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Troubleshooting Post-Installation Configuration Problems
As Linux continues to be developed, it has become increasingly fault-tolerant, meaning that if errors are
You will find clues to many problems in dmesg output, or in the /var/log/messages file, a simple text file containing constantly updated kernel and system information that you can view in any editor. Take a moment to review this file or dmesg output after installing or configuring new hardware; you will see that they show the progress of booting and starting services on your system. The messages are generated by the kernel, other software run by /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit , and Fedora's runlevel scripts. You might find what appear to be errors at first glance, but some errors are not really problems (for example, if a piece of hardware is configured but not present on your system).
When troubleshooting error messages, remember that "Google is your friend." Simply copy part or all of the error message and paste the information into a search field at http://www.google.com/linux/ and at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/. You might find links to pages with information to help you solve your problem. It is quite likely that you are not the first person to encounter the problem. Reading the manual page for
Remember to only solve one problem at a time and always make a backup copy of any system file before you modify it. Do not use the common extension .bak because files with that extension can sometimes be overwritten. Here is a good method of copying the file: # cp filename filename.original And when restoring from that backup, do not rename the file, just copy it, like so: # cp filename.original filename
(When these tips have saved you countless hours of frustration, thank us by purchasing copies of this book as gifts for your
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Your Hardware and Kudzu
When you add or replace hardware, for example, you will need to configure the operating system to recognize and boot with the new
NOTE
The
kudzu
service maintains a database of your system's hardware information under the
/etc/sysconfig
directory in a file named
hwconf
. This service can be started,
You can perform many post-installation tasks without rebooting or downtime. With proper planning, you also can create a server or workstation configuration that allows "hot-swapping" of system storage and other components, eliminating the need for downtime. In this chapter, you learn how to configure various USB and Firewire (IEEE-1394) devices in addition to keyboards, modems, and notebook PCMCIA services. Information about your system's installed hardware is contained in a number of files under the Fedora directory system. Aside from one or two symbolic links , or shortcut-type files created under the /dev directory for the convenience of system utilities, nearly all these hardware settings are in text files under the /etc directory. The contents of these files are used by various software services to manage your system's hardware, save changes to your hardware, ensure that settings are saved between reboots, and to properly configure your system upon booting. A number of these files are used by the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit script when Linux starts. For example, some of these files include
You will find additional information about the files in /etc/sysconfig in the file named sysconfig.txt under the /usr/share/doc/initscripts directory.
CAUTION Do not edit kudzu 's text-file database of installed hardware; these files are updated dynamically by Kudzu. If you have trouble with a device, however, you can check the information in these files when troubleshooting to see if the device is properly recognized and its definition matches the actual hardware. |
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