[mythtv-users] Scary times ahead

Jeff Simpson llcooljeff at gmail.com
Wed May 11 16:45:37 UTC 2005


> Check system logs - where are they? what are they called? 

anything / everything under /var/log. They are just text files, so you
can open them up in your favorite editor or "tail" them (tail -f
/var/log/messages). It will keep a running display of things being
added to the log

> Install software and then go to start it up - where is the icon? Where is
> the program kept? what is the equivalent of .exe in linux? Grrrrrrrr - (find
> ./ -name...) 

locate usually works in most newer distributions and is often a lot
faster and more intuitive than find. (just type "locate name", locate
myth will find anything with myth in the file/directory name). The
equivalent of an exe in linux is a file marked as having execute
rights. In dos/windows, you can mark a file as readonly, system,
archive, none of which mean much of anything. In linux/unix, you mark
a file as readable, writeable, or executable, and it makes them
readable, writable, and/or executable. Executable files are generally
found in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, /usr/sbin or /usr/local/sbin. the
"sbin" is superuser-bin, generally for programs only root can/should
use. The local means that it's locally installed, has a different
usage depending on the distribution.

> I tell you this so you will understand how little linux knowledge I have!

I can understand that! It's a tough thing to pick up and learn,
because nobody ever just lists off all the things you need to know
anywhere. I found the same thing out when learning HTML years+years
ago - books tell you what to code, but none of them explain what a
webserver is, or the fact that html goes into a text file in a
particular directory and a webserver serves it out to the clients.
That part is assumed, but if you don't know it, how do you ever find
out?

Good luck with the learning! let us know how it works out - there are
some good forums/lists out there for linux help, but some aren't as
friendly to n00bs as others.

 - Jeff


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