Dennis Dixon wrote:...
>1) I have succesfully installed XFree86 and am now attempting to run the
>XF86Setup routine. In trying to get the mouse to work it appears to me all I
>should have to do is select one of the 'devices' and hit 'apply'. However,
>I tried all possible device options and none got a response from the mouse.
>(The mouse says Microsoft right on it, so I assume 'Microsoft' is the
>correct protocol. I tried different protocols with the 'inbortbm' device
>and still got nothing.)
Someone else suggested it might be a PS/2 mouse. If so, its connector
will be a little circular plug. The correct devicename for this is
/dev/psaux.
>
>The real problem is I don't understand how 'devices' work. I found a
>'MAKEDEV' command, but I'm not sure what this does. Is there a command to
>query the contents of '/dev/smouse', etc.? Plus, if I run a command like
>'MAKEDEV' it would obviously create a new file in '/dev', but how would it
>know to hook up to the mouse port on the machine?
Devices look like files but are actually pointers to device drivers in the
kernel (the operating system program). For example:
$ ls -l /dev/{psaux,hda}*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 Dec 9 1996 /dev/hda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 1 Dec 9 1996 /dev/hda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 2 Dec 9 1996 /dev/hda2
....
crw------- 1 root sys 10, 1 Jun 16 01:44 /dev/psaux
The first character of the modes (b or c) shows whether it is a block-
or character-device. (Block devices, such as disks, expect to send and
receive data in blocks rather than one character at a time.) The pair of
numbers separated by a comma are the major and minor device numbers.
The major number tells the kernel which device driver is wanted (3 = IDE
hard disk, 10 = PS/2) and the minor number is an entry point in the
device driver. The full list of device major and minor numbers is in the
documentation of the kernel-doc-<kernel_version> package and is to be
found at /usr/doc/kernel-doc-<kernel_version>/Documentation/devices.txt.gz.
Unix treats devices as if they were files, so you can read and write them
(subject to permissions - you don't want arbitrary writes to your hard
disk!).
>
>
>2) I have several other miscellaneous questions, although not necessary,
>would make my life a lot easier. When I go to '/var/log/messages' ( or any
>log file for that matter) I get a huge file. Does this file clear
>automatically somehow eventually or does it just keep growing forever? There
>must be a command to clear log files.
If you leave your machine running all the time, your log files will get
purged by programs run in the background by cron. If you turn it off,
they can't run, so you need to install the anacron package, which should
catch up with necessary maintenance when you turn your machine on.
>
>3) The 'find','locate', and 'dpkg -search' commands would be great if I
>could get them to work. Logged in as 'root' if I type 'find <filename>'
>from any directory it should find that file anywhere in the system?
>However, it doesn't do this for me. Am I doing something wrong?
The syntax for find is
find / -name <filename>
find has many options. Run `man find' and read carefully!
dpkg:
$ dpkg -S devices.txt
kernel-doc-2.0.32: /usr/doc/kernel-doc-2.0.32/Documentation/devices.txt.gz
...
locate:
$ locate devices.txt
/usr/doc/gs-aladdin/devices.txt.gz
...
>
>4) The last questions is a repeat from a previous post. I am trying to make
>it so a 'user' can run 'pon'. ('pon' currently runs fine when logged in as
>'root')
>A response from Martin Bialasinski suggested that I use the following comman
>d:
>
> adduser theuser dialout
>
>Although this command ran fine and added 'theuser' to the dialout group,
>when logged in as theuser I still couldn't use the 'pon' command.
What happens when the user tries to run it?
--
Oliver Elphick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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