1. General Information

The following sections provide some general information about Linux, this mailing list, and where to go for further information.

1.1 How do I (un)subscribe myself from the list?

This mailing list is handled by a majordomo server at vger.rutgers.edu. To remove/add yourself to the mailing list simply send an email to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu.

To subscribe put the following in the body of the message:

subscribe linux-admin your@email.address

To unsubscribe put the following in the body of the message:

unsubscribe linux-admin your@email.address

The subject line will be ignored.

1.2 Information about the linux-admin mailing list and this FAQ

This mailing list is generally devoted to all Linux administration matters, including all those which might be slightly interlaced with other linux-* mailing lists (like linux-kernel, linux-net, linux-x11.. etc).

FAQ Availability

The full 'package' of this FAQ (including SGML/HTML/ASCII formats) could be also downloaded in http://www.kalug.lug.net/linux-admin-FAQ.tar.gz

Mirrors of this FAQ are available at any of the following locations:

• http://www.kilnar.com/linux/linux-admin-FAQ/
• http://linux.ibd.net/linux-admin-FAQ/
• http://spyjurenet.com/linux/
• http://beryte.com/linux/faq/
• http://www.miscellaneous.net/linux/
• http://www.cybernet.bg/linux/

This faq is also available at faqsmtp@kalug.lug.net, the FAQ-SMTP service (handled by script, developed by Brian Shau.

Foreword

In writing this FAQ, we assume that you already have a basic understanding of Linux/Unix and its administration. Questions such as ``What's Linux?'' and ``How do install Linux?'' will probably get the ``RTFM'' response (``Read The *Fine* Manual'').

Please check http://www.linux.org, http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/ for answers to such questions.

List etiquette

Once you join the list, please observe these DO's and DON'T's of mailing list etiquette:

• DON'T: Post messages in HTML, or with 50-line PKS-7 signatures which nobody ever checks (fortunately this list seems to be quite free from this).
• DON'T: Attach 20-line ASCII-art signatures to the bottom of every message.
• DO: Use common sense when citing the previous message.
• DON'T: Cite the whole of the previous message just because that's your mailer's default behavior. And especially, don't cite all of the junk that the previous poster forgot to trim.
• DON'T: Post new messages by using your mailer's ``reply'' feature to reply to some random message, unless you're going to manually remove the In-Reply-To: and References: headers. Some mail readers actually use these headers for threading, so don't put them where they don't belong.
• DO: Post replies using your mailer's ``reply'' feature. This way, other people can see if a message has been replied to without having to scan the rest of the list.
• DON'T: Line-wrap the output of programs, e.g. ifconfig, route, etc. It makes them much harder to read. If your mailer is incapable of posting text without messing with the line breaks, either get a better mailer, or send the program output as an attachment.
• DO: Line-wrap natural-language text to around 70 columns (to allow some space for citation marks). Don't assume that everybody else's mailer will do it automatically just because yours does.

Basic information about the list

Subscription: This mailing list is handled by a majordomo server at vger.rutgers.edu. To remove/add yourself to the mailing list simply send an email to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu.

To subscribe put the following in the body of the message: subscribe linux-admin your@email.address

To unsubscribe put the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe linux-admin your@email.address. The subject line will be ignored.

To see what lists you are already subscribed (and whether you were dropped due to the bounced messages, which your address may've generated), put the following the the body of the message: which your@email.address. The subject line will be ignored.

NOTE: You will only need to specify your@email.address in case if your mail doesn't have correct return address. By default, it will subscribe you using the address, from which you sent the subscription request. If you have some kind of signature or something automatically attached to the end of your message, you also ought to put "end" command (or `--') at the end of your subscription request. This tells majordomo to ignore the rest of message (otherwise it will try to interpret signature as set of majordomo commands).

Purpose: This mailing list is generally devoted to all Linux administration matters, including all those which might be slightly interlaced with other linux-* mailing lists (like linux-kernel, linux-net, linux-x11.. etc).

List archives:

• http://www.reference.com
• http://www.linuxhq.com/lnxlists/linux-admin/
• http://linuxwww.db.erau.edu/mail_archives/
• http://www.linuxrx.com/Lists/Lists.perl
• http://www.findmail.com/list/linux-admin/

How to contribute this FAQ

To contribute this FAQ, send your question either directly to my address fygrave@tigerteam.net or to the list linux-admin@vger.rutgers.edu with the "Linux admin FAQ" as the subject. Please indicate the question, the section, you think it belongs to, and the answer for you question.

1.3 Where do I get more information?

There are lots of resources about Linux available in the Internet, here are several links which would be good places to start:

• http://www.linux.org
• http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html
• http://www.linux.org/help/
• http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/FAQ/Linux-FAQ.html
• http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP -LDP site
• http://www.redhat.com - RedHat site
• http://ipmasq.home.ml.org - Linux IP Masquerade Resource
• http://www.altern.org/andrebalsa/doc/lkml-faq.html - Linux kernel mailing list FAQ

1.4 Is this list archived somewhere?

Yes, it is. Check out http://www.reference.com, http://www.linuxhq.com/lnxlists/linux-admin/ But it surely is avaliable at the other places.

Also check out http://linuxwww.db.erau.edu/mail_archives/, which has some stuff related to this list.

Also there's an Index of Linux mailing lists and newsgroups avaliable at: http://www.linuxrx.com/Lists/Lists.perl

It's sorted by subject and fully searchable. At present it holds info on 533 lists and groups.

Yet another linux-admin archive: http://www.findmail.com/list/linux-admin/

1.5 Where did all the list traffic go? I haven't received any/many messages from the list for x number of days..

It is possible that you were automatically unsubscribed from the list for one reason or another. It is also possible that there has been an Internet problem that has been preventing list traffic from reaching you. It may help to unsubscribe and resubscribe. It will certainly not help to mail the list about it.

To find out if you have been dropped from the list, you can send a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu containing the following command in the body of the message:

which myname@myaddress

Find out which lists you (or myname@myaddress if specified) are on.

Some people have reported that they faced this problem while being subscribed to the list, and solved it by simply unsubscribing and subscribing to the list again.