Leah Cunningham, Karl Eichwalder, Stefan Fent, Werner Fink, Peter Findeisen, Dennis Geider, Viviane Glanz, Carsten Groß, Roland Haidl, Björn Jacke, Richard Jelinek, Hubert Mantel, Johannes Meixner, Edith Parzefall, Peter Pöml, Peter Reinhart, Marc Rührschneck, Thomas Schraitle, Klaus G. Wagner, Christian Zoz SuSE Linux 7.2 System and Reference Manual SuSE Inc. 580 2nd Street, #210 Oakland, CA 94607 USA Toll free phone number within the US and Canada: 1-888-UR-LINUX (1-888-875-4689) Phone.: +1-510-628-3380 Fax.: +1-510-628-3381 e-mail: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] WWW: http://www.suse.com Europe: SuSE Linux Ltd. The Kinetic Centre Theobald Street Borehamwood, WD6 4PJ UK Phone.: +44-20-8387-4088 Fax: +44-20-8387-4010 WWW: http://www.suse.co.uk SuSE GmbH Schanzäckerstr. 10 D-90443 Nürnberg Germany Tel.: +49-911-740-5331 Fax.: +49-911-741 77 55 e-mail: [email protected] WWW: http://www.suse.de Leah Cunningham, Karl Eichwalder, Stefan Fent, Werner Fink, Peter Findeisen, Dennis Geider, Viviane Glanz, Carsten Groß, Roland Haidl, Björn Jacke, Richard Jelinek, Hubert Mantel, Johannes Meixner, Edith Parzefall, Peter Pöml, Peter Reinhart, Marc Rührschneck, Thomas Schraitle, Klaus G. Wagner, Christian Zoz SuSE Linux 7.2 System and Reference Manual 1st edition 2001 SuSE GmbH Copyright This work is copyrighted by SuSE GmbH. You may copy it in whole or in part as long as the copies retain this copyright statement. Layout: LATEX English Translation and Editing: Rebecca Ellis, Marc Rührschneck Cover design based on graphics by Stephan Endraß. Design by Manuela Piotrowski. Geeko-Icons by Rolf Vogt. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. XFree86 ™ is a registered trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc. MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are: Clipper of Computer Associates, dBASE of Borland, Foxbase of Microsoft, Compuserve, T-Online of Deutsche Telekom, SuSE and YaST of SuSE GmbH . All trade names are used without the guarantee for their free use and are possibly registered trade marks. SuSE GmbH essentially follows the notations of the manufacturers. Other products mentioned in this manual may be trademarks of the respective manufacturer. Contents Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 What Is “Linux”? ......................... 1 1.2 Purpose of this Book – Notes on Usage ............. 2 1.3 Typographical Conventions – or What Does “earth:˜ # ls” Mean ............................... 3 1.4 Additional Linux Documentation ................. 3 1.5 Acknowledgments ........................ 5 2 Your first SuSE Linux installation 9 2.1 Installation with the Text-based YaST (YaST 1) ......... 9 2.1.1 Now We’re Starting: the Welcome Screen ........ 9 2.1.2 The Basics: linuxrc .................... 10 2.1.3 Installation with YaST .................. 14 2.1.4 Partitioning and Formatting the Hard Disk ........ 15 2.1.5 Installation of Software Packages ............ 17 2.1.6 Selection of the Base Software .............. 18 2.1.7 Installing System Software and Programs ........ 19 2.1.8 Selecting a Kernel for the System ............ 20 2.1.9 Base System Configuration with YaST .......... 21 2.1.10 Logging in After Your First Installation ......... 23 2.1.11 Shutting Down and Booting the System ......... 25 2.2 Starting SuSE Linux ....................... 26 2.3 Special Installations ........................ 28 2.3.1 Installation Without a Supported CD-ROM Drive .... 28 2.3.2 Automatic Installation and Configuration of SuSE Linux 29 2.4 Tips and Tricks .......................... 30 2.4.1 Creating Space for Linux (Partitioning) ......... 30 2.4.2 Booting with CD 2 .................... 33 2.4.3 Creating a Boot Disk In DOS .............. 33 2.4.4 Creating a Boot Disk with UNIX ............. 35 2.4.5 Does Linux support my CD-ROM? ........... 35 2.4.6 ATAPI CD-ROM Hangs While Reading ......... 36 i Contents 2.4.7 Problems with CD-ROM Drives on Parallel Port .... 37 2.4.8 Loadlin Doesn’t Have Enough Memory to Load the Kernel 38 2.4.9 Loadlin Doesn’t Start ................... 38 2.5 Partitioning Tips ......................... 38 2.6 Partitioning for Experts ...................... 40 2.6.1 Size of Swap Partition .................. 41 2.6.2 Computer Used as Stand-alone Machine ......... 41 2.6.3 Optimizations ....................... 42 3 YaST – Yet another Setup Tool 45 3.1 Basic Usage and Keyboard Layout ................ 45 3.2 The YaST Main Menu ....................... 45 3.3 Adjustments of Installation .................... 47 3.3.1 Selecting the Language .................. 47 3.3.2 Selecting Keyboard Layout ................ 47 3.3.3 Installation Medium ................... 47 3.3.4 Installation from CD-ROM ................ 48 3.3.5 Installation from a Hard Disk Partition .......... 48 3.3.6 Installation via NFS ................... 49 3.3.7 Installation from a Reachable Directory ......... 50 3.3.8 Installation via FTP .................... 51 3.3.9 Partitioning Your Hard Disk ............... 52 3.3.10 Setting Target Partitions/File systems .......... 54 3.3.11 Configuring Your Hard Disk Manually ......... 58 3.3.12 File systems and Mount Points .............. 60 3.3.13 Configuring the Logical Volume Manager ........ 64 3.3.14 Installation to a Directory ................ 65 3.4 Determining the Size of the Installation ............. 66 3.4.1 Load Configuration .................... 66 3.4.2 Save Configuration .................... 67 3.4.3 Changing Your Configuration .............. 67 3.4.4 What if... ......................... 69 3.4.5 Start Installation ..................... 70 3.4.6 Checking Package Dependencies ............ 70 3.4.7 Index of all Series and Packages ............. 70 3.4.8 Searching for Packages .................. 71 3.4.9 Installing Packages .................... 71 3.4.10 Deleting Packages .................... 72 3.5 Updating the System ....................... 72 ii Contents 3.6 System Administration ...................... 73 3.6.1 Integrating Hardware into the System .......... 73 3.6.2 Kernel and Boot Configuration .............. 75 3.6.3 Network Configuration .................. 78 3.6.4 Login configuration .................... 80 3.6.5 Settings for susewm (the Window Manager) ....... 81 3.6.6 User Administration ................... 81 3.6.7 Group Administration .................. 83 3.6.8 Creating Backups ..................... 84 3.6.9 System Security Settings ................. 85 3.6.10 Setting the Console Font ................. 85 3.6.11 Setting the time zone ................... 86 3.6.12 Configuring XFree86(TM) ................ 86 3.6.13 Configuring gpm ..................... 86 3.6.14 Changing the Configuration File ............. 87 4 Booting and Boot Managers 89 4.1 Booting a PC ........................... 89 4.2 Boot Concepts ........................... 90 4.3 An Overview of LILO ....................... 91 4.4 Configuring LILO ......................... 94 4.4.1 Structure of lilo.conf ................. 95 4.4.2 Other LILO Configuration Options ............ 97 4.5 Installing and Uninstalling LILO ................. 100 4.6 Creating a Linux Boot Disk .................... 102 4.7 Sample Configurations ...................... 104 4.7.1 DOS/Windows 95/98 and Linux ............. 104 4.7.2 Windows NT and Linux on One Hard Disk ....... 105 4.7.3 OS/2 and Linux ...................... 106 4.7.4 DOS, OS/2 and Linux .................. 107 4.8 LILO Problems .......................... 108 4.8.1 Diagnosis of Errors: LILO Start Messages ........ 108 4.8.2 The 1024-Cylinder Limit ................. 109 4.8.3 Special Boot Problems with Kernels from 2.0 Onwards . 110 4.9 Starting via loadlin ........................ 113 4.9.1 Necessary Steps for all loadlin Users ........... 114 4.9.2 Setting up Boot Menus .................. 114 4.9.3 Starting Linux from Within Windows .......... 116 4.9.4 The Windows Boot Menu ................ 117 iii Contents 5 The X Window System 121 5.1 Historical Background ...................... 121 5.2 The New Version 4.0 of XFree86 ................. 122 5.3 Configuration Using SaX2 .................... 124 5.3.1 First-time installation ................... 124 5.3.2 Reconfiguring ....................... 134 5.3.3 Troubleshooting ..................... 135 5.3.4 The X server logfile ................... 139 5.3.5 Starting the X Window System .............. 141 5.4 Configuration Using SaX ..................... 142 5.4.1 Reconfiguring ....................... 150 5.4.2 Troubleshooting ..................... 150 5.5 Configuration Using xf86config .................. 151 5.6 Optimizing the Installation of the X Window System ...... 158 5.6.1 Inserting Additional (True Type) Fonts ......... 162 5.6.2 Setting up input devices ................. 165 5.6.3 3D acceleration ...................... 166 6 Linux and Hardware 169 6.1 Preliminary Notes ......................... 169 6.2 Cards ............................... 169 6.2.1 PCI and ISA Cards .................... 169 6.3 Sound Cards ............................ 173 6.3.1 Configuring Sound Cards with YaST2 .......... 173 6.3.2 Configuring Your Sound Card With alsaconf ...... 173 6.4 Ports on a Computer ....................... 175 6.4.1 PS/2 Ports ......................... 175 6.4.2 Serial Ports ........................ 175 6.4.3 Parallel Ports ....................... 175 6.4.4 USB – Universal Serial Bus ............... 177 6.5 Removable Drives ......................... 180 6.5.1 Floppy Disk Drives .................... 180 6.5.2 LS-120 Drives .....................