Newbie needs help

[jwmcgee1]

Hello,

Just an FYI, I know VERY little about Linux but I am trying to learn.

I have installed Fedora on an older Dell 8600 with mixed results.

The ethernet adapter and the Intel Wireless 2200bg show up in the hardware section of network manager, but when the system starts up it can't find the device and says the it will be delayed.

I would really appreciate any help.

John

[landoncz]

I think you need to install the IPW 2200 firmware which is NOT open source code, and therefore NOT included in the standard Fedora rollout. You can type the following to install the firmware via yum:

$ su
[enter your root password here]
# yum install ipw2200-firmware


Then reboot and that should do it. If it doesn't work (i.e. you get some sort of error message like "package not found", then you first need to install the freshrpms repository like so:

$ su -
[enter your root password here]
# rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/5/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

assuming you are using Fedora Core 5, and then repeat the above yum install command...

Let us know if that does not work for you

[kpearsonxyz]

One related, but not specific answer:

When you use su or su - remember the difference, which is:

su by itself gives you root power, but doesn't load the root environment, including $HOME or $PATH, which is essential for many things. su alone leaves you in your own environment with super user power.

su - does load the root environment.

From a former newbie...

[jwmcgee1]

That was it! Thank you so much!!!!

[paul matthijsse]

One related, but not specific answer:

When you use su or su - remember the difference, which is:

su by itself gives you root power, but doesn't load the root environment, including $HOME or $PATH, which is essential for many things. su alone leaves you in your own environment with super user power.

su - does load the root environment.

From a former newbie...
Thanks for that clear explanation, now I have a related question that I can find out myself but I was just reading your post and wondering what is the difference with sudo, compared to the other two options?

Thanks, Paul

[kpearsonxyz]

sudo gives you super user capability without ever leaving your environment. It also doesn't load the root environment, so is one step below just su. That's not a bad thing because it gives you as the administrator the ability to allow a regular user access to a command, or commands as determined to pose no threat but allow that trusted user to do something useful.

I've put /sbin and /usr/sbin in the path of some users who needed to run specific commands found in those directories. I've also created a symlink in /usr/local/bin and made sure the permissions in /sbin and /usr/sbin are appropriate so no one but sudo users can execute those programs.

Hopefully this is clear...

[Dan]

It was plenty clear here, and a good explanation too. I was wondering about sudo. Thanks!

Dan