the directory /debs is now mounted) using BasicLinux or Toms Root Boot distribution. 45

When installing packages from this directory using dpkg you have to install them in a particular orderdpkg wont install a package unless those packages it depends on are already installed. To obtain the packages containing basic utilities, unzip the le basutils.tar.gz to disgorge the appropriate package or deb les using the command tar xvzf baseutils.tar.gz Then you could enter, one by one in order, the following commands to install these packages: dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install lpr_0.48-1.deb groff_1.15.2-1.deb man-db_2.3.16-1.1.deb magicfilter_1.2-39.deb libpaperg_1.0.3-13.deb a2ps_4.13-2.deb xfree86-common_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xlib6g_3.3.6-11potato32.deb mtools_3.9.6-4.deb joe_2.8-15.2.deb libncurses4_4.2-9.deb sc_6.21-10.deb zlib1g_1.1.3-5.deb lynx_2.8.3-1.deb freetype2_1.3.1-1.deb libpng2_1.0.5-1.deb svgalibg1_1.4.1-2.deb vflib2_2.25.1-4.deb gs_5.10-10.1.deb gsfonts_5.10a-2.deb ispell_3.1.20-12.deb ibritish_3.1.20-12.deb

Somewhere along the line you will be asked to choose a default paper name. In North America that will be [letter]. A number of the above packages are simply library and supporting software for other programs. But several are worth noting as we proceedthis will make you aware of what is in fact installed on your computer. The lpr package sets up the line printer daemon, which listens for instructions from the shell and other programs to send les to the printer and then responds appropriately. The man-db package sets up a data-base framework 46

in which the manual pages of all other installed programs will be contained. In addition, it includes man-pages for programs already installed. The package magicfilter sets up a ltering system in which all les sent to the printer are converted from their current form, be it text, postscript or pdf, into language the printer understands. You will be asked to congure this program when it is set up. You will need to know the driver for your printer as well as the port to which is connected. This will normally be the rst parallel port, in Linux-speak called /dev/lp0 (the second parallel port is called /dev/lp1). The magiclter setup installs a le in the /etc directory called printcap. The printer daemon reads this le for instructions before sending les to the printer. Either a text, postscript or PDF le can then be printed by simply entering on the command line the word lpr followed by the le name. If you happen to screw up in setting up magiclter you can have another go at it later by entering the command /usr/sbin/magicfilterconfig --force The package a2ps (anything to postscript) provides a neat program for converting text les into postscript les and printing them. The mtools package provides the ability to copy les to and from a oppy disk in Drive A: using commands similar to well-known DOS commands and in a form that can be stored on DOS formatted disks. A brief discussion of how to use the program can be found in the Appendix E. The package joe contains my favourite editor, which was written many years ago by Joe Allen. It is simple to learn and can do everything I need to do with an editoragain, see Appendix E. The sc package contains the spreadsheet calculator program Sc, which is a simple text-based program sucient for most research tasks unless you are planning to store large quantities of data in multi-paged spreadsheet les. I have written a mini-manual, minmansc.ps, which is available from my ftp site. You can nd additional information about all these programs by entering man followed by the name of the program on the command line. The package lynx contains a web browser that does not require a graphics interface. It is much faster than Netscape for retrieving les from the Internet, especially when one knows ahead of time where those les are located. You can gure out how to use lynx from its manual page, which you can obtain by entering man lynx on the command line. Alternatively, to print out the manual page you can execute the two commands man lynx > lynxman.ftxt 47

lpr lynxman.ftxt The le lynxman.ftxt will contain formatting codes that make it dicult to read using a text editor. The svgalibg1 package, which is required because other packages depend on it, can be used to view postscript les from a text terminal (without using X) although it does a rather crude job. The gs package contains the Ghostscript program for printing postscript lesit can be used with svgalib to view postscript les. ispell is a text-based spell-checking program which can be used by simply typing on the command line the word ispell followed by the name of the le to be spell-checked. An appropriate dictionary for Canadians is contained in the package ibritish. Returning to the procedure for installing these packages, I will now outline a much faster method than running dpkg on the packages one by one. You can simply copy the script basutilss, which should been disgorged when you unzipped basutils.tar.gz and therefore be present in the /debs directory, to /usr/local/bin and make it executable using the command chmod +x basutilss Then type from within the directory /debs the word basutilss on the command line and the packages listed above will be automatically installed one by one. The order in which the dpkg commands are listed in the script is such that the packages that other packages depend on get installed rst. To install the remaining programs sucient for a text-based system, you can unzip the le textprgs.tar.gz and copy the le txtprgsu to /usr/local/bin and make it executable. Then type the word txtprgsu on the command line and the following commands will be executed automatically. dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install gnuplot_3.7.1p1-4.deb xlispstat_3.52.14-1.deb ed_0.2-18.1.deb perl-5.005_5.005.03-7.1.deb libnet-perl_1.0703-3.deb dpkg-perl_0.1-3.0.deb tetex-base_1.0-10.deb tetex-lib_1.0.6-7.deb tetex-bin_1.0.6-7.deb

The gnuplot package contains the plotting program Gnuplot which you A will use to plot charts and incorporate them in your L TEX documents. The 48

basic things you will need to know about this program is contained in my tiny manual minmangp.ps which can be obtained from my ftp site. XlispStat, an excellent free lisp-based statistical program that is relatively easy to learn, is contained in the package of the same name. Get my A Short Manual for Xlispstat, minmanls.ps, from my ftp site for the basics on how to use A the program. The remaining commands install the TEX/L TEX document preparation system. Next you have to install the X-Windows graphics system. Unzip the le X11prgs.tar.gz, copy the le X11prgss to /usr/local/bin and make it executable. Then type X11prgss on the command line and press ENTER. The following commands will be executed automatically. dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install libace5.0_5.0.7-4.deb libjpeg62_6b-1.2.deb libtiff3g_3.5.4-5.deb t1lib1_1.0-2.deb menu_2.1.5-3.deb cpp_2.95.2-13.deb xaw3dg_1.3-6.9potato1.deb xbase-clients_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xfonts-100dpi_3.3.6-2.deb xfonts-75dpi_3.3.6-2.deb xfonts-base_3.3.6-2.deb xfonts-scalable_3.3.6-2.deb xserver-common_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xserver-vga16_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xserver-svga_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xterm_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xv_3.10a-25.deb gv3.5.8-17.deb ivtools-interviews_0.7.9-6.deb ivtools-unidraw_0.7.9-6.deb ivtools-bin_0.7.9-6.deb tcl8.2_8.2.3-2.deb tk8.2_8.2.3-2.deb ical-2.2-6.deb addressbook_0.7-13.deb libc5_5.4.46-3.deb xpm4g_3.4k-5.deb icewm_1.0.1-1.deb 49

Along the way you will be asked whether to make the VGA server the default and then whether you want to make the SVGA server the default. If you have decent equipment, you should be able to make the SVGA server the default. Most of these packages are required to satisfy dependencies of the ones we really want to use. The postscript viewer gv, contained in the package of the same name, is indispensable for previewing documents in preparation A using L TEX and various manuals on the system as well as other postscript les obtained over the Internet. Through it, postscript documents can be printed all or in part via Ghostscript. You can use it by simply typing gv on the command line in a terminal window followed by the name of the le to be viewed. The xv package contains the program xv, which is used to view gif, jpeg, and other graphics les and convert them to dierent formats. The program can be run by entering the command xv in a terminal window. A manual can be found at /usr/share/doc/xvdocs.ps.gz. It will need to be unzipped using the command gunzip /usr/share/doc/xvdocs.ps.gz to obtain the postscript le xvdocs.ps which can be viewed and printed using the postscript viewer. The ivtools package contains the drawing program Idraw which you can use to make supply and demand and other drawings. A minimal manual is available o the web to show you how to use it. Go to http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/paolo/arvo-titles/idraw-help.html The ical package contains a useful program for keeping track of your appointments and addressbook contains a program whose purpose is selfevident. A comparable program is not available for Debian 3.0. To use addressbook you will have to give yourself (rather than the root user) ownership of and write access to the directory in which the program resides, /etc/addressbook/, and all les in it. To do this, become root user and, after making /etc the working directory, issue the commands (substituting, of course, your username for john) chown john addressbook chgrp john addressbook Then cd to the directory addressbook as follows and enter the further commands

50

cd addressbook chown john * chgrp john * The icewm package contains the Ice Window Manager. A window manager interprets the mouse clicks and key strokes of the various graphics programs and passes along to the X-Server (which is the core of the X11 graphics interface) appropriate instructions to cause it to draw windows and other objects on the screen. Each of the many available window managers will present any given program with its own unique (and congurable) look and feel. The Ice Window Manager will end up being the default (and only) window manager on your system. You will need Netscape Navigator to surf the Web, obtain data over the Internet, and handle your mail through external web-mail hosts such as hotmail, yahoo, etc., or ones provided by your college or university. Unzip the le netsc476.tar.gz, copy the le nets4su to /usr/local/bin and make it executable and then enter nets4su on the command line. The following commands will be executed automatically, one by one: dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg --install --install --install --install --install --install --install --install netscape-base-4_4.76-1.deb netscape-base-476_4.76-1.deb netscape-java-476_4.76-1.deb navigator-base-476_4.76-1.deb libstdc++2.9-glibc2.1_2.91.66-4.deb xpm4g_3.4k-5.deb navigator-smotif-476_4.76-1.deb navigator-nethelp-476_4.76-1.deb

Alternatively, if you only have 16 megs of RAM you may want to use an older less resource demanding version of Netscape. In that case, unzip the les netsc304.tar.gz and oldnets.tar.gz, copy to the directory /tmp the netscape 3.04 archive cp netscape-v304-export.x86-unknown-linux-elf.tar.gz /tmp and install the following packages in order. dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg dpkg --install --install --install --install --install libc5_5.4.46-3.deb xlib6_3.3.6-11potato32.deb xpm4.7_3.4k-5.deb motifnls_2.1-6.deb netscape3_3.04-8.deb 51

If you want to switch from one netscape to the other, you can purge the currently installed netscape using dpkg with the command dpkg --purge netscape3 or dpkg --purge netscape4 and then, after erasing all les in /home/yourusername/.netscape/ and removing the directory itself, install the other version as above. You will need the Acrobat Reader to be able to view and print PDF les obtained over the Web. Unzip the le extras.tar.gz (which contains a number of useful packages in addition to the acrobat reader). You can install the acrobat reader using the command dpkg --install acroread_4.05-3.deb After unzipping the above zip le you will also nd the Debian package ox-3.00-2.i386.deb containing the high-powered statistical program Ox. It can be installed using the command dpkg --install ox-3.00-2.i386.deb The manual for Ox can now be found on your system at /usr/local/lib/ox-3.00/doc/ you will need both OxIntro.pdf and OxAppendix.pdf. To read the help le on line, point your browser to /usr/local/lib/ox-3.00/doc/index.html. Add this URL to your Bookmarks. As an alternative to using the program Idraw (idraw) to create graphs, you can use the program XFig (xfig). To set this program up, obtain the two les xfig_3.2.3.a-6.deb and xfig-doc_3.2.3.a-6.deb from my ftp site and install them using dpkg. Additional packages from the Debian 2.2 distribution can be obtained by pointing your browser at the locations http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/binary-i386/ http://non-us.debian.org/dists/potato/non-US/ Next you need to move the /home partition to the partition /dev/hda3, replacing the les there that you used to set up the system. Give yourself root privileges by entering su on the command line and then typing in the root password when asked. Then make a new directory o the root directorycall it /archivesas follows: 52

mkdir archives Now copy any les that you want to keep from the /debs directory to this new directory cd /archive cp /debs/filetobecopied . The . in the last command is importantit tells the bash shell to put the le in the directory you are executing the command from. After copying to /archives any les from /dev/hda3 that you want to keep, you need to empty the /debs directory by executing the command rm -i * from within that directory. The -i switch on the command tells the shell that you want to be prompted separately for each le you remove. This will take a while but it protects you from screwing up and erasing something you want to keep. Now that all les have been removed from the debs directory and the partition /dev/hda3, go to the root directory and remove the debs directory as follows cd / umount debs rmdir debs Next, rename the directory /home to /home.bak using the mv (move) command and then make a new directory called /home and mount it on the partition /dev/hda3. The relevant commands are mv /home /home.bak mkdir /home mount /dev/hda3 /home Then copy all data from your old home directory /home.bak to the new directory /home. cp -dpR /home.bak/* /home This will also copy the les and subdirectories involved to /dev/hda3 on which your new /home directory is now mounted. Actually, if you do this right after setting up your system there will only be a few hidden les and no subdirectories in your home.bak directory. To view these hidden les, use the command (from within that directory) 53

ls -a * You can thus copy them to /home using a much simpler command than the one above. Finally, you need to have your new home partition mounted when the computer is rebooted. To do this you need to edit the le /etc/fstab, adding to it the following lines (the lines beginning with # are comments you might put in to remind yourself later of what you did with the uncommented line). # Addition to /etc/fstab # Mount /dev/hda3 as /home into the file system /dev/hda3 /home ext2 defaults 0

Finally, you have to congure the X-Window System. Before doing so you should know the correct horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for your monitor and the name and model of the video card that will be driving the display. You will be asked to choose among the following monitor setups. hsync in kHz; monitor type with characteristic modes 1 31.5; Standard VGA, 640x480 @ 60 Hz 2 31.5 - 35.1; Super VGA, 800x600 @ 56 Hz 3 31.5, 35.5; 8514 Compatible, 1024x768 @ 87 Hz interlaced (no 800x600) 4 31.5, 35.15, 35.5; Super VGA, 1024x768 @ 87 Hz interlaced, 800x600 @ 56Hz 5 31.5 - 37.9; Extended Super VGA, 800x600 @ 60 Hz, 640x480 @ 72 Hz 6 31.5 - 48.5; Non-Interlaced SVGA, 1024x768 @ 60 Hz, 800x600 @ 72 Hz 7 31.5 - 57.0; High Frequency SVGA, 1024x768 @ 70 Hz 8 31.5 - 64.3; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz 9 31.5 - 82.0; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 76 Hz 10 31.5 - 95.0; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 85 Hz 11 Enter your own horizontal sync range You can choose one of the generic setups or enter your own horizontal sync range directly. You will then be asked to enter the vertical refresh rate of your monitor from the following list, with the latter option being to enter your monitors specications directly. 1 50-70 54

2 3 4 5

50-90 50-100 40-150 Enter your own vertical sync range

In setting up your video card you will be given the opportunity to select from a large database of cards. If you choose one from the list it MUST BE AN EXACT MATCH for your card. If your card is not on the list you need not make any selection from this lista generic installation will result. You will also have to pick a server from the list below. Only options 2 and 3 are installed in the setup outlined here. You should pick option 3 if your equipment supports it. 1 The XF86_Mono server. This a monochrome server that should work on any VGA-compatible card, in 640x480 (more on some SVGA chipsets). The XF86_VGA16 server. This is a 16-color VGA server that should work on any VGA-compatible card. The XF86_SVGA server. This is a 256 color SVGA server that supports a number of SVGA chipsets. On some chipsets it is accelerated or supports higher color depths. The accelerated servers. These include XF86_S3, XF86_Mach32, XF86_Mach8, XF86_8514, XF86_P9000, XF86_AGX, XF86_W32, XF86_Mach64, XF86_I128, XF86_S3V, and XF86_3DLabs.

2 3

It is worthwhile to know exactly what your choices here will be when you buy your equipmentthis will enable you to seek advice from the technicians at the shop of sale so that you will know ahead of time exactly what your choices will be in the setup. If you already have a computer with a videocard in it and an old monitor, it might be useful to consult a local Linux guru. If issues like these are resolved beforehand, the installation will be a breezeotherwise you can waste a lot of time ddling around and wringing your hands! The X-Window system for Linux consists of an X-Server that talks to the computers hardware and X-clients on whose behalf the X-Server talks to that hardware. The most important and absolutely necessary X-client is the window manager whose job it is to take directives from other clients (programs) and arrange for the X-server to construct the necessary windows and manipulate them in response to the mouse and keyboard input of users of those programs. As noted above, a number of pieces of information are necessary for setting up the X-Window system. Almost every graphics card and color 55

monitor will operate with the VGA-16 X-Server although the presentation will be rather crude, using only 16 colors. And most of the standard cards and monitors will operate with the SVGA X-Server, using 256 colors. Both these servers were installed above. More up-to-date fancy cards will use fancier X-servers which can also be installed, but most will work also with the above servers, albeit at below capacity. It is very important to have selected a card and monitor that will work with this Debian 2.2 setup when you purchased your computer. Begin by conguring the X-Server. This is done by running, as root user, the program /usr/sbin/xserver-configure Before doing so read the manual page for xserver-congure which can be viewed by typing man xserver-configure on the command line. Follow the prompts as you work through the conguration program. MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT YOUR HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL REFRESH RATES DO NOT EXCEED THE RECOMMENDED RATES FOR YOUR MONITOR OR YOU MAY DESTROY IT! Run the test at the end to see if the conguration you have made is acceptable. You can look at and edit the conguration le if necessary. This le is /etc/X11/XF86Config. Now start the X server, as yourself, not root, by typing startx on the command line. The Ice Window Manager should load automatically presenting you with a task bar along the bottom of the screen which you can click on with the mouse. Click on the various items on this task bar to gure out how to use this window manager. You will notice the squares numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. These are alternative workareas which really represent separate screens on which programs can be left open but out of view. When you use Netscape, for example, you might want to click on workarea 2 and open it there. You can then move between using Netscape and using the programs you were previously working with on workarea 1 by moving back and forth between workareas 1 and 2. This avoids having a muddle of windows plastered all over the screen. The Ice Window Manager can also be operated using keystrokes. Enter Ctrl+Esc to open the menu on the bottom left corner of the screen. You can move around that menu using the arrow keys and press ENTER to activate choices. Alt+F5 rotates the focus among the windows and Alt+F4 deletes the currently focused window. Shift+Esc opens the window menu for the window currently in focus. Individual programs will also typically have key-

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stroke commands for various functions. You will nd the manual for the Ice Window Manager at /usr/doc/icewm/. You can change the background color and other preferences by editing the le /etc/X11/icewm/preferences. To change the background color to a nice blue, edit the line (leaving, in this case, the # character in place) # DesktopBackgroundColor="rgb:00/50/60" to read # DesktopBackgroundColor="rgb:46/82/B4" For more information on colors, point your browser to http://eies.njit.edu/~walsh/rgb.txt.html

17

Appendix D: Getting on the Internet Using a Modem

Your most important task is to get your new Debian system connected to the Internet. If you have established a network connection using an Ethernet card, this is already accomplished. If you are working through a modem, you have already established a dial-up PPP connection using BasicLinux. The task now is to do the same thing in your newly set up system. This should be easy if your ISP uses the PAP protocol. In the case of the University of Toronto systems, where chat scripts are used, it is quite dicultthus far impossible for a UTORDIAL connection. The easiest thing to do is to copy your BasicLinux les to an appropriate place in your new Debian Linux system. Boot your computer into BasicLinux and mount the partition on which your Debian system is installed. Then, after making back-up copies of the pap-secrets and options les in the /etc/ppp directory of your Debian system, copy the ppp-on-dialer, pap-secrets and options les from your BasicLinux RAM disk to the same directory on your Debian root partition.. Then, go to the /etc directory of your Debian system and make a back-up copy of any le called resolv.conf that happens to reside there. Now copy the resolv.conf le from your BasicLinux system to the /etc directory of the root le system on your Debian system. Finally, copy the ppp-on and ppp-off les from the /usr/sbin directory of the BasicLinux system to /usr/local/bin on your Debian system. 57

Now boot into your Debian system again and give yourself ownership of all of the above les by executing the commands (as root user) chown john filename chgrp john filename substituting, of course, your username on your system for john and inserting the appropriate le names. Also, make sure that the les ppp-on, ppp-off and ppp-on-dialer are executable. You should now be able to dial in to your ISP. If things dont happen as they did in BasicLinux, edit the ppp-on-dialer le and change the line exec chat to read exec chat -v. Then dial in again and, after things crap out, read (as root user) the bottom lines of the le /var/log/syslog to nd out what happened when you dialled in. You probably have made some mistake in placing the les or assigning permissions or ensuring that appropriate les are executable. As noted, I was successful in establishing a PPP connection to CHASS on my Debian system by this method. I could also establish, according to what the syslog le tells me, a PPP connection to UTORDIAL. Unfortunately, however, that connection did not workno data could pass through it. And little can be done because the sta at Information Commons refuse to discuss Linux! The above method of transfer between BasicLinux and Debian should also work for simpler types of connection that use either the PAP or the CHAP protocol. I have not conrmed this because I use the University of Toronto system as my ISP. If your ISP uses one of the above protocols and you cannot convert your BasicLinux dial-up to Debian, you can use the pppconfig program, which should be installed as part of the base system, to try to set up a connection. Log on as root and type pppconfig on the command line. Using what you already know, you should be able to respond appropriately to the prompts. If you have trouble, I suggest that you read online a few more sections of McCartys book. You will nd the section on PPP conguration at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/book/ch11_04.html If you want to learn more about conguring your modem, you can download the minicom package (and the libncurses package it depends on) from my ftp site and install them using the commands dpkg --install libncurses4_4.2-9.deb dpkg --install minicom_1.82.1-1.deb 58

and read ch11_02.html and ch11_07 on the OReilly web-site above. Minicom is a program that you can use to dial into your ISP and appropriately congure your modem. Using minicom, you can also log directly onto your account there without establishing a PPP connection, provided that your ISP supports shell accounts (as CHASS does). If you approach the Web by this route, however, you will only be able to browse the Web using the Lynx text browser from your ISP account, and then only if your ISP has Lynx installed.

18

Appendix E: Using Your Debian System

You should now copy the le uslocbin.tar.gz obtained from my ftp site to the directory /usr/local/bin/ and unzip it, making sure that all the les disgorged are executable. These consist of a number of programs that I have obtained from the Web or written myself to facilitate my research work. For example, included is a script oxmanual that accesses the on-line manual to the Ox statistical program, the installation of which is discussed above. Next, get and move the zip-le usloclib.tar.gz to the /usr/local/lib directory and unzip it. These les will also be usfull in your research as noted below.

18.1

Some Tweaks and Tips

In the course of managing your computer and doing your work you will need to collect les together in compressed archive les and to unzip archive les that others have created. The standard way to do this is using the tar command. To create an archive, use the command tar cvzf name.tar.gz file1 file2 file3 *.txt where name is the root name of the le you are creating and file1, file2, file3 and *.txt are the les to be compressed into the archive. You can include as many les as you wish in any archive. To unzip an archive with the sux .tar.gz or .tgz, execute the command tar xvzf filename Sometimes you will encounter an archive of the form filename.gz. In this case, unzip the archive with the command gunzip filename

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You will also occasionally run across zip les with the sux .zip that have been created on MS-Windows systems. To unzip these in Debian 3.1 you can install the program unzip in the usual way using apt-get. Use this program by entering the command unzip followed by the name of the le. All of the programs installed here have manual pages that you can access from the command line by entering man programname There are a few additional tweaks to your system that you should know. To reset the time, execute the command date MMDDHHMMCCYY where MM is a two-digit representation of the month (06 for June), DD is a two-digit representation of the day, HH is a two digit representation of the hour, and CCYY is a four-digit representation of the century and year (2003 for the current year). Entering date by itself will cause the shell to print on the screen the date and time. To change the time and date you must operate as root user. To congure your system to set the local time in relation to Greenwich Universal Time enter (as root user) tzconfig on the command line and follow the prompts. For Toronto and Canada you would choose 4 in response to the country prompt and Eastern (Central for daylight saving time) in response to the region prompt. To check what day of the week a particular day falls on in the current month, use the cal program by entering the word cal on the command line. To access the dates in a month other than the current one, enter cal mm, where mm is a two digit place-holder for the month. To obtain a full calendar for a particular year, enter cal yyyy where yyyy is a four-digit place-holder for the year. To obtain a calendar for the month in which King Henry VIII of England had his fth wife Catherine Howard be-headed for the crime of adultery, enter cal 03 1543. To nd les on your system, execute, as root user, a command of the following form find -name xxxx* from the root directory after substituting the appropriate lename for xxxx* or lename segment for xxxx. If you boot your system from the boot disk you created upon installation the boot process will take a long time. As an alternative, you can easily make 60

a dierent type of boot disk for your Linux system. Make a DOS boot disk and copy to it the program loadlin.exe which you can obtain from my website if you have not already obtained it to make a DOS install of the base system. Then seek out the linux kernel which you will nd on your system in the directory /boot. This le will have a name like vmlinuz-2.2.20. Copy this le to your boot disk, renaming it as simply vmlinuz. Then create an autoexec.bat le containing the single line LOADLIN vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro substituting your root partition for /dev/hda1 if it happens to be dierent. Now copy this le to your boot disk. That disk should boot up your Linux system. You can alter this disk to boot any linux system by simply copying the appropriate kernel to it and changing the root partition if required.

18.2

Using the Editor joe

To start joe to edit a particular le or les, make the following command line entry as appropriate joe filename joe file1 file2 file3 Most of the commands in joe involve holding down the Ctrl key while pressing K and some other specic key. To move between le windows when more than one le is loaded onto the screen, use the commands Ctrl+K,N, (i.e., hold down Ctrl and press K and then N) to go down to the next le and Ctrl+K,P to go up to the previous one. To save the current le, enter Ctrl+K,D. To exit enter Ctrl+C and to save and exit enter Ctrl+K,X. To block text for copying or deleting, enter Ctrl+K,B at the beginning of the block and Ctrl+K,K at the end of the block. Copy the block to a new cursor position by using Ctrl+K,C, move it to the new cursor position using Ctrl+K,M and delete it using Ctrl+K,Y. Undo the eects of previous commands by using Ctrl+_. To move a rectangular area from one place in a le to another, enter Ctrl+T and then the letter X to enter rectangular mode. Then block the area to be copied, moved (or deleted) by entering Ctrl+K,B at the upper left corner and Ctrl+K,K at the bottom right corner. Move the cursor to the place where you want the upper left corner of the material to be inserted and execute either Ctrl+K,C or Ctrl+K,M as appropriate. Delete the rectangular area of material by entering Ctrl+K+Y. Get back into insert mode by entering the command Ctrl+T and then pressing ENTER. 61

Write blocked material to le using Ctrl+K,W and insert a le at the cursor position by entering Ctrl+K,R. All these commands and more are outlined in the help le which can be brought to the top of the screen using the command Ctrl+H and removed using the same command.

18.3

Using mtools

As it is set up, mtools can only be used by the root user. For ordinary users, namely you as yourself, to use the program, read and write priviledges to the oppy drive /dev/fd0 have to be extended using the commands (as root user) chmod o+r /dev/fd0 chmod o+w /dev/fd0 To copy les from your hard drive to a oppy disk in Drive A, use the command mcopy filename a: if the le is a binary le or mcopy -t filename a: if it is a text le. To copy a le from Drive A: to the directory you are currently in, use the commands mcopy a:filename mcopy -t a:filename depending upon whether the le is a binary le or a text le. To delete a le on Drive A: enter the command mdel a:filename and to make a list of the les on a disk in Drive A: enter the command mdir a:filename To format a disk for use with DOS enter the command mformat a:

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18.4

Logging Into and Obtaining Files from Other Computers

To log into another computersay, your university system or Internet provider, enter the command ssh -l username othersystem where othersystem will be a name like credit.utm.utoronto.ca, and username is your username on that system. Respond with your password when prompted. To copy a le from the other computer to your computer, use the command scp username@othersystem:~/filename . where one or more directory names can be inserted before the lename. To copy a le from your computer to the other computer, use the command scp filename username@othersystem:~/ Again, directory names can be added.

18.5

Number Calculations, Spreadsheets and Graphs

Use my simple command-line calculator by entering calc on the command line. Type help or any other four letters to obtain an on-line manual. To load the spreadsheet program sc enter sc filename.sc on the command line. If no lename is entered a new spreadsheet will be started and you will be prompted to supply a name the rst time you save it. I have written four useful utilities for this program. The utility mat2sc converts a text le containing a matrix of numbers into an sc le called tempmat.sc with the upper corner of the matrix xed to a particular cell. Use this utility with the command mat2sc filename.mat C 12 where C 12 is the column and row of the cell in which the upper left corner of the matrix will reside. The resulting le tempmat.sc can be either renamed or merged into a pre-existing spreadsheet le. A second utility, text2sc, converts a column of lines of text into a single-column worksheet le called temptext.sc with leftmost character of the upper line tied to any chosen cell. This le too can be copied under a new name or merged with a pre-existing spreadsheet. A third utility program, cdsst2sc, converts a 63

comma delineated text le, identical with the spreadsheet les produced by the Chass Data Centre, into an sc le called tempwks.sc to be subsequently renamed. In addition to the name of the source le, a token to occupy empty cells must also be specied on the command line. The choices are NA, -1, -999 and 0 (to leave the cell empty). The source le must contain commas separating the cells, with quotation marks around the contents of those cells consisting of strings (words) rather than numbers. A fourth utility program cdtxt2sc also converts a comma delimited spreadsheet to an c worksheet using the same command line as the previous program. The dierence is that strings in the source le must not have quotation marks around them the program infers which cells contain strings and which contain numbers. Typing the name of any of the above utility programs by itself on the command line will produce an explanation of how to use it. The maximum permissible width of the worksheet les for the three utilities that process numbers and not just text is 26 columns. A Gnuplot manual will be present on your system in the form of a zip le called gnuplot.ps.gz in the directory /usr/share/doc/gnuplot. Unzip it with the command gunzip /usr/share/doc/gnuplot/gnuplot.ps.gz to convert it to an ordinary postscript le and then view it using the command gv /usr/share/doc/gnuplot/gnuplot.ps &

The & on the end of the command line tells the shell to spawn a completely separate window for the viewing program, gv, so that the window in which the command is executed can be used for other things while the postscript le is being viewed. This program operates through menus that are selfexplanatory. The program pl uses Gnuplot to plot text matrix les created with spreadsheet programs. Before using it you should create in your home directory (as yourself, not as root) a resource le called .plrc containing the lines set data style points set data style lines As congured, the points will be connected by lines, as required for time series plots. To leave the points unconnected and designated by diamondshaped symbols, comment out the second line by placing the character # in 64

front of it. For time series plots, the left-most column of the data matrix should be a vector of dates. If the data are not annual, the dates must be written as, say, 1981.0, 1981.083333, 1981.166667, 1981.25, ..... etc., for monthly data, and 1981.0, 1981.25, 1981.5, 1981.75, 1982.0, .... etc., for quarterly data. To plot all columns of the matrix, simply enter the command pl filename To plot column 2 against column 1 (which will be the date vector in the case of time series), enter the command pl -u 1:2 filename To plot both columns 2 and 3 against column 1, enter the command pl -u 1:2 -u 1:3 filename To make a scatter plot of columns 2 and 4 of the matrix, comment out the appropriate line in .plrc and enter the command pl -u 2:4 filename Before I was aware of the pl program, I constructed some scripts to make quick plots using Gnuplot. These are still useful on occasion. To make time series plots of one, two, three, or four time series, respectively, each series should be copied, using the spreadsheet or a statistical program, to a separate two-column le of real numbers containing the dates of the observations in the left column and the observations themselves in the right column. These data les should be named tsdata1.tmp, tsdata2.tmp, tsdata3.tmp, and tsdata4.tmp. Then enter either plotts1, plotts2, plotts3, or plotts4 on the command line, depending on the number of series you wish to plot. The four scripts with the above names, which must be resident and executable in the directory /usr/local/bin (and are contained in the zip le uslocbin.tar.gz), instruct the shell to copy the respective template les plotts1.gpt, plotts2.gpt, plotts3.gpt and plotts4.gpt, which must be resident in /usr/local/lib, as les of the same root name but with sux .tmp in the directory from which the command is issued and in which the data les above must reside. The shell then executes the respective commands gnuplot plotts1.tmp, gnuplot plotts2.tmp, etc., to plot the relevant set of time series to the screen. The les plotts?.gpt, which will be placed in the /usr/local/lib directory when you unzip usloclib.tar.gz there, can be used at as templates with which to creA ate charts for inclusion in L TEX documents. These .gpt les can be copied 65

under new names and edited in obvious ways, and corresponding data les renamed with, say, .gd instead of .tmp suxes, to produce the type of chart desired. To produce a scatter plot, copy the data for the two variables side by side in a text le called xydata.tmp with the variable to be plotted on the horizontal axis in the left column. Then execute the command plotxy on the command line. The gnuplot command le plotxy.gpt will be copied from /usr/local/lib to the working directory as plotxy.tmp and the chart constructed. The le plotxy.gpt will also be a useful template le for making scatter plots for inclusion in documents. After doing quick and dirty plots of the kind above, you will nd it useful to clean up after yourself by executing the command rm -i *.tmp in the working directory. Probably the easiest practical way to obtain a frequency distribution is to write the numbers to a single-column text le, sort the le using the command sort < file > sortedfile and then, after setting up appropriate classes, simply count the number of observations in each class. If you have a large data set you can read the list of numbers to be sorted into XlispStat and use that program to create a histogram from which can be extracted the frequency distribution. The proper commands to do this are explained in my short manual for XlispStat, which can be obtained from my ftp site. Neither Gnuplot nor XlispStat plot histograms in a form suciently pleasing to the eye to merit inclusion in A publications. The best way to incorporate a histogram in a L TEX document is to create it in the form of a bar chart within the document itself. See below for further discussion. For drawing simple charts, use the program XFig (the command is xfig). A manual for this program can be http://www.xfig.org/userman Alternatively, if you are working in Debian 2.2 you can use the program Idraw. A manual for this program can be found at http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/paolo/arvo-titles/idraw-help.html

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18.6

Printing Text and Spreadsheet Files

I have written a number of shell scripts for using the program a2ps to convert text les to postscript and print them. To print a text le in standard a2ps form, enter prntxt filename on the command line.10 This prints the le, two pages side-by-side on each sheet of paper in landscape mode, with the pages numbered and the lename written across the top of each page. To print the pages one to a sheet in portrait mode with normal-sized print, use the command prntxtb. To print a le having lines a bit too long to t on the page in normal print, use the command prntxtw followed by the le name. To print a spreadsheet le, saved as a text le by sc or Gnumeric, use either prntxtw above if there are a small number of columns, or prntxtxw if there are many columnsthe limit is 204 text characters of width (e.g., 10 columns, each 20 characters wide). The rst of these utilities prints the le in portrait mode with small print (the size used in prntxt) while the second prints the le in landscape mode with the same small print. For each of these four utilities there is a corresponding one for printing to a postscript le instead of directly to the printer. For printing to le, simply add the character f to the beginning of the script namefor example fprntxtw instead of prntxtw. All these eight scripts will be in /usr/local/bin if you unzipped uslocbin.tar.gz there. They must, of course, be executable.

18.7

A L TEX Tips

A L TEX is a document preparation program used by a wide variety of academicians in many elds. You can learn how to use LaTeX by reading A The Not So Short Introduction to L TEX 2 by Tobias Oetiker et. al.11 It is A also worthwhile to obtain Leslie Lamports little book, L TEX A Document Preparations System: Users Guide and Reference Manual, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994. One prepares a formatted text le (these always have the sux .tex) for the document and then processes it by entering on the command line

latex filename
A without the sux (L TEX automatically adds the sux .tex if it is not specied on the command line). This will result in the creation of a device
10 a2ps will refuse to print les with the sux .tex, cleverly thinking that the le should be processed rst! To trick it, make a copy of the le called filename.texcode and print the copy. 11 Go to http://people.ee.ethz.ch/ oetiker/short/short.pdf.

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independent or .dvi le with the same root name that can be processed by a wide range of printing devices. Here we process it to create a postscript le using the program dvips by entering pps filename again omitting the sux, which will be dvi. Actually the required command line is really dvips -t letter filename.dvi -o filename.ps but I have created the shell script pps which instructs the shell to execute the command dvips -t letter $1".dvi" -o $1".ps" where $1 is the root lename entered on the command line. If you only want to process particular pages of the document you enter the command ppps filename p1 p2 where p1 and p2 are numbers indicating the rst and last pages to be processed. The shell script ppps contains the single line of code dvips -t letter -p$2 -l$3 $1".dvi" -o $1".ps" where $1, $2, and $3 are place-holders for the le name (minus the sux) and the two page numbers. These two scripts are among those zipped up in the le uslocbin.tar.gz. If you are working in Debian 3.1, you can create a PDF le by entering the command dvipdfm filename again leaving o the sux. A To simplify writing letters and memos with L TEX I created two template A L TEX code les called lettemp.tex and memotemp.tex. You will nd them in the directory /usr/local/lib if you unzipped usloclib.tar.gz there. To create a letter or a memo, simply copy the respective template le under an appropriate new name and modify it according the instructions contained in the le itself. You can process the template les and any les created from them by the usual method.

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18.7.1

A Including Graphics in L TEX Documents

A To include gures and charts in L TEX documents, rst save them as postscript les. For charts containing time-series and scatter plots, simply uncomment the following lines in the Gnuplot command le (which you should have obtained by modifying the appropriate template)

#set terminal postscript eps #set output filename.eps by removing the # characters from the beginning of the lines and appropriately changing the lename. When you process the le with Gnuplot it will write the chart to an encapsulated postscript le rather than put it on the screen. Figures and drawings made with XFig and Idraw can also be A incorporated into L TEX documents rather easily by saving them as .eps les. A To incorporate postscript graphic les into your L TEX document you rst need to add a line \input epsf in the preamble of the document. Then create a separate .tex le for each gure or chart or cluster of charts and insert it at the appropriate place in your document with the command \input figfile.tex where the sux .tex can be left o the command (but not the le). I have created a template figtemp.tex that will also be in /usr/local/lib if you unzipped usloclib.tar.gz there. If you want to include three gures on the page, all you need to do is copy figtemp.tex under an appropriate name and change the names of the postscript .eps les to match the ones produced by your Gnuplot commands. And, of course, you will also have to alter the gure number and the descriptive comment at the bottom of the le. The code line \baselineskip 12 points in figtemp.tex makes the space between the lines of comment at the bottom of the page smaller than between regular lines of text in the document. You can change the number 12 to something else, or delete the line entirely, if you wish. If you want to change the size of a chart, modify the relevant line \epsfxsize=4.7in 69

to change the width from 4.7 inches to an appropriate alternative number. A corresponding change in the height of the graphic will occur automatically. If you want to include only two charts in the gure, or one, simply delete the lines of code pertaining to the charts you do not want to include. You can include a fourth chart by creating an additional line, but this will make the gure longer than a page. You will then have to make the charts smaller in the vertical dimension. You can do this by altering the line set size 1.0,0.7 in the Gnuplot command les name.gpt to read, say, set size 1.0,0.55 to reduce the vertical height of the chart to 55% instead of 75% of the default. You can also adjust the \vglue = .8 command at the top of gures spawned from figtemp.tex, or add a similar command elsewhere in the le, to move graphics further up towards the top of the page, or down towards the bottom, or to change the space between the chart or gure and any text that may be above or below it. Sometimes you will be trying to include a postscript drawing or chart in your document and it behaves in an unruly fashion, taking up much more space than is covered by the actual drawing. This is an indication that the drawing or chart is not encapsulated by a bounding box. We usually denote encapsulated postscript les made with Gnuplot or xfig by giving them the sux .eps. This errant gure will probably have the sux .ps rather than .eps. To x the problem you have to specify a bounding box for the chart or drawing. Print the graphic on a page by itself by entering the command lpr followed by the name of the graphic. Then take a ruler and measure the distance from the left edge of the paper to the left edge of the printed graphic in inches. Multiply the number of inches by 72 to convert the distance into postscript units and call this distance llx. Now measure the distance from the bottom of the page to the bottom of the printed graphic and convert that distance to postscript units, calling it lly. Next measure the distance from the leftmost edge of the paper to the rightmost edge of the printed graphic in postscript units and call it urx. Finally, measure the distance from the bottom of the page to the uppermost edge of the printed graphic and call that ury. A bounding box can then be added to the graphic by changing the line \centerline{\epsffile{name.eps}} 70

in the .tex le for the gure to \centerline{\epsffile[llx lly urx ury]{name.eps}} so that the line will look something like \centerline{\epsffile[124 145 486 502]{name.eps}} When you print out a graphic on a sheet by itself and it is encapsulated by a bounding box, it should appear on the bottom left corner of the page. To learn more about these issues you can obtain a copy of the dvips manual from the web at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/dvips/dvips_man.ps.gz Download and unzip the graphic (use gunzip dvips_man.ps.gz) and print the resulting postscript le. Be prepared for a heavy read! If you want to incorporate histograms in your document you will probably obtain the best results by actually creating a bar chart from the numbers A in the frequency distribution directly in L TEX using the Barchart package. A To do this you will need to consult a book called The L TEX Companion, written by Michael Goossens, Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin, and published by Addison-Wesley (1994). Work through pages 283289. If you want to try and wing it, go to the following Web location http://www.ichimusai.org/latex/#barchart You may have to obtain the style le bar.sty from the Web. You will nd it on my ftp site or at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex209/contrib/misc/bar.sty The le should be copied to the directory ./usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/tools/ on your system where the other .sty les reside. One problem you will occasionally have is getting your gures, dened A in L TEX code by the \begin{figure} and \end{figure} commands in your modied versions of figtemp.tex, to appear where you want them in the document. You may have to move the \input figfilename commands A ahead or back in the document to tweak L TEX into doing what you want. If a group of charts slightly overll a page (you wont notice this from viewing A the document) L TEX will put that page and all subsequent graphics at the end of the document. See page 197 of Leslie Lamports book for instructions A on how to tweak L TEXinto putting the graphics where you want them in the document. 71

18.8

A Using TEX Instead of L TEX

If you are really strapped for cash you may want to avoid having to buy A Leslie Lamports book by using TEX instead of L TEX so that you can use the free manual A Gentle Introduction to TEX by Michael Doob. You can obtain this manual in postcript form, gentle.ps, from my ftp site. TEX A is the programming language for document preparation on which L TEX is built. When you use TEX you are using that programming language in the raw. The commands are somewhat dierent than the ones you would use A in L TEX and, of course, it is much harder to do fancy things because you have to program the fancy stu yourself. Nevertheless, you can do basic document preparation quite easily in TEX. Simply follow the instructions in the manual. The inclusion of graphics in your document will use the same A approach as outlined above for L TEX (dvips does not care whether you A are using L TEX or TEX), with a few minor but crucial adjustments. First, when you are using the template figtemp.tex you will have to delete the \begin{figure} and \end{figure} commands on the rst and last lines of the le. At the end of the code you will have to restore baselineskip to the value you are using for the regular text in the document. Moreover, you will save yourself a lot of trouble by putting all drawings, whether they form a group that t on a single page or are individual stand-alone graphics, at the end of the document rather than trying to insert the code for these graphics within the document. This will avoid pagination hassles. If you want to have your graphics distributed throughout the document, rather than at the end, the best way to proceed is to insert an \advancepageno code on a line by itself wherever a gure or chart or group of related gures or charts that t on a single page will appear. This will cause TEX to skip that page number in numbering the pages of the document. Then insert a new page command \vfill\eject at the end of the document where the rst gure or chart, or page of charts, is to be printed and add a command like \pageno=13 or whatever to reset the page number to the number of the page on which the graphic will appear. Do this for each page of graphics, some of which will only have a single chart or drawing on them, and then after printing the document move these pages to the place where they belong in the document.

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18.9

Spell-Checking Your Documents

To spell-check a document, use the ispell program by entering the command ispell docname.tex Words that ispell does not recognise will be highlighted and you must respond according to the menu along the bottom of the page. The option A) means that you accept what is there regardless of what ispell thinks. If ispell has in mind a dierent possible spelling for the highlighted word it will number and list it on the screen. You can choose to replace the word with one suggested by ispell by simply pressing the appropriate number. After you have spell-checked the document you should check it for double occurrences of wordsthese happen when you accidentally type a word, usually to, the, or a, twice in succession. You can do this with my little program dubword by entering dubword docname.tex An output le called dubword.out will be created, containing the line numbers of all incidents of double typing of words and the word involved in each instance.

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