Help an Absloute Beginner (RH9)

bminish

I have just installed Red hat 9 on to a computer to play with. So far I am very impressed and I have managed to get quite a few things working the way that they should however as a complete beginner to this stuff I could do with some help, sorry if these are really basic questions.

I have manged to download and install some RPM's such as open office, latest mozilla, wine etc.
How do I make the correct file associations for these so that when I click on a .doc file in X open office launches, A HTML file launches the latest Mozila etc

What is the recommended directory to install packages to? /usr ?

how can I open files on other SMB (win2k) machines that i can view with nautilus, currently I have to make local copies befoe i can open files, is it possible to open file directly ?


How do I change the tcp/ip parameters such as Rwin?

Are there some good web sites for complete Linux beginners to learn how to do stuff.

Are there any 'must have' utilities I should consider installing?

the audio player app that came with RH9 does not have support for MP3 files can anyone recommend a nice audio player that does, preferably from a Samba shared location.

.Brendan

dahamsta

Hi Brendan,

I have manged to download and install some RPM's such as open office, latest mozilla, wine etc. How do I make the correct file associations for these so that when I click on a .doc file in X open office launches, A HTML file launches the latest Mozila etc

I thought you could right-click on the file but I'm not sure and I can't check at the moment. I'm pretty sure the KDE control panel has a module for handling associations too, but again I can't check. Some help, eh?

What is the recommended directory to install packages to? /usr ?

RPM's will install according to the Red Hat FS layout. If you want to install stuff from source, /usr/local is the usual spot.

Are there some good web sites for complete Linux beginners to learn how to do stuff.

I guess the Linux Documentation Project would be handy, but mostly I just rely on Google.

Are there any 'must have' utilities I should consider installing?

Webmin can be fierce handy, just make sure you lock it down to localhost or your LAN. Also, not a utility but if you use the console much, this HOWTO is handy too.

the audio player app that came with RH9 does not have support for MP3 files can anyone recommend a nice audio player that does, preferably from a Samba shared location.

See here.

HTH,
adam

bminish

Originally posted by dahamsta


I thought you could right-click on the file but I'm not sure ...

Indeed you can and I have now worked out how to make the required associations (most of the time!) things are looking up

I guess the Linux Documentation Project would be handy, but mostly I just rely on Google.

I have been doing this too, the problem with the docuements and many of the web pages is that they assume that the reader already understands Linux. Lots of linux concepts are pretty unlike what the windows / dos user is used to and it's going to take me a while to get my head around it!

Webmin can be fierce handy, just make sure you lock it down to localhost or your LAN.

that IS useful, not a good idea to open this up to the outside world though..

Thanks for the pointers
.Brendan

dahamsta

I have been doing this too, the problem with the docuements and many of the web pages is that they assume that the reader already understands Linux. Lots of linux concepts are pretty unlike what the windows / dos user is used to and it's going to take me a while to get my head around it!

Very true, but it gets easier as you go along. Plus there's places like this and the Irish Linux User Group (see linux.ie) to help too. Just be sure to say you're a newbie if you post on ILUG, they can be pretty snappy. For best results subscribe to a local LUG. We don't mind answering the easy questions here because it makes us look like we know what we're doing.

If there's one piece of advice I could give you, it's to put the Windows bias against the console away and get to know it. Linux is getting there on the desktop but you can still save an awful lot of p1ssing about using the console for certain things. One example is installing packages, I find most of the GUIfied package managers woeful, they just seem a waste of time when you can rpm -UVh and just be done with it.

that IS useful, not a good idea to open this up to the outside world though..

Hit the Webmin tab, then Webmin Configuration and IP Access Control. If it's for you local machine and you don't need to access it from somewhere else, fire 127.0.0.1 in there and you're done.

adam

bminish

Any Advice on How to set up basic NAT either using webadmin or by setting up the appropriate Ip chains.
I am getting to like the command line more every day..

Currently the setup looks like this

eth0 (192.168.0.10) is what connects to the outside (via Win2k ICS Nat) and eth1 (192.168.1.1)
is the other side that I would like to provide nat to.
It would be good if the linux box did the DNS as well so that all the macines on the other side of the nat don't need to be told about the external DNS servers

oscarBravo

On my Debian router I used ipmasq - not sure if that's a Debian-specific package. It sets up a basic NAT firewall - as secure and responsive as I need it to be, on a Pentium-166.

I also installed dnsmasq to handle the DNS forwarding. It's not a DNS daemon, it just does exactly what you said - forwards DNS requests to the real server.

oscarBravo

Just had a quick glance at the webmin firewall module: looks like it might do the job nicely for you. When you go into it for the first time, it notices that you have no firewall setup, and prompts for how you would like to set it up. One option is to do network address translation on a selected interface - eth0 in your case.

bminish

Originally posted by oscarBravo
..... When you go into it for the first time, it notices that you have no firewall setup, and prompts for how you would like to set it up. One option is to do network address translation on a selected interface - eth0 in your case.

This is the case if you haven't already messed things up trying to do it manually!
ipsmasq would appear not to be installed in RH9

oscarBravo

Hm. Remove ipchains (or iptables, what kernel are you using?) completely (I assume RPM has a 'purge' or 'clean' option that will scrub configuration files) and reinstall?

bminish

Originally posted by oscarBravo
Hm. Remove ipchains (or iptables, what kernel are you using?) completely (I assume RPM has a 'purge' or 'clean' option that will scrub configuration files) and reinstall?

After some more messing I have managed to get NAt working (& learned a bit on the way..) Now to get DNS working, for this do I need to run BIND DNS server or is there an easier way ?


dnsmasq isn't on this distro, can I download it from some place?

oscarBravo

http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html

bminish

Thanks Paul, that worked a treat.

Is there any way I can mount (read only will do) network directories from my win2k machine. I can see them and copy stuff to the Linux machine using Samba but it would be nice to be able to access documents and files directly without having to copy each file over first.

.Brendan

oscarBravo

If you want to mount win2k shares on your Linux box, install the Samba filesystem, smbfs. Then you can either "mount -t smbfs //win2k/share /mnt/share", or add an entry to your /etc/fstab. Look here for some pointers - I had to figure all this stuff out over the past few days.

If you want to see shared directories from the Linux box on the win2k machine, set them up in /etc/smb.conf. You need to set up Samba users separately from Linux users, using smbpasswd. Look at the man pages for smb.conf and smbpasswd for more info.

bminish

That worked a treat

I added the shares to /etc/fstab like so

//desktop/c /mnt/c smbfs username=someuser,password=somepass,rw
//desktop/d /mnt/d smbfs username=someuser,password=somepass,rw