| When I brought up my website I had to jump right into the UNIX pool.
I knew nothing about Unix, let alone /usr or /bin or any of that other fancy Unix talk.
I found that other other webmasters (where did people who build websites get the
name of webmaster? Make them sound superior. I don't fall into this category.)
on the pair system were very helpful with their suggestions and helped me to get going.
One of the first things I wanted to learn how to do was create a stat pages for Wakeolda.Com
automatically every night. This required something I've never heard of before, a
cron job. Part of the cron job was telling it to run "nice", which means
giving up clock ticks to other programs running or I guess we should call them
processes. You also selected the time of day you wanted it to run and I chose the
odd time of 2:37 in the morning, hoping the server wouldn't be too busy at that time.
One of the first things I did was to look for a simple book on Unix. I didn't want one
of thick bible books that I would use more as a door stop than a reference manual. A
friend of mine, Bob Thompson does some writing for O'Reilly, so I started searching for
Unix books by O'Reilly and I found their nutshell series. I decided on the Unix in a Nutshell.
It gives me just what I wanted, which is a listing of the Unix commands and what they do.
I do wish is give some better examples. You can purchase the Unix in a
Nutshell book from Amazon.com.
Now that I have mentioned my friend Mr. Thompson I should tell you that he's the one
who got me into networking and more specifically into NT. I had been running one of
those old fashioned bulletin board systems and he was working for the MIS department for
our county government and he helped me to learn about connectivity, most of which I have
already forgotten. He and another friend, John Mikol, got me into the internet and
away went the bulletin board. John had also given me a little primer on UNIX, but of
course nothing stuck. We were even going to put up a freenet here in Winston-Salem
in the early days of internetting, but that idea went away quickly as the internet grew.
If you would like to check out Bob's webpage, drop by www.ttgnet.com.
He includes a day notes column
that's very interesting, although there is hardly ever anything there on UNIX, which was
supposed to be the subject of this writing. Sorry, I have gotten off the subject a
little bit here haven't I?
Bob also plans to write a hardware book with Jerry
Pournelle from Byte magazine fame.
If you think you might have some unix tips that might help a newbie I would welcome
some mail.
I haver done a little more research into Linux today and found there is a local
Winston-Salem Linux User Group. It appears they meet every third Thursday and
it also appears they have settled in at Wake Forest University Someone there must
have an interest in Linux. The local group has named themselves PLUG for Piedmont
Linux User Group. I also found another interesting site that looks like it might
put some useful Linux links together in one place, especially for newbies like myself.
Check out Control-Escape.
I wonder if there is a site named Control-Alt-Delete and Shift-Tab?
The local group, like all LUGs I am sure, have what they call installfests.
I am sure this is a time when newbies like myself can bring my machine to a
gathering place and have someone more versed with the operating system help you to get it
installed and start to answer your questions. You will kindly notice that I didn't
say answer all of your questions. I remember my beginning days of DOS and my
personal learning curve. I am sure I drove some people out of their mind with all of
my mind-numbing questions. I still like to do a few things in a DOS window, just for
the heck of it.
This group sorta reminds me of some of the local computer clubs that went by the
wayside when Vice-President Al Gore created the internet. I hope you all caught that
comment last week. He must have inhaled what his partner didn't. This is not
intended to be a political site, but this was just too good to pass up! Sorry I
didn't think to link this story from CNN earlier.
Here are a few Linux titles that may be purchased directly from Amazon.Com through this
site.
A Practical Guide to
Linux, by Mark G. Sobell
Linux
A-Z, by Phil Cornes
Running
Linux 2nd Edition, by Matt Welsh & Lar Kaufman
Linux -
Configuration and Installation (3rd Edition)
 send
eMail to Steve Tucker
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