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 qThe 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.
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.
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 rewindI 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.