Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [39]
It's up to you; if all else fails, just go with the flow and see what happens. It's doubtful that anything you do incorrectly now cannot be undone in the future (knock on wood).
* * *
[*] Matt shamefully admits that he kept a notebook of all his tribulations with Linux for the first few months of working with the system. It is now gathering dust on his bookshelf.
[*] Notice that this applies to filesystems only, not to directories. Of course, you can have any number of directory trees off the root directory in the same filesystem.
[*] This value applies to machines with Intel processors. On other architectures it can be both higher and lower.
[*] A block, under Linux, is 1024 bytes.
[*] Again, some distributions of Linux prepare the swap space for you automatically, or via an installation menu option.
Post-Installation Procedures
After you have completed installing the Linux software, you should be able to reboot the system, log in as root, and begin exploring the system. (Each distribution has a different method for doing this; follow the instructions given by the distribution.)
Before you strike out on your own, however, there are some tasks you should do now that may save you a lot of grief later. Some of these tasks are trivial if you have the right hardware and Linux distribution; others may involve a little research on your part, and you may decide to postpone them.
Creating a User Account
In order to start using your system, you need to create a user account for yourself. Eventually, if you plan to have other users on your system, you'll create user accounts for them as well. But before you begin to explore you need at least one account.
Why is this? Every Linux system has several preinstalled accounts, such as root. The root account, however, is intended exclusively for administrative purposes. As root you have all kinds of privileges and can access all files on your system.
However, using root can be dangerous, especially if you're new to Linux. Because there are no restrictions on what root can do, it's all too easy to mistype a command, inadvertently delete files, damage your filesystem, and so on. You should log in as root only when you need to perform system administration tasks, such as fixing configuration files, installing new software, and so on. See "Maintaining the System" in Chapter 10 for details.[*]
For normal usage, you should create a standard user account. Unix systems have built-in security that prevents users from deleting other users' files and corrupting important resources, such as system configuration files. As a regular user, you'll be protecting yourself from your own mistakes. This is especially true for users who don't have Unix system administration experience.
Many Linux distributions provide tools for creating new accounts. These programs are usually called useradd or adduser. As root, invoking one of these commands should present you with a usage summary for the command, and creating a new account should be fairly self-explanatory.
Most modern distributions provide a generic system administration tool for various tasks, one of which is creating a new user account.
Again, other distributions, such as SUSE Linux, Red Hat Linux, or Mandriva, integrate system installation and system administration in one tool (e.g., yast or yast2 on SUSE Linux).
If all else fails, you can create an account by hand. Usually, all that is required to create an account is the following:
Edit the file /etc/passwd to add the new user. (Doing this with vipw--instead of editing the file directly — will protect you against concurrent changes of the password file, but vipw is not available on all distributions.)
Optionally edit the file /etc/shadow to specify "shadow password" attributes for the new user.
Create the user's home directory.
Copy skeleton configuration files (such as .bashrc) to the new user's home directory. These can sometimes