Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[James Tuttle]

Trying to port my Linux experience to Solaris 10 makes my brain bleed
some days.  I'd recommend, and this is probably too onerous for the
original poster, installing OpenSolaris in a virtual machine if the
installation route seems viable.  The differences between Solaris (or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@# Solaris!, as we affectionately call it) and Linux are pretty
great.  However, installing a distro inside VirtualBox is probably a
little more advanced than the OP may be prepared for.

Jim


> --
> 
> Date:Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:02:39 +0100
> From:Tim Hodson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Unix training options?
> 
> As most linux distros and unix systems share a common history, many
> commands are similar but have more or less options.  If you want to
> experiment with linux distro's, I can recommend trying out VirtualBox
> [1] , which is now distributed by sun.  It is free for non-comercial
> use (teaching yourself sounds non commercial to me), and gives you a
> chance to try installing several operating systems without having to
> worry about trashing your existing (host) system.
> 
> In terms of the absolute basics for moving round the system and seeing
> what is going on, I would recommend the following commands
> 
> bash - use a bash shell which has handy command history and command
> completion with the tab key
> cd - change directory
> ls - list the contents of a direcory
> vi - to read, create and edit files.
> less - view even very big files easily, and uses standard vi commands
> to navigate
> 
> The easiest way to learn is through doing, playing and making
> mistakes. - and being forced to learn because you HAVE to do something
> is a great catalyst to knew knowledge. :)
> 
> Tim
> informationtakesover.co.uk
> colourphon.co.uk
> 
> [1] http://www.virtualbox.org/

-- 
---
Jim Tuttle
Geospatial Data Librarian

NCSU Libraries, Box 7111
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

(919)513-0651 Phone
(919)515-3031  Fax

Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[Joe Hourcle]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, James Tuttle wrote:


Trying to port my Linux experience to Solaris 10 makes my brain bleed
some days.  I'd recommend, and this is probably too onerous for the
original poster, installing OpenSolaris in a virtual machine if the
installation route seems viable.  The differences between Solaris (or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@# Solaris!, as we affectionately call it) and Linux are pretty
great.  However, installing a distro inside VirtualBox is probably a
little more advanced than the OP may be prepared for.


I'd completely agree -- for those of you who haven't had to cut your teeth 
on multiple flavors of un*x, you're in for a world of hurt trying to learn 
two at the same time and trying to keep everything straight.


I've had to administer SunOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, picoBSD, Slackware, MacOS 
X and Red Hat ... and have been a user on Tru64, MachTen, HPUX, AIX, IRIX 
and too many BSD and Linux variants to keep track of.  Using them, they're 
all pretty similar ... you just have to adjust your shell & path to make 
everything behave like you're used to, and remember which versions of 'ps' 
and 'tar' are installed.


Administering them, however, is no where near as straightforward -- how do 
you patch it?  Where are the RC scripts stored?  How do you force the 
machine to single user mode?  Which host based firewalls are on by 
default, and how do you configure it?  Where are the mail queues?  What's 
the default MTA?  Is it running Vixie Cron?



If you don't already have a spare sun box sitting around, try checking 
with the CS department and whomever runs your computer centers, and see 
if they have an old box they're getting rid of.  Otherwise, I'd go the 
OpenSolaris route, just as it's going to be the closest to managing a 
Solaris system.


-Joe

Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[Roy Tennant]

On 6/16/08 6/16/08 € 6:14 AM, "Joe Hourcle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> I'd completely agree -- for those of you who haven't had to cut your teeth
> on multiple flavors of un*x, you're in for a world of hurt trying to learn
> two at the same time and trying to keep everything straight.

And to think of all argument I got for my "Why Unix Sucks"
post...
Roy 

Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[Joe Hourcle]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008, Roy Tennant wrote:


On 6/16/08 6/16/08 € 6:14 AM, "Joe Hourcle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


I'd completely agree -- for those of you who haven't had to cut your teeth
on multiple flavors of un*x, you're in for a world of hurt trying to learn
two at the same time and trying to keep everything straight.


And to think of all argument I got for my "Why Unix Sucks"
post...


Your arguments have nothing to do with Unix.

It'd be like trying to keep track of where stuff is between Windows ME, 
2000, NT, XP and 98 all at the same time ... there are two major code 
bases out there for Windows, and they're slowly intermixing until I can't 
keep track where stuff is in each version.  Luckily, I don't have to deal 
with both Un*x and Windows machines anymore, and I've managed to forget 
most of it ... and I got out before Vista and whatever the numbered 
version currently is.


And how did someone decide to set the program to start at boot? 
StartupItems?  something in the Registry?  autoexec.bat on older systems? 
something else entirely?


...

and well, we work for Libraries -- we should all know that there are many, 
many things that Google is NOT good at finding, and this is one of them. 
(and it you do manage to find your error message, you find 20+ messages 
that are from two different mailing lists that are made web-accessible 
through 10 different hosts each ... and DejaNews (aka Google Groups) has 
the question with the person responding to themselves with 'nevermind, I 
fixed it', but no actual record of what they did.)


-Joe

Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[Jonathan Rochkind]

How about you all move the "which OS is better" argument to Roy's blog, 
where he started it, instead of here? Just my own personal request.


Jonathan

Joe Hourcle wrote:



On Mon, 16 Jun 2008, Roy Tennant wrote:

On 6/16/08 6/16/08 € 6:14 AM, "Joe Hourcle" 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

wrote:

I'd completely agree -- for those of you who haven't had to cut your 
teeth
on multiple flavors of un*x, you're in for a world of hurt trying to 
learn

two at the same time and trying to keep everything straight.


And to think of all argument I got for my "Why Unix Sucks"
post... 



Your arguments have nothing to do with Unix.

It'd be like trying to keep track of where stuff is between Windows 
ME, 2000, NT, XP and 98 all at the same time ... there are two major 
code bases out there for Windows, and they're slowly intermixing until 
I can't keep track where stuff is in each version. Luckily, I don't 
have to deal with both Un*x and Windows machines anymore, and I've 
managed to forget most of it ... and I got out before Vista and 
whatever the numbered version currently is.


And how did someone decide to set the program to start at boot? 
StartupItems? something in the Registry? autoexec.bat on older 
systems? something else entirely?


...

and well, we work for Libraries -- we should all know that there are 
many, many things that Google is NOT good at finding, and this is one 
of them. (and it you do manage to find your error message, you find 
20+ messages that are from two different mailing lists that are made 
web-accessible through 10 different hosts each ... and DejaNews (aka 
Google Groups) has the question with the person responding to 
themselves with 'nevermind, I fixed it', but no actual record of what 
they did.)


-Joe


--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu

Re: [CODE4LIB] CODE4LIB Digest - 13 Jun 2008 to 14 Jun 2008 (#2008-132)

[John Fereira]

James Tuttle wrote:

Trying to port my Linux experience to Solaris 10 makes my brain bleed
some days.  I'd recommend, and this is probably too onerous for the
original poster, installing OpenSolaris in a virtual machine if the
installation route seems viable.  The differences between Solaris (or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@# Solaris!, as we affectionately call it) and Linux are pretty
great.  However, installing a distro inside VirtualBox is probably a
little more advanced than the OP may be prepared for.
  
At a former job, long, long ago I was a unix systems administrator for a 
small company (long before that I was a unix system administrator for a 
very large company) that developed some software products which ran on 
various versions of unix.  As a result we had hardware from many 
different vendors to run the various versions of unix.  If I recall 
correctly I supported machines running 8 different flavors of unix, all 
of which were slightly different.  Linux was barely on the radar at the 
time so it wasn't one of them.


*Most* of the command line commands one needs are essentially the same 
and have their roots with old BSD systems or System V.