getting started in Unix...

LoLth

I gots the book.

I gots online tutorials

Now all I need is the OS (I've even got a machine to throw it onto!)

Anyone know where I can get a nice vanilla unix OS?

moist

www.bsdmall.com
(which is actually mall.daemonnews.org but hey! )

Hecate

Give NetBSD a go if your looking for a vanilla system.

It's very lightweight and you can get ports of it for nearly every platform going.

quozl

i appreciate you people all have your own little evangelical agendas. But what kind of gobsh1tes suggests netbsd or any BSD frankly, to an obvious unix newbie.
Redhat, or mandrake (even simpler) are about as easy an introduction to unix as you will find. Or perhaps SuSe Live? Runs from the CD, doesnt even install, but is a complete SuSe distribution with X et al.
Simplicity, a good graphical installer (hah at netBSD's offering), and configuration tools that are as simple as windows, is whats required.
As for the vanilla, I'd suggest he ment 'standard' by that. Which redhat is rapidly becoming. And no I'm not a particular fan of RH, but I dislike to see newbies being given such woeful advice. It'll just put them off the varius *nixs.
quozl

Hecate

well excuse me for offering advice

by vanilla unix os I thought he meant somthing lightweight.

Typedef

If by vanilla you mean [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.]
then I really think you need like professional help - & I mean serious professional help.

If on the other hand you mean "whereas vanilla simply means `ordinary'." then how about Suse to start and then move to Debian & SLACKWARE once you have become one with the force?

flamegrill

Slackware is a good place to start.

i started with slackware quite some time back and i still use it at home and on my host in the USA where the below website is hosted.

Basically, its simple. Layed out very nicely more closely related to an actual UNIX os. By that i mean the file system structure for configurations is quite standard, unlike mandrake or redhat.
e.g /etc/rc.d/rc.* is simple and east to make changes. in redhat and mandrake all this is thrown out the window. and can be quite confusing. best to stay away from such setups as headaches will follow otherwise.

Debian is also setup quit similar although its a wee bit more technical than slackware and can be a bit confusing at times.


So in closing i suggest you get one of the two that I and others have mentioned. (i can smell phaxx adding a post to this thread later tonight) install them and you will learn a lot. and dont forget to post to boards with problems, but ill say one thing about that, do us all a favour first. goto www.google.com and RTFM.
thanx.

logic1

I'd have to agree with Quozl here. The guy wants the simpliest version of unix/linux available to start off on. I wouldn't recommend *BSD to any one new to *nix.

If the elitist BSD snobs want to show off that's fine but don't lead new guys astray.

/me giggles and botts up freeBSD.

.logic.

Ronin

Nice one greg, finally someone decided enough is enough.

This board is too cluttered in my os is soo much better then yours crap.

Every distro has good points and bad points.

But for a simple install any of the linux's is the place to start.

Speaking of which, think I'll install all the various distro's and do a round up on ease of install.

Lets try answer peoples questions rather then put forward how cool the distro you use is.

Ro

Typedef

I couldn't agree more, if windows/Red-Hat/Mandrake users would just accept that their os were totally useless and resource hogs and everyone would realise that Slackware and FreeBSD kicked ass then surely we would all be well on the way to having a nice ilucidated Asimovian culture where large brained robots would do all the commerce (presumably running Slackware or FreeBSD) , which would eventaully eliminate imbalance,injustice and windows.

At this point surely we could all become non-corporeal beings and become part of the Q continuum - though seeing as how the continuum would be running (Slackware or FreeBSD) we would all be benovalent & peace loving Q right?

QED.

Ronin

another pointless post about your OS of choice being better...

but a well, least it keeps posts on the unix board..

I think its time to install slackware again, haven't done so in a while, years in fact, see its improved at all...sucked the last time i used it..

q someone waffling about power users and security..

Do many people use unix as there main desktop in work and at home, or just someit to play with..good idea for a thread..

Ro

LoLth

thanks for the suggestions. Yes, by vanilla I meant lightweight.

Basically I'm looking for the DOS-like OS.

I do have RedHat on CD though so I might give that a go. I take it linux has a dos-prompt-like option in it or is it gui based all the way through?

I have a trial version of SuSe as well so oi'll have a peek at that as well.

What I need at teh moment is something I can practise any shell scripts I write on before putting them up on a server (don't want to go testing sripts on a server.. especially in an OS I don't know!).

question on the fuser command by the way, (checked the maual but the detail I need isn't there...).

if I fuser and it returns the current status of the file how do I say:

if it's in use, wait a bit and try fuser again. give up after 5 attempts.

I'm guessing it uses the Until command with a counter that goes n=n+1 and test n=5, but how do I include that with the "if it's in use" condition? the || option? Not asking for someone to do my homework for me but I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around the basic rules of conditionals etc. so any help or examples would be appreciated.

moist

Well I don't think you can do that with the fuser command its slef, you would have to do it with
your script.
You could use the environment vairable to get the
exit status of the command after you run it.
$? for sh derrivitives and $status for csh.

fred:~$ fuser /
/: 529r 529c 6967r 6976r 7010r 7429r 7432r 7433r 7437r 7512r
fred:~$ echo $?
0
fred:~$ fuser blah.tst
fred:~$ echo $?
1

Although I think that could get a bit messy when your looping through a few statements.

You could test weather there was any output from
the command, the general way to test weather a variable contains any data is:

[ "x$var" = "x" ]

So, if $var contains "foo" you will be testing weather "xfoo" is equal to "x" which is fase.
But if $var was empty you would be comparing "x" to "x".
The reason for the "x" is because the test(1) command can get a bit quirky if one of the
operands is missing, generally your ok if you quote them, but sometimes....

Then you would use && to see if you were getting output from 'fuser' and that your count was still
less than 5.

ehh... somthing like the following should do...

#!/bin/sh
FILE=/path/to/file
X=0

[ ! -e $FILE ] && echo "File does not exist ! " && exit 0

while true
do
        if [ "x$(fuser $FILE)" != "x" ]  && [ "$X" -lt "5" ]
        then
                echo "In use ! "
                sleep 1
                X=$(($X+1))
        else
                if [ "x$(fuser $FILE)" != "x" ]
                then
                        echo "File still open, giving up after 5 attempts..." 
                else
                        echo "File not in use ! "
                fi

                break

        fi
        
done

There is probably a better way of doing what you want, though I can't think of a shell script way
at the moment, generally I would advisary locking in C.

If you are interested the O'Reilly book "UNIX Power Tools" is great for general shell scripting
and showing you how to stick general utilities together.


As far as what OS you should go with, all UNIXes are generally the same on the command line.
They have somewhat different commands and some commands have different options and do things
differently, although most of the Free ones have
GNU utilities (even solaris comes with them now).

So yeah, you can install just the base system (i.e. no X-windows) with RedHat, Mandrake, Suse and the *BSD's.