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What Is Linux? Linux is the kernel of operating systems that look like and perform as

How to Get Started There are a handful of major Linux distributions. For information about

What Software does Linux Support? All of the standard open source utilities, like GCC,

How to Find a Particular Application Look first in the Linux Software Map. It's at: ftp://

What Hardware Is Supported? A minimal Linux installation requires a machine for which a

Ports to Other Processors The Web site, Overview of Linux Ports: http://www.itp.uni-hannov

Disk Space Requirements: Minimal, Server, and Workstation About 10Mb for a very minimal instal

Minimum and Maximum Memory Requirements At least 4MB, and then you will need to use special in

Does Linux Support Universal System Bus Devices? Linux supports a few dozen USB devices

What Is Linux's Open-Source License? The Linux trademark belongs to Linus Torvalds. He

Is Linux *nix? Not officially, until it passes the Open Group's certification tests,

Where Is the Latest Kernel Version on the Internet? Make that versions. The 2.0 series

Where Is the Documentation? Look in the following places, and the sites that mirror the

Where Is the Linux Stuff on the World Wide Web? In addition to the Linux Documentation

What News Groups Are There for Linux? Comp.os.linux.announce is the moderated announcem

What Other FAQ's and Documentation Are There for Linux? There are a number of special i

Where Are the Linux FTP Archives? There are three main archive sites for Linux:

How To Get Linux without FTP Access The easiest thing is probably to find a friend with FTP ac

How To Get Information without Usenet Access A digest of comp.os.linux.announce is available b

What Mailing Lists Are There? The Linux developers now mainly use the Majordomo server

Where Are Linux Legal Issues Discussed? On the linux-legal mailing list, of course. You

Sources of Information for Unmaintained Free Software Projects There are Web pages at: http://

Are the News Groups Archived Anywhere? The Usenet Linux news groups are archived at

Where To Find Information About Security Related Issues There's a page of Linux related securi

Where To Find Linux System Specifications As a start, look at the Linux Standards Base, ht

Can Linux Use the Same Hard Drive as MS-DOS? OS/2? 386BSD? Win95? Yes. Linux uses the s

How To Access Files on a MS-DOS Partition or Floppy Use the DOS file system, type, for example

Does Linux Support Compressed Ext2 File Systems? The ext2compr project provides a kerne

Can Linux Use Stacked/DBLSPC/Etc Until recently, not very easily. You can access DOS 6.X volum

Can Linux Access OS/2 HPFS Partitions? Yes, but Linux access to HPFS partitions is read

Can Linux Access Amiga File Systems? The Linux kernel has support for the Amiga Fast Fi

Can Linux Access BSD, SysV, Etc Recent kernels can mount (read only) the UFS file system used

Can Linux Access SMB File Systems? Linux supports read/write access of Windows for Work

Can Linux Access Macintosh File Systems? There is a set of user-level programs that rea

Can Linux Run Microsoft Windows Programs? WINE, a MS Windows emulator for Linux, is sti

Where Is Information about NFS Compatibility? This information is partly taken from Nic

Can Linux Use True Type Fonts? Yes. There are a number of True Type font servers for th

Can Linux Boot from MS-DOS? If LILO doesn't work, and if the machine has MS-DOS or Micr

How Can Linux Boot from OS/2's Boot Manager? 1. Create a partition using OS/2's FDISK.

How To Get Linux to Work with a Disk If your disk is an IDE or EIDE drive, you should read the

How To Undelete Files In general, this is very hard to do on unices because of their multi

How To Make Backups You can back up a directory hierarchy or complete file system to any m

How To Resize a Partition (Non-Destructively) Use the FIPS.EXE program, included with most Lin

Is There a Defragmenter for Ext2fs? Yes. There is defrag, a Linux file system defragmen

How To Create a File System on a Floppy To format a 3.5-inch, high density floppy: $

Does Linux Support Virtualized File Systems Like RAID? The most recent Linux kernels su

Does Linux Support File System Encryption? Yes. One file system, ppdd, is archived at

Linux Prints Nasty Messages about Inodes, Blocks, and the Like You may have a corrupted file s

The Swap Area Isn't Working When you boot (or enable swapping manually) you should see

How To Add Temporary Swap Space In addition to a swap partition, Linux can also use a swap fil

How To Remove LILO So the System Boots DOS Again? The lilo program (not the complete LI

Why Does fdformat Require Superuser Privileges? The system call to format a floppy can

The System Checks the Ext2fs Partitions Each Reboot Refer to ("EXT2-fs: warning: mounting unch

Root File System Is Read-Only Remount it. If /etc/fstab is correct, you can simply type:

What Is /proc/kcore? None of the files in /proc are really there--they're all, "pretend

The AHA1542C Doesn't Work with Linux The option to allow disks with more than 1024 cylinders,

Where Is the Journalling File System on the Net? The journalling file system, named Rei

How To Compile Programs Most Linux software is written in C and compiled with the GNU C co

How To Install GNU Software On a correctly configured system, installing a GNU software packag

Where To Get Java The Sun Microsystems Java runtime environments and developer's kits are

How To Port XXX to Linux In general, *nix programs need very little porting. Simply follow the

What Is ld.so and How To Get It? ld.so is the dynamic library loader. Each binary using

How To Upgrade the Libraries without Trashing the System Warning Note: You should alw

How To Use Code or a Compiler Compiled for a 486 on a 386 Yes, unless it's the kernel.

What Does "gcc -O6" Do? Currently, the same as -O2 (GCC 2.5) or -O3 (GCC 2.6, 2.7). Any

Where Are linux/*.h and asm/*.h? The files /usr/include/linux/ and /usr/include/asm/ ar

What To Do about Errors Trying to Compile the Kernel See the previous question regarding the h

How To Make a Shared Library For ELF, $ gcc -fPIC -c *.c $ gcc -shared -Wl,-sonam

Programs Are Very Large With an ELF compiler ("What's All This about ELF? glibc?"), the most

Does Linux Support Threads or Lightweight Processes? As well as the Unix multiprocessin

Where To Find lint for Linux Roughly equivalent functionality is built into GCC. Use the -Wall

Where To Find Kermit for Linux Kermit is distributed under a non-GPL copyright that makes its

How To Use Linux with a Cable Modem The www.CablemodemInfo.com and xDSL Web page at http:/

Is There an ICQ Program That Runs under Linux? Several ICQ clients are available on met

FTP Transfers Seem to Hang FTP transfers that die suddenly are due, apparently, to some form o

Free Dumps Core In Linux 1.3.57 and later, the format of /proc/meminfo was changed in a wa

Netscape Crashes Frequently Netscape shouldn't crash, if it and the network are properly c

FTP or Telnet Server Won't Allow Logins This applies to server daemons that respond to clients

How To Keep Track of Bookmarks in Netscape? This probably applies to most other browser

The Computer Has the Wrong Time There are two clocks in your computer. The hardware (CMOS) clo

Setuid Scripts Don't Seem to Work That's right. This feature has been disabled in the Linux ke

Free Memory as Reported by free Keeps Shrinking The "free" figure printed by free doesn't incl

When Adding More Memory, the System Slows to a Crawl This is a common symptom of a failure to

Some Programs (E.g You are probably using non-shadow password programs and are using shado

Some Programs Allow Logins with No Password You probably have the same problem as in ("Some Pr

The Machine Runs Very Slowly with GCC / X / .. You may have too little real memory. If you hav

System Only Allows Root Logins You probably have some permission problems, or you have a file

The Screen Is All Full of Weird Characters Instead of Letters You probably sent some binary da

I Screwed Up the System and Can't Log In to Fix It Reboot from an emergency floppy or floppy p

I Forgot the root Password Note: Incorrectly editing any of the files in the /etc/ directory c

There's a Huge Security Hole in rm! No there isn't. You are obviously new to unices and

lpr and/or lpd Don't Work First make sure that your /dev/lp* port is correctly configured. Its

Timestamps on Files on MS-DOS Partitions Are Set Incorrectly There is a bug in the prog

How To Get LILO to Boot the Kernel Image From kernel versions 1.1.80 on, the compressed kernel

System. How To Make Sure the System Boots after Re-Installing the Operating System. T

The PCMCIA Card Doesn't Work after Upgrading the Kernel The PCMCIA Card Services modules, whic

How To Remove (or Change) the Colors in the ls Display The shell command, "unalias ls," should

Why Won't a Program Work in the Current Directory? Because the current directory (i.e.,

How To Find Out If a Notebook Runs Linux There's no fixed answer to this question, because not

Installing Linux Using FTP Most distributions are too large and complex to make FTP installati

Resuming an Interrupted Download You can use the "reget" command of the standard ftp client pr

Boot-Time Configuration You can configure Linux at the lilo: prompt either by typing the k

Formatting Man Pages without man or groff The man2html program translates groff text to HTML,

How To Scroll Backwards in Text Mode With the default US keymap, you can use Shift with the Pg

How To Get Email to Work For sending mail via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and rec

Sendmail Pauses for Up to a Minute at Each Command Make sure that Sendmail can resolve your ho

How To Enable and Select Virtual Consoles In text mode, press the left Alt-F1 to Alt-F12 to se

How To Set the Time Zone Change directory to /usr/lib/zoneinfo/. Get the time zone package if

Dial-up PPP Configuration This information is mainly for people who do not have a wrapper

What Version of Linux and What Machine Name Is This? Type: $ uname -a

What Is a "core" File? A core file is created when a program terminates unexpectedly, d

How To Enable or Disable Core Dumps By using the ulimit command in bash, the limit command in

How To Upgrade/Recompile a Kernel See the Kernel HOWTO or the README files which come with the

Can Linux Use More than 3 Serial Ports by Sharing Interrupts? Yes, but you won't be abl

Configuring Emacs's Default Settings Create a file in your home directory named .emacs with th

How To Make a Rescue Floppy Make a file system on it with bin, etc, lib and dev directorie

How To Remap a Keyboard to UK, French, Etc.? For recent kernels, get /pub/Linux/system/

How To Get NUM LOCK to Default to On Use the setleds program, for example (in /etc/rc.local or

How To Set (Or Reset) Initial Terminal Colors The following shell script should work for VGA c

How To Have More Than 128Mb of Swap Use several swap partitions or swap files. Linux kernels b

How To Program XYZ Under Linux Read the manuals, or a good book on Unix and the manual pages (

What's All This about ELF? glibc? See the ELF HOWTO by Daniel Barlow. Note that this is

How To Determine What Packages Are Installed on a System For distributions that use RPM format

What Is a .gz File? And a .tgz? And .bz2? And.. gz (and .z) files are compressed using GNU gzi

What Does VFS Stand For? Virtual File System. It's the abstraction layer between the us

What is a BogoMip? "BogoMips" is a combination of Bogus and Mips. MIPS stands for (

What Online/Free Periodicals Exist for Linux? There are a number of recent additions to

How Many People Use Linux? Linux is freely available, and no one is required to registe

How Many People Use Linux? (Redux.) In 1999, International Data Corporation released it

What Is the Best (Distribution|SCSI Card|Editor|CD-ROM Drive|....) The "best" of anythi

How Does One Pronounce Linux? This question produces an outrageous amount of heated deb

Modprobe Can't Locate Module, XXX, and Similar Messages These types of messages mostly occur a

Unknown Terminal Type "linux" and Similar In early kernels the default console terminal type h

INET: Warning: old style ioctl.. You are trying to use the old network configuration utilities

ld: unrecognized option '-m486' You have an old version of ld. Install a newer binutils

GCC Says, "Internal compiler error." If the fault is repeatable (i.e., it always happen

Make Says, "Error 139." Your compiler (GCC) dumped core. You probably have a corrupted,

Shell-Init: Permission Denied when I Log In Your root directory and all the directories up to

No Utmp Entry Your /var/run/utmp is screwed up. You should have /var/run/utmp

Warning--bdflush Not Running Modern kernels use a better strategy for writing cached disk bloc

Warning: obsolete routing request made This is nothing to worry about. The message means that

EXT2-fs: warning: mounting unchecked file system You need to run e2fsck (or fsck -t ext2 if yo

EXT2-fs warning: maximal count reached This message is issued by the kernel when it mounts a f

EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached Kernels from 1.0 onwards support checking a file system bas

df Says, "Cannot read table of mounted file systems." There is probably something wrong

fdisk Says, "Partition X has different physical/logical..." If the partition number (X,

fdisk: Partition 1 does not start on cylinder boundary The version of fdisk that comes with ma

fdisk Says Partition n Has an Odd Number of Sectors The PC disk partitioning scheme works in 5

Mtools Utilities Say They Cannot Initialize Drive X This means that mtools is having trouble a

At the Start of Booting: Memory tight This means that you have an extra-large kernel, w

The System Log Says, "end_request: I/O error, ...." This error message, and messages li

"You don't exist This is not a viral infection. It comes from programs like write, talk, a

"Operation not permitted." One or more of the file's or directory's attribute bits are

programname: error in loading shared libraries: lib xxx..soopen shared object file: No suc

"init: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes." In most distributions this

connection." FTP server says: "421 service not available, remote server has closed conne

Does Linux Support X? Yes. Linux uses XFree86 (the current version is 4.0, which is bas

How To Get the X Window System to Work The answers to this question can, and do, fill entire b

Where To Find a Ready-Made XF86Config file If you can't seem to get X working using the guidel

What Desktop Environments Run on Linux? Linux with XFree86 supports the KDE, GNOME, and

xterm Logins Show Up Strangely in who, finger The xterm that comes with XFree86 2.1 and earlie

How to Start a X Client on Another Display To start a X client on another system that has a ru

If this Document Still Hasn't Answered Your Question... Please read all of this answer before

What to Put in a Request for Help Please read the following advice carefully about how to writ

How To Email Someone about Your Problem Try to find the author or developer of whatever progra

Where To Send Comments Contributions to the FAQ may be in any format. Comments and co

Formats in Which This FAQ Is Available This document is available as an ASCII text file, an HT

Authorship and Acknowledgments This FAQ is compiled and maintained by Robert Kiesling, act

Disclaimer and Copyright The GNU Free Documentation License Copyright (c) 2001 Robert