Once you get Basic Linux installed on your hard drive, there are some necessary things you need to
do in order to make your Linux system useful:
Configure CD/DVD-ROM
I've had good luck getting standard old ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drives working out-of-the box with Basic Linux
simply by uncommenting a couple lines in the bootup script. The Basic Linux system bootup/init
script is very simple and does not comprise of multiple files like every other Linux distro I have
encountered. Simply edit the "/etc/rc" file:
edit /etc/rc
Now locate the ##_ACTIVATE_CD_DRIVE_## section and, ensure the following lines are added
(or uncommented by removing the "#" symbol) so that the insmod commands precede the "mount -avt nonfs"
command such as:
##_ACTIVATE_CD_DRIVE_##
insmod cdrom
insmod ide-cd
insmod isofs
mount -avt nonfs
The last command (mount) is the command that tells the system to map all the mount points in the "/etc/fstab"
file during bootup and is how we gain access to the files on the CD-ROM drive, your hard drive partitions, etc.
This is why we want the CD-ROM kernel modules to be loaded prior to the mount command so that any CD-ROM
drives you may configure in your "/etc/fstab" file will be loaded upon bootup without further user
intervention.
Now, create a mount point for your CD-ROM drive such as "/mnt/cdrom", and put this mapping in the "/etc/fstab"
file like this:
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
edit /etc/fstab
Once the editor is up, edit/add the cdrom device mapping to the new mount point you just created so it looks something like this:
/dev/hdX /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,noauto 0 0
Replace "/dev/hdX" above with the actual device name of your CD-ROM drive such as "/dev/hdb".
To find this, you may get a hint when the system is booting and detecting devices attached to the computer
although this slew of information goes by rather quickly.
Linux has a special command "dmesg" to provide access to this bootup information long after the system
has booted. This command gives you access into what's known as the "kernel's ringbuffer". Rather than just
dump the whole thing to the screen by running the "dmesg" command without arguments, you can try
a case-insensitive search by piping the output into grep and specifying an identifier such as "CDROM"
or "CD-ROM" to print all bootup lines containing that string. For example:
dmesg|grep -i cd-rom
Results in the following output on one of my machines:
hdb: ATAPI 8X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.11
So using the above example, I would use the device name "/dev/hdb" in place of "/dev/hdX" in while editing
"/etc/fstab" to tell the system where and how to mount the CD-ROM device. "/dev/hdc" is also a common
CD-ROM device filename. These device filenames looks similar to the hard drive's
device filenames because [at least in this example] inside the computer, the CD-ROM interface is an IDE interface
just like the hard drive.
The "ro" option in the "/etc/fstab"
file tells the bootup mount command that the filesystem is read-only, and the "noauto" option prevents
the CD-ROM from auto-mounting during the bootup process. You also see the "noauto" option in for the floppy
drive device (/dev/fd0) because you may not always have a CD-ROM or floppy disk inserted upon bootup and
in these cases you wouldn't want to see an extraneous bootup error indicating:
cdrom: open failed.
mount: Mounting /dev/hdb on /mnt/cdrom failed: No medium found
...hence the purpose of the "noauto" command.
Reboot your system using the "reboot" command and insert a CD-ROM into your drive once booted. Issue the command:
mount /mnt/cdrom
*OR*
mount /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660 -o ro,noauto
If you don't supply all the information to the "mount" command (as in version #1 of the command above),
the "mount" command will fill in the missing information by matching either the device filename
or mount-point path with the corresponding line in the "/etc/fstab" file. In fact you can mount
almost all your filesystems on Linux using the long version of the "mount" command and not
even use the "/etc/fstab" file (with exception of your root filesystem and a special case filesystems
such as "proc"), but "/etc/fstab", is your friend and is a very convenient place to
remember your filesystem settings.
If you see no output, the command likely succeeded. Issue an "ls"
command to test if you can see the files on the disc:
ls /mnt/cdrom
Configure Network Card
You'll want to have your network/ethernet card recognized by Basic Linux if you want to get on the internet
or at least communicate with other machines on your LAN.
Although you can configure modem and PPP/SLIP support through Basic Linux to connect to the internet using
dial-up, I never had the need to learn this information so these instructions assume you are hardwired into a
LAN.
I spent the bulk of my time learning Basic Linux trying to get it to recognize my ethernet
cards not because of a problem with Basic Linux per se, but because there is such a lack of documentation out there; and to top it off,
I was a newbie to Linux let alone Basic Linux. By reading many of the
blog messages about the problems people had getting their ethernet cards working, I gathered that
it was just a matter of locating the correct kernel module (driver) file from the
official Basic Linux Network Modules page,
copying the file into the right place and running the "insmod" command just like configuring the
CD-ROM driver. The tricky part is that there were 82 netcard driver files for Basic Linux 3.50 and
none of the names are very descriptive, assuming you even remember the type of network card in that old
machine you're trying to get up and running :).
So let me save you some time. I was able to get ethernet cards recognized in Basic Linux on three
of my old machines by using
either the "tulip" (Testing Upgrades of Linux Images Program) or "3c59x" (3COM) driver files, so try these
first before resorting to "process of elimination". I think I read somewhere that the "tulip" driver
works with many types of cards, but don't quote me on that. Once you've decided on a driver file to try,
here is the process to see if that driver works with your ethernet hardware:
Visit the Basic Linux Network Modules page,
download the module file (e.g. tulip.o) and save it to floppy disk. Insert this disk
into your Basic Linux machine and execute the following commands replacing module with the module
you are using:
mount /fd
cp /fd/module.o /lib/modules/2.2.26/misc
insmod module
If you see output such as that below, then this driver is not a suitable match for your network card hardware
and you need to try a different one:
Using /lib/modules/2.2.26/misc/3c59x.o
insmod: init_module: 3c59x: Device or resource busy
If on the other hand, if you see output like that below, then proceed on to the next step:
Using /lib/modules/2.2.26/misc/3c59x.o
3c59x.c 18Feb01 Donald Becker and others http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
eth0: 3Com 3c900 Boomerang 10Mbps Combo at 0x6200, 00:10:4b:95:19:cf, IRQ 11
8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/10baseT interface
Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-fram receives.
If you end up trying many modules, it may be easier to download and copy all the modules
to floppy disks (all 82 modules fit on 2 floppy disks by the way) and copying them into the "/lib/modules/2.2.26/misc"
directory all at once. Then you can simply issue the "insmod" commands in succession until you
get one that works. Don't forget to remount the floppy drive each time you swap disks!
Once you get a module that doesn't give you an error (obviosly this doesn't guarantee your network card will
work with Basic Linux), you want to edit your "/etc/rc" file to load this driver upon startup:
edit /etc/rc
Now locate the section ###_ACTIVATE ETHERNET_### and edit it as follows:
###_ACTIVATE ETHERNET_###
insmod module
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.100
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
Make sure you replace module in the example above with the module name of your driver. The example
also assumes you want your netcard to have the IP address 192.168.1.100 and your gateway/router's IP address
is 192.168.1.1. Please adjust those values to reflect your own LAN settings as necessary.
The last step is to configure at least one IP address that Basic Linux will use as a DNS starting point
to resolve internet domains names:
edit /etc/resolv.conf
Now add at least one nameserver IP address separated by a linefeed:
nameserver 192.168.1.1
In the example above, we just specified the router's IP address which is normally fine because the router
will simply forward the DNS request on the appropriate static or dynamic DNS server upstream to the internet
and you won't have to fiddle with keeping this file updated. Or you can specify the IP address(es) for the DNS
server's your ISP has assigned you (if any), your choice.
Reboot the machine and if all goes well, you should be able to browse the web with "links" or ping something you know exists on the internet such as:
ping google.com
PING google.com (64.233.167.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64.233.167.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=233 time=130.2 ms
64 bytes from 64.233.167.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=233 time=100.3 ms
64 bytes from 64.233.167.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=233 time=117.9 ms
Configure Basic Linux to Allow User Logins
Out of the box, Basic Linux requires no login. When Basic Linux boots, you are immediately
at a Linux prompt with full "root" access to the machine. You can take the first step towards making your
Basic Linux machine a tad more secure by downloading and installing the "passwd" package from
the Basic Linux Add-Ons page.
Click the link to the left to download the "passwd.tgz" add-on from the official Basic Linux site and put the file
on a floppy disk. Insert the floppy disk into your Basic Linux machine and run the following commands:
mkdir /addons
mount /fd
cp /fd/passwd.tgz /addons
cd /addons
pkg passwd.tgz
The "pkg" command installs the "getty" utility and configures the "/etc/inittab" to spawn "getty" on each
running Basic Linux terminal upon bootup. "getty" is the utility that prompts the user to login.
The system will be configured to allow logins from the user "root". If you are not prompted to set the password,
issue the "passwd" command to set the "root" password before rebooting.
Replace Bootup Message
Get rid of the Basic Linux installation instructions by simply editing the "/etc/issue" file
using your favorite editor, or the following command:
edit /etc/issue
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