Frequently Asked Questions

Text vs. GUI login

Q. I don't want a GUI login screen, just plain text. Where is that determined?

A. In /etc/inittab. There is a line that says

id:5:initdefault:
Use an editor (vi or nano or emacs) to edit that file and change the "5" to "3", then save and exit the editor. Then either reboot or
telinit q
The 3 and 5 are called runlevels. Here are the runlevels supported in Red Hat Linux:

0 - halt
1 - single user (maintenance)
2 - multi-user, minimal networking
3 - multi-user, full networking
4 - not used
5 - multi-user, full networking, X login
6 - reboot

Once you are in runlevel 3, you can bring up an X session with startx.

Connecting to your Linux box.

Q. I can't telnet or ftp to my Linux machine from another machine.

A. That is a Good Thing(tm). See the discussion of security.

Backups

Q. What should I back up, and how?

A. I recommend backing up /etc/ (your configuration files), /root/ (if you have anything important in there), /var/ (spools and other configuration things), and /home/ (arguably the most important). I use cpio using this script

#!/bin/sh
TAPE=/dev/nftape
mt rewind
mt reten
cd /
find etc home root var | cpio -oBc >$TAPE
mt rewind
I consider the system stuff restorable from the distribution disks. I also have a /u partition, but I consider everything in there as replaceable or expendable.

I put this script in /etc/cron.weekly. If you don't want to lose more than a day's work, consider doing incremental backups every day to diskette or another disk drive. If you want anything more sophisticated, I recommend Amanda.


Bob McClure <robertmcclure@earthlink.net>
Last modified: Tue Apr 16 14:53:34 CDT 2013