In addition to not trying to make your box an instant AOL, cLIeNUX doesn't try to make configuration automatic. Mostly that's because there's currently only one of me working on cLIeNUX, but that raises some other points. Making everything "easy"...
This is a tour of things you probably want to configure for your hardware, preferences and connections. Most items are just html hyperlinks to the pertinent config file. Hit (enter) over the link, and then hit e in browse/Lynx to edit the file. ctrl&x will exit Pico back to browse. Some config files will be in effect as soon as you have edited them, but usually whatever it is you just re-configured will have to be re-started or signal -HUP'ed.
Most (but not all) config files observe the standard unix shell syntax for a comment, where everything on a line after a # is ignored. Therefor, to "uncomment a line" in e.g. /configure/inetd.conf you just remove the # with an editor such as Pico.
Also look at known problems for this release of cLIeNUX.
Here's a list of the files in /configure that are real important, such that they have manpages/seedocs of thier very own, roughly in order of importance. If you screw up one of the first 3 bad enough you won't be able to boot to that partition.
A Real Install
If you are just perusing cLIeNUX from the umsdos or loopback versions and have decided to use it most of the time you'll want to head for the a_real_install document and the partitioning HOWTO.
Passwords
I suppose I could do a CGI wrapper to password from here, but I'll keep it simple and just remind you to make passwords, using "password", for root or r and any other users you may have before connecting your box to any external networks, ISP, etc., or if pranksters have access to your console.
They say most computer security breaches are due to weak passwords or weak password secrecy, like writing it on your monitor. A password should be memorable to you, so you can remember it without writing it down, and obscure to others. Passwords should also not be regular words. It's a personal thing.
cLIeNUX'es /configure/login.defs is defaulted for rather relaxed password *selection* constraints, i.e. you can use your login name as your pass, which is idiotic, basically, but it depends on your degree of connectivity and your environment. However, much more limiting, cLIeNUX password is not "SUID root". Only root can set passwords. There are no SUID bits in cLIeNUX, making "root exploits" almost impossible. In most unices SUID root, su and sudo allow plain users to run certain things as root. In cLIeNUX root is root, period. It's a trade-off geared for client use. If you're ready to have users telnetting into your box, and you want to allow them to set thier own passwords, then you know all about SUID and so on, right? You'd better.
Mouse
Linux cuts and pastes text just fine, courtesy of the gpm program, and cut/paste is extremely useful. (So does Pico (pico) ). Unfortunately mouse protocols are a configuration mess. The mouse is handled by the gpm daemon, which can also be started from /configure/inittab, I think, or you can call it by hand. For serial mice /dev/mouse should be a symlink to the correct /dev/ttyS#, but for PS/2 mice it needs to be a symlink to /dev/psaux. I don't know about busmice. Here's the available types....
gpm-Linux 1.10, July 1996 Available mouse types are: name synonym description mman Mouseman The "MouseMan" and similar devices (3/4 bytes per packet). ms The original micro$oft protocol, with a middle-button extension. bare Microsoft The ms protocol, unextended. Necessary for some 2-buttons mice. msc MouseSystems Mouse-Systems-Compatible. Used in most 3-button mice (5-bytes). sun 'msc' protocol, but only 3 bytes per packet. mm MMSeries MM series. Probably an old protocol... logi Logitech Used in some Logitech devices (only serial). bm BusMouse Micro$oft busmice and compatible devices. ps2 PS/2 Busmice of the ps/2 series. Most busmice, actually. ncr Ncr3125pen, found on some laptops wacom Wacom tablet
Shell options
Bash is the only unix-style command interpreter shell in cLIeNUX Level 2. "sh" is just a symlink, a symbolicly linked filename, to Bash. You can set a users default shell in /configure/passwd to gforth or H3sm or something, which are both also in /configure/shells for grins, but probably all you'll want to fool with are the system-wide login profile file /configure/profile and the various user's .bash_profile files, such as /owner/.bash_profile. Note that the supplied /owner/.bash_profile has examples of commands to run at shell startup, and some command aliases. You can also set shell variables, as in /configure/profile.
Kernel Modules
The supplied 2.2.9 Kernel has bunches of filesystems supported. There are also a wide variety of types of harddrives supported. Linux also supports runtime-insertable kernel modules. The kernel can link and unlink code to itself at any time. I am compiling several megs of modules as I type this. These modules are mostly device drivers for things that aren't essential to booting, such as sound, ethernet cards, ISDN, and so on. Eventually you'll want to build a kernel specifically for your box, but modules are handy. The related utilities include insmod
Be careful with pppd and logging. It can put the root password in plain text in the logs. I think the pppd debug option does that. The logs are priceless when configuring ppp however.
I put pppsetup and dialog back in. I had yanked them, but gpm can use dialog, so it has more than one thing it supports.
Hostname
There's a call to the hostname command in /configure/inittab that sets the hostname to cLIeNUX. That's what the shell prompt is controlled by. Change cLIeNUX to Your_cooool_hostname.
Font
Your fonts are in /suite/lib/kbd/consolefonts. "fav" is the symlink I use in that directory to set up an easy-to-type default. The viewall script that comes with the fonter console font editor cycles through all the fonts. To view all fonts, cd to /suite/lib/kbd/consolefonts/ and do ./viewall . setfont with no arguments will set the font that came in your VGA card. That fugly 80x25 one.
Login text
/configure/issue, /configure/motd and /configure/issuevt are the bootup and login files you see. Edit them to your tastes. The defaults are geared for the first time you see them.
SVGA
The view picture viewer and SVGATextMode use libvga, which can be MUCH MUCH better if you get the /configure/vga/libvga.config file tweaked right for your video card. See the files TextConfig and ~TextConfig in /configure also.
Printer
I don't know about modern printers. I have a dot-matrix. It's on /dev/lp0 in the 2.2 kernels, and cat ascii_text_file > /dev/lp0 works. There was a DIP switch on mine to set it to use unix-style newlines, i.e. just cursor_return instead of Dos-style CR/LF. Otherwise you get "staircasing". lpd is line printer daemon, i.e. for a networked printer, which I know nothing about. lpd has the print job spooling, possible exploits and all that fun stuff. My printer also does troff and Postscript if I preprocess them by hand with ghostscript or troff.
There are seedocs for devices in cLIeNUX Core. see lp .
copyright Richard Allen Hohensee 1999. This file is released for re-distribution only as part of an intact entire cLIeNUX Core.