| | After installation of the basic software, you will need to configure the server soft-ware to run your particular LAN. This includes tweaking your network settings, config-uring services, and making the sever secure. To begin working on the server, you will have to log in to the console. So at the login prompt, type the name of the user account that you created for yourself and hit enter; you will then be prompted for the password you assigned during installation: Login: name
Password: As you type the password, you will see nothing being entered on the screen, but that is only for security. Once you enter the password, hit enter, and you should see the com-mand line prompt: [name@english /name]$ The first word in brackets tells you that your user name; the second tells you the host-name of your server, in this case “english,” and the latter word tells you in what directory you’re located. You should use this account for all of your day to day work on this machine. However, to configure the server, you need to become the root user. To do this, you use the su command:
su –
Once you type this and hit enter, you will again be prompted for a password; you need to enter the password that you assigned to the root user during installation. Once you enter this password, your command line prompt changes to that of root, or super user:
[root@english /root]#
The “#” should remind you that you are wielding almighty power as the root user, so you should double check everything you type before hitting enter. As the root user, you can seriously cripple your system with a careless keystroke. Use the su command any time you want to make changes in your system. You should never login as root from a console or terminal.
The environment you find yourself in is called the command line. Since running a GUI takes up a lot of system processing power, so the server just uses the command line so it has all of its resources concentrated as much as possible on offering the LAN’s services. You will do all of your work on the server from this command line and a text editor called Pico (See Figure 5).13 All of Pico’s commands are on the bottom of the screen for ease reference.
The first thing we’ll do is set Pico as your default editor, so it will be invoked when you need to set the crontab, as you will have to later. You will need to edit your /etc/profile file in order to set your default editor; type:
pico –w /etc/profile
The “-w” option allows for no line breaks and should be used when editing any system files. The Pico editor will launch and open the /etc/profile file. The contents of the file should look something like this:
# /etc/profile
# System wide environment and startup programs
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc
PATH=“$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin”
USER=`id -un`
LOGNAME=$USER
MAIL=“/var/spool/mail/$USER”
HOSTNAME=`/bin/hostname`
HISTSIZE=1000
EDITOR=“vi”
export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAM HISTSIZE EDITOR INPUTRC
Using your arrow keys, move your cursor to the “EDITOR” line, and replace “vi” with “pico”; if the line does not exist, just enter it yourself. Note the last line beginning with “export”; if you add the “EDITOR” line yourself, you should add “EDITOR” to the last part of that line to have you change take effect. Now you can begin setting up your server. Hit control-x to exit Pico.
Next, test your network connection by typing:
ping yahoo.com
You should get a string of output that looks like this:
PING yahoo.com (216.115.108.245) from 131.247.202.102 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from img5.yahoo.com (216.115.108.245): icmp_seq=0 ttl=239 time=111.194 msec
64 bytes from img5.yahoo.com (216.115.108.245): icmp_seq=1 ttl=239 time=111.563 msec
To stop the output, hit control-c. If you get an error, like “network is unreachable,” you need to double-check your network numbers and re-enter or correct them using linuxconf (see below in 2.1.5). You will need to have your network functional before continuing.
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