Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage by John Goerzen and Ossama Othman (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

don’t press the Shift key, LILO will automatically load the default operating system after about 5 seconds. If you like, you can change what system LILO loads automatically, which systems it knows how to load, and how long it waits before loading one automatically.

 

If you didn’t install LILO on your hard drive, you probably created a boot disk. The boot disk will have LILO on it. All you have to do is insert the disk before you turn on your computer, and the BIOS will find it before it checks the MBR on the hard drive. To return to a non-Linux OS, take out the boot disk and restart the computer. From Linux, be sure you follow the proper procedure for restarting; see section 4.5 on page [*] for details.

 

LILO loads the Linux kernel from disk and then lets the kernel take over.

(The kernel is the central program of the operating system, which is in control of all other programs.) The kernel discards the BIOS and LILO.

 

On non-Intel platforms, things work a little differently. But once you boot, everything is more or less the same.

 

Linux looks at the type of hardware it’s running on. It wants to know what type of hard disks you have, whether or not you have a bus mouse, whether or not you’re on a network, and other bits of trivia like that. Linux can’t remember things between boots, so it has to ask these questions each time it starts up. Luckily, it isn’t asking you these questions - it’s asking the hardware! While it boots, the Linux kernel will print messages on the screen describing what it’s doing.

 

The query process can cause problems with your system, but if it was going to, it probably would have when you first installed GNU/Linux. If you’re having problems, consult the installation instructions or ask questions on a mailing list.

 

The kernel merely manages other programs, so once it is satisfied everything is okay, it must start another program to do anything useful.

The program the kernel starts is called init. After the kernel starts init, it never starts another program. The kernel becomes a manager and a provider of services.

 

Once init is started, it runs a number of scripts (files containing commands), which prepare the system to be used. They do some routine maintenance and start up a lot of programs that do things like display a login prompt, listen for network connections, and keep a log of the computer’s activities.

 

The GNU General Public License GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

 

Version 2, June 1991

 

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

 

59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

 

Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software-to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

 

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

 

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.

 

These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

 

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

 

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

 

Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.

 

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.

 

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

 

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

 

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

 

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work, and a “work based on the Program”

 

means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modification”.) Each licensee is addressed as “you”.

 

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

 

Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

 

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

 

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

 

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1

 

above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

 

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

 

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

 

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

 

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

 

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

 

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

 

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

 

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will