Red Hat Commercial Linux Frequently Asked Questions Donnie Barnes, Maintainer Version 1.38 Copyright 1995, Red Hat Software This is the first edition of the O-ficial Red Hat Commercial Linux FAQ. It is maintained by support@redhat.com and all comments or suggestions for this FAQ should be sent to that address. To get updates to this FAQ, send mail to faq@redhat.com for an automated reply, ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub, or http://www.redhat.com/RedHat-FAQ. Conventions: RHCL = Red Hat Commercial Linux What's new in 1.35? - Why can't I install to a partition greater than 9? What's new in 1.36? - Are there any known security holes? What's new in 1.37? - I rebuilt my kernel, but I got vmlinux instead of vmlinuz. Why? What's new in 1.38? - How do I make my own packages (rpps)? Contents: ========= Section 1: General Questions -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.01: Where can I get information on Red Hat Commercial Linux? 1.02: How do I order from the ACC Bookstore? 1.03: How do I get support if all I bought was the Caldera CD? 1.04: What's the quickest and best way to get support for RHCL? 1.05: Where is the installation manual that you used to ship? 1.06: What Media is Red Hat Commercial Linux Available on? 1.07: When will your distribution be all ELF based? 1.08: What hardware does Red Hat Commercial Linux support? 1.09: What other products do you offer for RHC Linux? 1.10: Does Red Hat Commercial Linux include source code? 1.11: What companion products are currently available? 1.12: What version of X Windows is included with RHCL? 1.13: How do I contact RH Software? 1.14: How do I get new updates to RHCL as they happen? 1.15: What packages do we ship in our latest release? 1.16: What is the relationship between Red Hat and Caldera? 1.17: How do I report a problem? 1.18: Does RHCL support UMSDOS installs? 1.19: Are there any known security holes? Section 2: Installation Questions -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.01: How do I get to that setup program again? 2.02: I seem to be missing some programs. Where are they? 2.03: I installed, but there's no LILO prompt. What now? 2.04: How do I mount my CD after the install is over? 2.05: Why does my Trident 9400 show up as an 8900? 2.06: I have 32M of memory, but linux only sees 16M. What gives? 2.07: How do I view the manual? 2.08: Does Red Hat support the Adaptec 2940 SCSI Controller? 2.09: Why can't I install to a partition greater than 9? Section 3: Using Red Hat Commercial Linux -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.01: Why does RHCL `adduser` put each user in his/her own group? 3.02: Why doesn't the xmh shipped with Red Hat work properly? 3.03: The WWW/ftp startup utility just hangs. Why? 3.04: I've installed the Word Perfect demo, now how do I run it? 3.05: How do I get the color ls to work? 3.06: Fstool and other control panel apps exhibit some bugs... 3.07: Why doesn't PPP give me a decent transfer rate? 3.08: I rebuilt my kernel, but I got vmlinux instead of vmlinuz. Why? 3.09: How do I make my own packages (rpps)? Appendix A: Copyright Notice [ BEGIN FAQ ] Section 1 General Questions ==================================================================== 1.01 Q) Where can I get information on Red Hat Commercial Linux? A) Contact the ACC Bookstore for ordering information. For other info, send mail to info@redhat.com for an automated reply (quite helpful...*really*). You can also poke around ftp://ftp.redhat.com and http://www.redhat.com for cool new announcements and product info. 1.02 Q) How do I order from the ACC Bookstore? A) The ACC Bookstore can be reached at: phone: (203) 454-5500 (800) 546-7274 fax: (203) 454-2582 email: info@acc-corp.com WWW: http://www.acc-corp.com 1.03 Q) How do I get support if all I bought was the Caldera CD? A) Please do not contact us unless you purchase Red Hat Commercial Linux *only* or Caldera and RHCL separately. Yes, if you have Caldera then you have Red Hat Commercial Linux, but you bought it from Caldera. If you would like support for Caldera, please see their web site: http://www.caldera.com for their support options. 1.04 Q) What's the quickest and best way to get support for RHCL? A) Send mail to redhat-list@redhat.com with your questions. Again, please only use this if you have purchased a RHCL CD set. 1.05 Q) Where the heck is the installation manual that you used to ship? A) 2 places: On our ftp site, and in Dr. Linux ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/manual.{dvi,ps,html.tar}.gz There are no screen shots in this version (well, the html may have them) because a) they don't help all that much, and b) our net connection is currently 14.4K slip from netcom. You can also get the entire installation manual in the latest edition of _Dr. Linux_, available from the ACC Bookstore (Soon). 1.06 Q) What Media is Red Hat Commercial Linux Available on? A) It is available on CD only at this point. It will be available for ftp soon as well on sunsite.unc.edu, ftp.caldera.com, linux.agis.net, and ftp.pht.com. 1.07 Q) When will your distribution be all ELF based? A) We have a release planned for September that will be entirely ELF. It will also contain a cool new packaging system and an X windows based install. 1.08 Q) What hardware does Red Hat Commercial Linux support? A) We support all hardware that linux supports on the Intel platform. Nothing more. For more info on hardware compatibility, see the Hardware-HOWTO at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO 1.09 Q) What other products do you offer for Red Hat Commercial Linux? A) Currently, Red Hat Software doesn't have another product. We are working to add products very quickly, however. Watch for announcements on comp.os.linux.announce on Usenet (and if you don't know how to use Usenet, LEARN IT! You'll be glad you did...) or email info@redhat.com or check our web site at http://www.redhat.com We do have the Red Hat Developer's Program. For more info on it, see http://www.redhat.com/program.html It is basically a year subscription (10 CD's) to RHCL and some extra technical support. We may also offer extra "deals" to Program members from time to time. 1.10 Q) Does Red Hat Commercial Linux include source code? A) Soitenly! (That's "certainly" for those who don't watch "The 3 Stooges" :-) We include the exact source that we use to build from. In almost every case, you should be able to unpack the source for any package and follow the instructions in the source to build it without any snags. This does mean that the source we distribute may not be "pristine", but it works under RHC Linux. Our ELF release, however, will include a new packaging system that ONLY uses pristine source (the same as what you'd find at the author's ftp site) and an RHCL patch. If you use our tools to build, the RHCL patch is applied automatically to give you a nice package. If you like, you can also make your own patches and include those. Very nice system... 1.11 Q) What companion products are currently available? A) The ACC Bookstore offers a great line of commercial software for linux. You can get everything from text editors to database tools to complete desktop systems. Contact them at the above number for a complete catalog. 1.12 Q) What version of X Windows is included with RHCL? A) XFree 3.1.1 comes standard with a very nice configuration tool. We have also added third party X servers from Metrolink and X Inside with no problems. 1.13 Q) I like your distribution so much, I want to send you some of my homemade cookies. How do I do so? A) Red Hat Software PO Box 4325 Chapel Hill, NC 27515 redhat@redhat.com 1.14 Q) How do I get new updates to RHCL as they happen? A) Keep your eye on: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/rpps/new for any new packages we've made since your CD was pressed. Also check the non-free and contrib directories under rpps for packages that we can't distribute on CD or packages that users have sent to us. We will also make periodic announcements to redhat-list with updates. 1.15 Q) What packages do we ship in our latest release? A) For the sake of brevity, we can't put that info here, but you can find it easily on www.redhat.com. Set your URL to: http://www.redhat.com/rpps/rpps.html This will not only give you a list, but will allow you to find out in more detail what each of those packages actually has in it. We include not only a description of the package, but a *complete* file list for each package as well (binary only, however, are present on the web server). 1.16 Q) What is the relationship between Red Hat and Caldera? A) Both are totally separate companies. Caldera has the right to use Red Hat Commercial Linux as the base operating system for their products. In addition: Red Hat Software, Inc. is pleased to acknowledge the support of Caldera Inc. towards the continuing improvement of the Red Hat Commercial Linux distribution. Caldera has also generously contributed to the development of various aspects of the Linux operating system that the Red Hat distribution uses. Caldera Inc. include the Red Hat Commercial Linux distribution as the basis of their advanced Caldera Network Desktop product. Caldera hold a fully paid up right to use the Red Hat Commercial Linux distribution for this purpose. [Management] 1.17 Q) How do I report a problem? A) Send mail to support@redhat.com. Be as detailed as possible!!! For example, if you can't get RHCL to see your SCSI drives, tell us: a) What kind of SCSI card b) what kernel c) what SCSI id's are the drives d) how many IDE drives do you have e) specific details of the problem If you can't get your CDROM recognized, tell us: a) make and model of CDROM b) type of interface (IDE, SB, etc) c) bootdisk version Again, be as detailed as possible about your problem! 1.18 Q) Does RHCL support UMSDOS installs? A) In a word, no. UMSDOS is not seen by RHS as a stable platform, nor is it a good performance idea. Aside from that, you don't "need" DOS on your machine anyway :-) 1.19 Q) Are there any known security holes? A) There are currently no known security holes in the Mothers Day Release. There are, however, security holes in any xdm.ncsu package that might be on other versions of Red Hat Linux that is distributed by other vendors. If you have this package, it is a security hole. Please do not run it. Any user using it has his group set to 'root'. [ End Section 1 ] Section 2 Installation Questions ===================================================================== 2.01 Q) I completely misconfigured my system during the install. How do I get to that setup program again? A) Reboot your machine using the two disks that you made for the installation. You will most likely need to completely reinstall your system. 2.02 Q) I installed RHCL and everything seemed to go fine, but I am missing some programs that I thought I should have. What did I do wrong? A) Try doing a 'df' at the shell prompt. If you have / or /usr showing up as 100% used, chances are your partition was too small for the entire install. Unfortunately, this does not result in any type of error messages unless you are watching closely (which most people don't when the thing tells you it is going to take 2 hours to install :-). You will most likely need to reinstall and do one of two things: a) make your root or /usr partition larger or b) install fewer packages. If the express install filled up your system and you can NOT make your partition bigger, you will need to do a Step-by-Step install and choose a fairly minimal setup -OR- don't let the Express Install choose your packages for you. 2.03 Q) I installed RHCL, but I don't get a lilo prompt. Do I need to re-install? A) Not necessarily. You should be able to use the boot disk that you made for the install to boot to your root partition on the hard drive. Insert the disk, reboot the machine, and at the boot prompt, type: linux ramdisk=0 root=/dev/#### where #### is the hard drive and partition number. If you installed to the first partition of your first IDE drive, this would be hda1. If you installed to the third partition on your second drive, this would be hdb3. The second partition of your second SCSI drive would be sdb2. If you don't remember, try what you *think* might work. The worst that will happen is a kernel panic or the machine will hang. In either case, reboot and try another partition. Once you get it booted, you need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and then run 'lilo'. For more info on how to do that properly, you need to mount your CDROM with redhat on it and install the howto-1995.05.21-bin.rpp (though the actual filename may differ due to newer versions) from the rpps directory on the CD. You can then read the LILO-HOWTO in /usr/doc on how to write a proper lilo.conf. An example lilo.conf to boot linux and DOS is below: boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 image=/vmlinuz label=linux root=/dev/sdb2 read-only append = "boot_verbose=0" other=/dev/sda1 label = dos You may also need a line in the "other" section with "table = /dev/hda" or whatever drive your DOS partition is on. The only lines from above that should change if you boot linux and DOS are "boot", "root", and "other". Some of what is there is optional, like the append and what YOU actually label the dos partition (some people prefer msdos). One caveat: Make sure the "boot" line points to your first IDE drive, OR your first SCSI drive IF AND ONLY IF you only have NO IDE drives. That is the only way the machine has to know where to find it. You need to also be sure that the partition in the "boot" line is marked "Active" by either the DOS fdisk, or the linux fdisk (or cfdisk). Here are the "rules" of where "/" must live: 1) If you have 2 IDE drives, your root partition MUST live on one of them, NO MATTER WHAT. 2) If you have 1 IDE drive and SCSI drives, your root partition MUST live on the IDE drive or the SCSI drive THAT IS AT ID 0. No other ID's will work. 3) If you have SCSI only, your root partition MUST live on a drive at ID 0 or ID 1. No other ID's will work. These rules are non negotiable. BUT I WANT DOS TO BOOT BY DEFAULT!!! Easy. Just change the above /etc/lilo.conf to: boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 other=/dev/sda1 label = dos image=/vmlinuz label=linux root=/dev/sdb2 read-only append = "boot_verbose=0" and then run `lilo` after saving the file. 2.04 Q) How do I mount my CD ROM now that my computer is booted into RHC Linux? A) If you installed from CD, you should be able to do: mount /mnt/cdrom If you did an install via NFS: You need to know what type of CD ROM you have. The best way is to watch the boot messages as you reboot, or look at /var/adm/messages (`more /var/adm/messages`). You most likely have an IDE CD ROM that will show up as /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd, or you have a Sound Blaster type that is /dev/sbpcd, or you have a SCSI that is /dev/scd0. In any case, you can do the following: mount -t iso9660 /dev/#### /mnt/cdrom and substitute #### for YOUR device. You can then: cd /mnt/cdrom and then: ls and you will be looking at the contents of the CD ROM. 2.05 Q) When running the Xconfigurator, my Trident 9400 shows up as an 8900. What's the deal? A) XFree 3.1.1 currently doesn't support the advanced features of the 9400. The timing for the release of the 9400 was just bad for the release dates of 3.1.1, so they weren't able to add the support in. Now that the card is pretty popular and a new release is expected soon of XFree, we expect to see direct support in the next version of XFree86. For now, you can run resolutions all the way to 1024x768 at 60 hz. If you have trouble using Xconfigurator to set it up, you will probably find that xf86config will do the job (it just doesn't look as nice doing it :-) 2.06 Q) I have 32M of memory, but linux only sees 16M. What gives? A) There are a couple things that could be wrong. On *some* 386's, you need to compile your kernel with "Limit memory to 16M?" enabled. Some AMI BIOS motherboards have a memory option to split memory into two segments. I'm not sure what the option is called, but it has something to do with "linear". You'll find it in your BIOS setup. You may need to specify the amount of memory to the kernel at boot time from lilo. To try this, type: linux mem=32M at the lilo prompt. If that works, you can add that line to the append in your /etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo. The example from above would be: append = "boot_verbose=0 mem=32M" Don't forget to run `lilo` after editing the file. 2.07 Q) How do I view the manual? A) If you bought the Mothers Day release, we said there would be a manual on line. Guess what? We didn't get it on there. We completely apologize. The manual is available on our ftp site, however: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/manual.ps.gz ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/manual.html.tar.gz ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/manual.dvi.gz If you just want to view the manual, download manual.html.tar.gz. Unzip it (using gunzip) in a directory and then untar it (tar xvfz manual.html.tar). Then run arena to view it (arena file:manual/manual.html &). If you want to print and/or view, download manual.ps.gz. Unzip it (gunzip manual.ps.gz). To print, assuming you have a printer setup, use `lpr manual.ps`. To view it online, use ghostscript (gs manual.ps). This can be odd, as the fonts come out small, but you can use gs -r100 to make them larger...this had the bad side effect of making the window 1100 pixels long, however. 2.08 Q) Does Red Hat support the Adaptec 2940 SCSI Controller? A) No, not directly. It is not supported in the current 1.2.x series of kernels, so we don't support it. We do have reports of it working, however. We also will provide the bootdisk you need to get it working. It's available at: ftp://www.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/contrib/boot2940.img I'm not sure what drivers are in that kernel, but you can at least get SCSI working and install if you have a SCSI CD ROM. If you get it installed, but it still doesn't have all the drivers you need, you'll have to get the kernel patch and kernel sources and build your own kernel. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN HERE. THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED. DON'T ASK US FOR HELP, PLEASE. All that said, the patch is available on: ftp://ftp.ims.com/pub/Linux 2.09 Q) Why can't I install to a partition greater than 9? A) The install program has a bug in it. To fix this, we have an updated root disk available from: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/rootdisks/ Just download it, un-gzip it and write it to a floppy. Then use it as your root disk instead of the one on the CD. To do this in dos: download rootdisk.img.gz to your hard drive as rootdisk.gz. Then download /pub/dos/gzip.exe to your harddrive. Then run: gzip -d rootdisk.gz You can then run: rawrite and use rootdisk as your image file. All of this assumes you have those programs in your path :-) [ End Section 2] Section 3 Using Red Hat Commercial Linux ========================================================================= 3.01 Q) Why does RHCL `adduser` put each user in his/her own group? A) It's called the user group scheme, and it's described in the manual. What it basically does is allow you to use groups to allow multiple people to use a common set of files and edit them, transparently. It goes like this: . You'd like to have a group of people work on a set of files is say, the /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp directory. You trust a few people to mess around in there, but certainly not everyone. . So you do `chown -R root.emacs /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp'. . And you add the proper users to the group. . To allow the users to actually create file in the directory you do `chmod 775 /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp'. . This is fine, but when a user creates a new file it gets the group of the users default group (usually users). . To prevent this you do `chmod 2775 /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp' which causes everything in the directory to get created with the "emacs" group. . This is fine, but the new file needs to be mode 664 for another user in the emacs group. To do this you make the default umask 002. . Well, this all works good, except that if your default group is "users", every file you create in your home directory will be writeably by everybody in "users" (usually everyone). . To fix this, you make each user have a "private group" as their default group. At this point, by making the default umask 002 and giving everyone a private default group, you can easily set up groups which users can take advantage of without doing any magic. Just create the group, add the users, and do the above chown and chmod on the group's directories. 3.02 Q) Why doesn't the xmh shipped with Red Hat work properly? A) We only ship xmh because it is part of the standard X11 distribution. It requires the mh mail package, which we do not ship. We haven't seen much need for it so far, so we haven't spent the time on it. If you have a need for it and would like to see it in future Red Hat releases, please let us know. I won't guarantee anything, but if enough people request it... 3.03 Q) When using the WWW/ftp configuration utility, I tell it to apply changes and it goes out and just hangs. Why is that? A) The version that we shipped is slightly broken. Okay, *completely* broken :-) Anyway, just ftp the new control panel rpp from us. It's available via: ftp.redhat.com:pub/mothers-day/rpps/new/control-panel-1.0-bin.rpp All you need to do is copy that file to your machine, and then do: rpp-uninstall control-panell rpp-install control-panel-1.0-bin.rpp and you should be set! (Although make sure you have exited the control panel and all related programs before trying to uninstall them). 3.04 Q) I've installed the Word Perfect demo, now how do I run it? A) You can launch it with: /usr/local/wp/wpbin/xwp & 3.05 Q) How do I get color ls to work? A) Some of you may be accustomed to other distributions and the fact that color ls is installed by default. RHCL does not do that, but it is possible. The best way to find info on it is to do: man color-ls man dircolors 3.06 Q) Fstool and other control panel apps exhibit some bugs... A) There is a new package available from: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/rpps/new This package fixes some networking configuration bugs among others...it also fixes the 'ignore' problem in fstool for DOS and HPFS partitions. 3.07 Q) Why doesn't PPP give me a decent transfer rate? A) The ppp package distributed with the Mothers Day release is completely broken. You need the new package from: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/mothers-day/rpps/new/ppp-2.1.2d-bin.rpp This package is *much* better and more complete. Also, for those who require speeds above 38400, a ppp-fast package is available there (at no extra charge to the consumer :-). This package is unsupported, however, as you must use libc-4.6.27 to run it. See README.PPP on the ftp site for instructions if you choose to try it. 3.08 Q) I rebuilt my kernel, but I got vmlinux instead of vmlinuz. Why? A) You need to do 'make zImage' or 'make zlilo' instead of just 'make'. 'make zlilo' is the best choice for most beginners as it will not only build the kernel, but also install it as the default for you if the make goes well. 'make zImage' will build a compressed kernel and place it in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot. You must copy it to your root dir and run lilo yourself to use this one. If you used 'make', you got a file called vmlinux. This is an *uncompressed* kernel image, and will NOT work! LILO will only boot a compressed kernel. 3.09 Q) How do I make my own packages (rpps)? A) Making rpps is quite simple. For starter info, type: man rpp RPP is really a whole suite of tools to build packages. The best way to build an RPP is the following: 1) Get the source tar file for the package you want to build and unpack to the place where the source should "live" if re-installed later (ie, "talk" would go in /usr/src/net or something). Make sure the src directory is named something live: talk-1.0 if the version number is 1.0. Having letters in the version is fine too, like: talk-1.0.5b would be fine as well. 2) Do whatever to make the source build. Once built, install the binaries to their proper places, recording where they went. (This includes man and info pages, if any.) 3) Get the 'makeRPP' script from our ftp site or Caldera's mirror of us. 'cd' into the source directory and run 'makeRPP'. This will make the RPP directory structure and fill in all the files it can. It is important for the source to be both built and "unclean". 'makeRPP' will want to execute a 'make clean' to find out the "size to build". You can skip this step and fill in the proper value later if you want. 4) Now, you need to edit the binary and source description files, and the binary list file. You need to put the path and filenames here of all binaries and manpages that got installed from step "2". During 'makeRPP', it will ask you for the binary prefix. For most things, just use "/" there and then your binary list would be something like: usr/bin/binary usr/man/man1/binary.1 5) You should then be able to cd to the parent of the source directory and run 'rpp-build source-dir-name'. If you get errors like "cannot stat file xxx", there is a file listed in the filelist (either binary or source) that is NOT present. Find out why it is not present, or in the file list when it shouldn't be. NOTE: NOTE: NOTE: The 'man rpp' refers to files called "dependencies". While it would be a nice feature, it is unimplemented. Don't bother putting anything in this file. Hopefully, you will end up with working src and bin rpp files. Test them out, and if they work, upload them to the Red Hat ftp site (ftp.redhat.com) in the incoming dir. [ End Section 3 ] Appendix A Copyright Notice ========================================================================= This document and it's contents are copyright protected. Permission to redistribute in any way other than the normal confines of the Internet must be obtained from Red Hat Software. This includes the sale of CD ROMs and floppy disks as well as any other media not normally used to carry Internet traffic. [ End FAQ] Have a Great Day! Donnie Barnes support@redhat.com