New to Linux - PLEASE HELP!!!!

pablogosse

Hi all. I've just been given a laptop which I'll be using for the next few months.

It's running Redhat 8.0, and to quote my sys admin:

"I did a fairly barebones installation: you won't have any compilers but it does have Postgresql, Apache and PHP as well as the usual editors and other utilities.

I haven't done any extra configuration on the system -- it's pretty much as it was immediately after installation."

Now, my sysadmin isn't around presently, and won't be for a while, so I'm on my own as to getting this thing up and running, and I need to start working on it asap.

Here's what I need to do:

1) Be able to copy files from a floppy disk on to the system (this laptop has no network or internet access)

2) Be able to start/restart/stop Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL

3) View my files locally through http://localhost/blah/file.php

4) Make modifications as necessary to php.ini and httpd.conf.

I've actually been working with unix/linux off and on since about '97, but believe it or not this is the first time I'll ever have had to work directly on a system running linux. I'm excited about it, but it's got me a little flustered. Every other linux/unix system I've worked with has been fully functional, with everything set up for me, and this laptop is the complete antithesis of anything I've worked with before.

If anyone can provide ANY advice on somewhere I could go online that would give me a decent tutorial in these things, or if anyone would be kind enough to give instructions here, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,
Pablo

dalecosp

OOh, boy...bash, I presume? Or are we talking GUI/X Windows? For the shell....

Use 'whereis' to find files and programs:

$whereis php.ini

$whereis ed

For modifying your php.ini/httpd.conf, I'd find out what editors I had available. vi and emacs are die hard UNIX emphasize hard (for beginners); I hear that Linux usually has vim, which is a bit lighter; ed is very limited. you might look for ee, pico, nano.... if whereis doesn't help you find them, look in /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin,
/usr/local/sbin, and so on.... if you can't call them by name from the commandline, check your $PATH environment variable.

I hear that Linux manpages are pretty lousy, but they should be there. Try 'man mount' for mounting the floppy drive, and there should be manpages for most installed binaries (like the editors I mentioned).

To restart apache, try:

$apachectl restart  (or stop, or start, or configtest)

If that doesn't work, you can call the apache binary directly if you know where it is.

$/usr/local/apache/bin/httpd restart

If PHP is installed as an Apache module, then you don't/can't turn it off. If a 'whereis PHP' gets you an answer, it's probably installed as a binary; otherwise you'll see stuff related to it in the httpd.conf file if it's "mod_php".

You'll have to get other help for PostGre; I do MySQL and am terrible at it, sorry.....

Oh, to view stuff. Gotta have GUI for that, and that's not my alley either... if you can find netscape or opera and call them up, maybe they'll do startx (or xdm or whatever) themselves, but I'm not into that....

HTH,

SELF-EDIT: FWIW, I've got UNIXHELP installed at www.daleco.biz
(free stuff from some University somewhere). Won't help with X Windows/GUI, but it's got a lot of terminology and stuff about the shell(s), even some things about editors, I believe.

id10t

Why not just "hack" the root password? Once you have root, you can do anything you'd like - including installing whatever you need, such as recompiling apache/php to add functionality.

Get the first 2 floppies to boot from, boot with the first, get to the installer and hit alt-f2 to give you a console. Mount the drive, find the etc/passwd and etc/shadow and remove the hashed password for root. Reboot as normal, login as root with no password, and set the root password to something you like.

Anyway, once you have root, you will have full access to do anything you like - which you will need if you run Apache off port 80, etc.

jerdo

Why go through all that? You can just force the OS to boot single and change the password from there.