From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Apr 15 05:12:50 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id FAA14106 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 05:12:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from po9.andrew.cmu.edu (PO9.ANDREW.CMU.EDU [128.2.10.109]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA14101 for ; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 05:12:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from postman@localhost) by po9.andrew.cmu.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA01305; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:12:37 -0400 Received: via switchmail; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:12:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix28.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:11:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix28.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:11:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from Messages.8.5.N.CUILIB.3.45.SNAP.NOT.LINKED.unix28.andrew.cmu.edu.HP9000.777 via MS.5.6.unix28.andrew.cmu.edu.hp700_ux90; Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:11:39 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <0lQXnv200YUf021VA0@andrew.cmu.edu> Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 08:11:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert N Watson To: Brill Pappin Subject: Re: help for a "dos'sy" CC: freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <316FD3EA.414@nation.org> References: <316FD3EA.414@nation.org> Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk There are two parts to this email -- first, a question of minor importance, and second, an attempt to answer your question. First: there are some funny codes in your email, I was wondering what email package you used, and whether you knew if it uses RTF or etc. I'm curious about what the codes are produced by, as I have seen them in quite a few emails/posts, and they probably get inserted by some common mailer that I don't use :). With regards to your question -- I would personally invest in "Unix System Administration Essentials" by O'Reilly and Associates (publisher). Release 2 if possible. It is a really good book that covers most everything one would need to know. As a dos user who was thrown into Unix sysadmin without warning, and had to support a user base of 300-400 in two weeks time (that was 3 years ago) it was kind of a shock. :) Fortunately BSD came preinstalled (BSDI in this case, which is a commercial flavor of FreeBSD) and I had a tech support number, but it was a long road with no help. Take a look through the FreeBSD handbook on www.freebsd.org, keep in mind the "man" command which provides some limited information about the purpose and incantations of a command, eg., man ls man man etc. Also, use the "more" command to view the config files in /etc, they gave me a feel for what does what in unix just by virtue of seeing a lot of the settings. so: cd /etc more * might help. Press space to go down a page, q to quit at any time, and :n to skip to the next file. If this is too basic, my apologies :). Keep in mind that unix, being multi-user, is heavily oriented around mediating system resources and services, and that will show up a lot in anything you do on the system -- eg., file rights, user communication, etc. Feel free to email me (and presumably questions@freebsd.org) with questions you have :). Robert Watson rnw+@andrew.cmu.edu