Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 07:57:16 +1000 From: "Sue Blake" <sue@welearn.com.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: It's the little things... Message-ID: <199610082159.HAA24542@mail.zip.com.au>
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Hi folks
My first post so of course it's full of questions, sorry :-)
I installed FreeBSD from CD to a second SCSI disk 6.5 days ago, then
read everything in sight (handbook, faq, man, o'reilly), rebuilt the
kernel, set up ppp, xwindows, etc. No probs at all with the hard
stuff because it's pretty well documented. But the little things are
driving me berzerk.
Pick a question:
Sometimes I can't access all the commands, and sometimes I can, and
I can't find a pattern to it. When the _first_ login after booting
is _root_ on console _one_ there seems to be no problem. Or is this
just coincidence? I know it's a FAQ. I searched the WWW site for
half an hour and found many prior questions on this, but no answers.
To be able to su root, do I just add my name to wheel in the group
file? I did this and rebooted, but it didn't seem to work properly.
The installation material implies that right after install you can
and should use su, but that's far from the case.
How can I set the prompt (to username and/or working directory... any
damn thing other than the machine name)? I'm using tcsh for myself
(set up with sysinstall's facility) and the default as root. I've
systematically edited and retried every dot file in my dir and can't make it
change. The files in /etc that look relevant are blank except for
comments.
I believe I shouldn't change root's shell, but I'd like a command
history. Is there any problem with simply logging in as root then typing
tcsh? If that's ok, would it also be available (or advisable) in
single user mode? And if not, how does root erase the "[" or "]" that
remains after accidentally pressing the up-arrow and erasing most of
the resultant junk from the command line?
How do you install the ports or packages which auto-request the files
by ftp? It doesn't seem to initiate ppp so I ran user ppp first,
connected with my ISP, then ran sysinstall. Whoo! Screen went blank
and keyboard locked until I switched the modem off. Is this the wrong
procedure or a misconfig?
Minicom is very badly behaved. I think it's terminal emulation
problems. I've set it to vt100. Funny characters appear on screen,
and Minicom keeps responding with its signature (Minicom v.xxx...) and
strings that look something like "Muummuunnnuy!nnnnumy". Even when I
first told my console to use vt100 instead of cons25 (through tcsh
for me, and also during the root login question) it didn't help minicom.
Not having a viable zmodem further insulates me from the non-Internet
world, but that's another issue. Is minicom being silly or am I?
What's _the_most_proper_ way to stop everything before turning the
machine off? I could not find anything written about this!! Surely
turning the power off is not kosher :-) Should I use shutdown or
halt? (Indeed, how was I to know that these commands existed?) They
don't seem to do a great deal, or leave me in single user mode ready
for login, not knowing if at that point it's safe to turn off power
or not. This is a most serious omission in the reading matter, or I
need new glasses.
What's the deal with MFS? I reckon I don't need half of my 64 megs of
ram so it'd be useful as /tmp. Am I reading this right? If so, what's
the syntax to tell the kernel how much ram MFS can have? I think it's
taking the lot (because I didn't say how much) and that might be a
bad thing, so I've unmounted MFS though there were no ill effects
while I was feeling bolder.
I was naughty and set my swap to only 70 megs. If I donate 32 megs
to MFS (if that's how it works) then I guess 70 is fine. Otherwise I
know it's no good. Which device will explode in my face if swap is
only half its suggested size, and will I still be alive to ask you
more questions?
My preferred text editor is joe. I found a copy and extracted the
contents. Having no idea what I was doing I typed 'make' and found an
executable which I put in bin and a .joerc which I put in my own dir.
So far it works but am I playing with fire?
TIA if you can help with any of these.
I'll return the favour one day.
Regards,
-*Sue*-
Regards,
-*Sue*-
Internet: sue@welearn.com.au Fidonet: 3:712/404 Modem: +61-2-665-2917
Solids: Sue Blake, PO Box K73, Haymarket NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.welearn.com.au/ Learning and teaching together
http://www.welearn.com.au/srcc/ Strathfield College
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