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<th colspan="3" align="center">Appendix I. Tips for New
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<div class="appendix" lang="en">
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<div>
<h2 class="title"><a name="newusertips" id=
"newusertips"></a>Appendix I. Tips for New Linux
Users</h2>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>This installation guide assumes that the user has at least a
basic understanding of Linux techniques and terminology. In this
section we provide tips that the new user may find helpful. While
the these tips are meant to clarify and assist users in installing
and configuring the NVIDIA Linux Driver, it is by no means a
tutorial on the use or administration of the Linux operating
system. Unlike many desktop operating systems, it is relatively
easy to cause irreparable damage to your Linux system. If you are
unfamiliar with the use of Linux, we strongly recommend that you
seek a tutorial through your distributor before proceeding.</p>
<h3>The command prompt</h3>
<p>While newer releases of Linux bring new desktop interfaces to
the user, much of the work in Linux takes place at the command
prompt. If you are familiar with the Windows operating system, the
Linux command prompt is analogous to the Windows command prompt,
although the syntax and use varies somewhat. All of the commands in
this section are performed at the command prompt. Some systems are
configured to boot into console mode, in which case the user is
presented with a prompt at login. Other systems are configured to
start the X window system, in which case the user must open a
terminal or console window in order to get a command prompt. This
can usually be done by searching the desktop menus for a terminal
or console program. While it is customizable, the basic prompt
usually consists of a short string of information, one of the
characters <code class="prompt">#</code>, <code class=
"prompt">$</code>, or <code class="prompt">%</code>, and a cursor
(possibly flashing) that indicates where the user's input will be
displayed.</p>
<h3>Navigating the directory structure</h3>
<p>Linux has a hierarchical directory structure. From anywhere in
the directory structure, the <span><strong class=
"command">ls</strong></span> command will list the contents of that
directory. The <span><strong class="command">file</strong></span>
command will print the type of files in a directory. For
example,</p>
<pre class="screen">
% file filename
</pre>
<p>will print the type of the file <code class=
"filename">filename</code>. Changing directories is done with the
<span><strong class="command">cd</strong></span> command.</p>
<pre class="screen">
% cd dirname
</pre>
<p>will change the current directory to <code class=
"filename">dirname</code>. From anywhere in the directory
structure, the command <span><strong class=
"command">pwd</strong></span> will print the name of the current
directory. There are two special directories, <code class=
"filename">.</code> and <code class="filename">..</code>, which
refer to the current directory and the next directory up the
hierarchy, respectively. For any commands that require a file name
or directory name as an argument, you may specify the absolute or
the relative paths to those elements. An absolute path begins with
the "/" character, referring to the top or root of the directory
structure. A relative path begins with a directory in the current
working directory. The relative path may begin with <code class=
"filename">.</code> or <code class="filename">..</code>. Elements
of a path are separated with the "/" character. As an example, if
the current directory is <code class="filename">/home/jesse</code>
and the user wants to change to the <code class=
"filename">/usr/local</code> directory, he can use either of the
following commands to do so:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% cd /usr/local
</pre>
<p>or</p>
<pre class="screen">
% cd ../../usr/local
</pre>
<p></p>
<h3>File permissions and ownership</h3>
<p>All files and directories have permissions and ownership
associated with them. This is useful for preventing
non-administrative users from accidentally (or maliciously)
corrupting the system. The permissions and ownership for a file or
directory can be determined by passing the <code class=
"option">-l</code> option to the <span><strong class=
"command">ls</strong></span> command. For example:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 jesse users 4096 Feb 8 09:32 bin
drwxrwxrwx 10 jesse users 4096 Feb 10 12:04 pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 jesse users 45 Feb 4 03:55 testfile
-rwx------ 1 jesse users 93 Feb 5 06:20 myprogram
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jesse users 112 Feb 5 06:20 README
%
</pre>
<p>The first character column in the first output field states the
file type, where 'd' is a directory and '-' is a regular file. The
next nine columns specify the permissions (see paragraph below) of
the element. The second field indicates the number of files
associated with the element, the third field indicates the owner,
the fourth field indicates the group that the file is associated
with, the fifth field indicates the size of the element in bytes,
the sixth, seventh and eighth fields indicate the time at which the
file was last modified and the ninth field is the name of the
element.</p>
<p>As stated, the last nine columns in the first field indicate the
permissions of the element. These columns are grouped into threes,
the first grouping indicating the permissions for the owner of the
element (<code class="systemitem">jesse</code> in this case), the
second grouping indicating the permissions for the group associated
with the element, and the third grouping indicating the permissions
associated with the rest of the world. The <code class=
"systemitem">r</code>, <code class="systemitem">w</code>, and
<code class="systemitem">x</code> indicate read, write and execute
permissions, respectively, for each of these associations. For
example, user <code class="systemitem">jesse</code> has read and
write permissions for <code class="filename">testfile</code>, users
in the group <code class="systemitem">users</code> have read
permission only, and the rest of the world also has read
permissions only. However, for the file <code class=
"filename">myprogram</code>, user <code class=
"systemitem">jesse</code> has read, write and execute permissions
(suggesting that <code class="filename">myprogram</code> is a
program that can be executed), while the group <code class=
"systemitem">users</code> and the rest of the world have no
permissions (suggesting that the owner doesn't want anyone else to
run his program). The permissions, ownership and group associated
with an element can be changed with the commands
<span><strong class="command">chmod</strong></span>,
<span><strong class="command">chown</strong></span> and
<span><strong class="command">chgrp</strong></span>, respectively.
If a user with the appropriate permissions wanted to change the
user/group ownership of <code class="filename">README</code> from
jesse/users to joe/admin, he would do the following:</p>
<pre class="screen">
# chown joe README
# chgrp admin README
</pre>
<p>The syntax for chmod is slightly more complicated and has
several variations. The most concise way of setting the permissions
for a single element uses a triplet of numbers, one for each of
user, group and world. The value for each number in the triplet
corresponds to a combination of read, write and execute
permissions. Execute only is represented as 1, write only is
represented as 2, and read only is represented as 4. Combinations
of these permissions are represented as sums of the individual
permissions. Read and execute is represented as 5, where as read,
write and execute is represented as 7. No permissions is
represented as 0. Thus, to give the owner read, write and execute
permissions, the group read and execute permissions and the world
no permissions, a user would do as follows:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% chmod 750 myprogram
</pre>
<p></p>
<h3>The shell</h3>
<p>The shell provides an interface between the user and the
operating system. It is the job of the shell to interpret the input
that the user gives at the command prompt and call upon the system
to do something in response. There are several different shells
available, each with somewhat different syntax and capabilities.
The two most common flavors of shells used on Linux stem from the
Bourne shell (<span><strong class="command">sh</strong></span>) and
the C-shell (<span><strong class="command">csh</strong></span>)
Different users have preferences and biases towards one shell or
the other, and some certainly make it easier (or at least more
intuitive) to do some things than others. You can determine your
current shell by printing the value of the <code class=
"envar">SHELL</code> environment variable from the command prompt
with</p>
<pre class="screen">
% echo $SHELL
</pre>
<p>You can start a new shell simply by entering the name of the
shell from the command prompt:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% csh
</pre>
<p>or</p>
<pre class="screen">
% sh
</pre>
<p>and you can run a program from within a specific shell by
preceding the name of the executable with the name of the shell in
which it will be run:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% sh myprogram
</pre>
<p>The user's default shell at login is determined by whoever set
up his account. While there are many syntactic differences between
shells, perhaps the one that is encountered most frequently is the
way in which environment variables are set.</p>
<h3>Setting environment variables</h3>
<p>Every session has associated with it environment variables,
which consist of name/value pairs and control the way in which the
shell and programs run from the shell behave. An example of an
environment variable is the <code class="envar">PATH</code>
variable, which tells the shell which directories to search when
trying to locate an executable file that the user has entered at
the command line. If you are certain that a command exists, but the
shell complains that it cannot be found when you try to execute it,
there is likely a problem with the <code class="envar">PATH</code>
variable. Environment variables are set differently depending on
the shell being used. For the Bourne shell (<span><strong class=
"command">sh</strong></span>), it is done as:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% export MYVARIABLE="avalue"
</pre>
<p>for the C-shell, it is done as:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% setenv MYVARIABLE "avalue"
</pre>
<p>In both cases the quotation marks are only necessary if the
value contains spaces. The <span><strong class=
"command">echo</strong></span> command can be used to examine the
value of an environment variable:</p>
<pre class="screen">
% echo $MYVARIABLE
</pre>
<p>Commands to set environment variables can also include
references to other environment variables (prepended with the "$"
character), including themselves. In order to add the path
<code class="filename">/usr/local/bin</code> to the beginning of
the search path, and the current directory <code class=
"filename">.</code> to the end of the search path, a user would
enter</p>
<pre class="screen">
% export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH:.
</pre>
<p>in the Bourne shell, and</p>
<pre class="screen">
% setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:${PATH}:.
</pre>
<p>in C-shell. Note the curly braces are required to protect the
variable name in C-shell.</p>
<h3>Editing text files</h3>
<p>There are several text editors available for the Linux operating
system. Some of these editors require the X window system, while
others are designed to operate in a console or terminal. It is
generally a good thing to be competent with a terminal-based text
editor, as there are times when the files necessary for X to run
are the ones that must be edited. Three popular editors are
<span><strong class="command">vi</strong></span>,
<span><strong class="command">pico</strong></span> and
<span><strong class="command">emacs</strong></span>, each of which
can be started from the command line, optionally supplying the name
of a file to be edited. <span><strong class=
"command">vi</strong></span> is arguably the most ubiquitous as
well as the least intuitive of the three. <span><strong class=
"command">pico</strong></span> is relatively straightforward for a
new user, though not as often installed on systems. If you don't
have <span><strong class="command">pico</strong></span>, you may
have a similar editor called <span><strong class=
"command">nano</strong></span>. <span><strong class=
"command">emacs</strong></span> is highly extensible and fairly
widely available, but can be somewhat unwieldy in a non-X
environment. The newer versions each come with online help, and
offline help can be found in the manual and info pages for each
(see the section on Linux Manual and Info pages). Many programs use
the <code class="envar">EDITOR</code> environment variable to
determine which text editor to start when editing is required.</p>
<h3>Root user</h3>
<p>Upon installation, almost all distributions set up the default
administrative user with the username <code class=
"systemitem">root</code>. There are many things on the system that
only <code class="systemitem">root</code> (or a similarly
privileged user) can do, one of which is installing the NVIDIA
Linux Driver. <span class="emphasis"><em>We must emphasize that
assuming the identity of <code class="systemitem">root</code> is
inherently risky and as <code class="systemitem">root</code> it is
relatively easy to corrupt your system or otherwise render it
unusable.</em></span> There are three ways to become <code class=
"systemitem">root</code>. You may log in as <code class=
"systemitem">root</code> as you would any other user, you may use
the switch user command (<span><strong class=
"command">su</strong></span>) at the command prompt, or, on some
systems, use the <span><strong class="command">sudo</strong></span>
utility, which allows users to run programs as <code class=
"systemitem">root</code> while keeping a log of their actions. This
last method is useful in case a user inadvertently causes damage to
the system and cannot remember what he has done (or prefers not to
admit what he has done). It is generally a good practice to remain
<code class="systemitem">root</code> only as long as is necessary
to accomplish the task requiring <code class=
"systemitem">root</code> privileges (another useful feature of the
<span><strong class="command">sudo</strong></span> utility).</p>
<h3>Booting to a different runlevel</h3>
<p>Runlevels in Linux dictate which services are started and
stopped automatically when the system boots or shuts down. The
runlevels typically range from 0 to 6, with runlevel 5 typically
starting the X window system as part of the services (runlevel 0 is
actually a system halt, and 6 is a system reboot). It is good
practice to install the NVIDIA Linux Driver while X is not running,
and it is a good idea to prevent X from starting on reboot in case
there are problems with the installation (otherwise you may find
yourself with a broken system that automatically tries to start X,
but then hangs during the startup, preventing you from doing the
repairs necessary to fix X). Depending on your network setup,
runlevels 1, 2 or 3 should be sufficient for installing the Driver.
Level 3 typically includes networking services, so if utilities
used by the system during installation depend on a remote
filesystem, Levels 1 and 2 will be insufficient. If your system
typically boots to a console with a command prompt, you should not
need to change anything. If your system typically boots to the X
window system with a graphical login and desktop, you must both
exit X and change your default runlevel.</p>
<p>On most distributions, the default runlevel is stored in the
file <code class="filename">/etc/inittab</code>, although you may
have to consult the guide for your own distribution. The line that
indicates the default runlevel appears as</p>
<pre class="screen">
id:n:initdefault:
</pre>
<p>or similar, where <code class="computeroutput">n</code>
indicates the number of the runlevel. <code class=
"filename">/etc/inittab</code> must be edited as root. Please read
the sections on editing files and root user if you are unfamiliar
with this concept. Also, it is recommended that you create a copy
of the file prior to editing it, particularly if you are new to
Linux text editors, in case you accidentally corrupt the file:</p>
<pre class="screen">
# cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.original
</pre>
<p>The line should be edited such that an appropriate runlevel is
the default (1, 2, or 3 on most systems):</p>
<pre class="screen">
id:3:initdefault:
</pre>
<p>After saving the changes, exit X. After the Driver installation
is complete, you may revert the default runlevel to its original
state, either by editing the <code class=
"filename">/etc/inittab</code> again or by moving your backup copy
back to its original name.</p>
<p>Different distributions provide different ways to exit X. On
many systems, the <span><strong class=
"command">init</strong></span> utility will change the current
runlevel. This can be used to change to a runlevel in which X is
not running.</p>
<pre class="screen">
# init 3
</pre>
<p>There are other methods by which to exit X. Please consult your
distribution.</p>
<h3>Linux Manual and Info pages</h3>
<p>System manual or info pages are usually installed during
installation. These pages are typically up-to-date and generally
contain a comprehensive listing of the use of programs and
utilities on the system. Also, many programs include the
<code class="option">--help</code> option, which usually prints a
list of common options for that program. To view the manual page
for a command, enter</p>
<pre class="screen">
% man commandname
</pre>
<p>at the command prompt, where <code class=
"option">commandname</code> refers to the command in which you are
interested. Similarly, entering</p>
<pre class="screen">
% info commandname
</pre>
<p>will bring up the info page for the command. Depending on the
application, one or the other may be more up-to-date. The interface
for the info system is interactive and navigable. If you are unable
to locate the man page for the command you are interested in, you
may need to add additional elements to your <code class=
"envar">MANPATH</code> environment variable. See the section on
environment variables.</p>
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Appendix H. Audio Support </td>
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Appendix J. Application Profiles</td>
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distrib
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i586
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media
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nonfree-updates
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81fae3ae235a548f801b562d1fe69f7f
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files
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