Red Hat Linux 7.3 the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide
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Red Hat Linux 7.3 The Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide Red Hat Linux 7.3: The Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide Copyright © 2002 by Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, Inc. 1801 Varsity Drive Raleigh NC 27606-2072 USA Phone: +1 919 754 3700 Phone: 888 733 4281 Fax: +1 919 754 3701 PO Box 13588 Research Triangle Park NC 27709 USA rhl-rg(EN)-7.3-HTML-RHI (2002-04-05T17:09-0400) Copyright © 2002 by Red Hat, Inc. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, V1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/). Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Distribution of the work or derivative of the work in any standard (paper) book form for commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder. The admonition graphics (note, tip, and so on) were created by Marianne Pecci <[email protected]>. They may be redistributed with written permission from Marianne Pecci and Red Hat, Inc.. Red Hat, Red Hat Network, the Red Hat "Shadow Man" logo, RPM, Maximum RPM, the RPM logo, Linux Library, PowerTools, Linux Undercover, RHmember, RHmember More, Rough Cuts, Rawhide and all Red Hat-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Motif and UNIX are registered trademarks of The Open Group. Intel and Pentium are a registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Itanium and Celeron are trademarks of Intel Corporation. AMD, AMD Athlon, AMD Duron, and AMD K6 are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Netscape is a registered trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation in the United States and other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. SSH and Secure Shell are trademarks of SSH Communications Security, Inc. FireWire is a trademark of Apple Computer Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. The Red Hat Linux Product Documentation Team consists of the following people: Sandra A. Moore, Product Documentation Manager — Primary Writer/Maintainer of the Official Red Hat Linux x86 Installation Guide; Contributing Writer to the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide Tammy Fox, Product Documentation Technical Lead — Primary Writer/Maintainer of the Official Red Hat Linux Customization Guide; Contributing Writer to the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide; Writer/Maintainer of custom DocBook stylesheets and scripts Edward C. Bailey, Technical Writer — Contributing Writer to the Official Red Hat Linux x86 Installation Guide Johnray Fuller, Technical Writer — Primary Writer/Maintainer of the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide John Ha, Technical Writer — Contributing Writer to the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................ix 1. Finding Appropriate Documentation ............................................................................ix 1.1. Documentation For First-Time Linux Users ................................................... x 1.2. For the More Experienced.................................................................................xi 1.3. Documentation for Linux Gurus ....................................................................xii 2. Document Conventions ..................................................................................................xii 3. Using the Mouse ..............................................................................................................xv 4. Copying and Pasting Text With X..................................................................................xv 5. More to Come ...................................................................................................................xv 5.1. We Need Feedback!..........................................................................................xvi 6. Sign Up for Support........................................................................................................xvi I. System Reference ..................................................................................................................... xvii 1. File System Structure....................................................................................................... 19 1.1. Why Share a Common Structure? .................................................................. 19 1.2. Overview of File System Hierarchy Standard (FHS)................................... 19 1.3. Special File Locations ....................................................................................... 23 2. The /proc File System..................................................................................................... 25 2.1. A Virtual File System........................................................................................ 25 2.2. Top-Level Files in /proc .................................................................................. 26 2.3. Directories in /proc.......................................................................................... 39 2.4. Using sysctl ..................................................................................................... 55 2.5. Additional Resources ....................................................................................... 55 3. Boot Process, Init, and Shutdown.................................................................................. 57 3.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 57 3.2. Behind the Scenes of the Boot Process ........................................................... 57 3.3. Sysconfig Information ...................................................................................... 63 3.4. Init Runlevels..................................................................................................... 75 3.5. Running Programs at Boot Time..................................................................... 77 3.6. Shutting Down .................................................................................................. 77 3.7. Differences in the Boot Process of Other Architectures............................... 77 4. GRUB ................................................................................................................................. 79 4.1. Defining GRUB.................................................................................................. 79 4.2. Terminology....................................................................................................... 81 4.3. Interfaces ............................................................................................................ 83 4.4. Commands......................................................................................................... 84 4.5. The Menu Configuration File.......................................................................... 85 4.6. Additional Resources ....................................................................................... 87 5. The ext3 File System ........................................................................................................ 89 5.1. Features of ext3.................................................................................................. 89 5.2. Creating an ext3 File System ........................................................................... 90 5.3. Converting to an ext3 File System .................................................................. 92 5.4. Reverting to an ext2 File System..................................................................... 93 6. Users and Groups ............................................................................................................ 95 6.1. Tools for User and Group Administration .................................................... 95 6.2. Standard Users .................................................................................................. 95 6.3. Standard Groups ............................................................................................... 96 6.4. User Private Groups ......................................................................................... 98 6.5. Shadow Utilities .............................................................................................. 100 7. X Servers and Clients..................................................................................................... 101 7.1. The Power of X ................................................................................................ 101 7.2. The XFree86 Server ......................................................................................... 102 7.3. Desktop Environments and Window Managers ........................................ 106 7.4. Runlevels.......................................................................................................... 108 7.5. Fonts.................................................................................................................. 109 7.6. Additional Resources ..................................................................................... 111