Frequently asked questions

FLOPPIX

Frequently asked questions:

A. What is included in floppix?

Floppix provides a platform to practice Unix commands and basic system administration. As much as possible, Floppix behaves like a small Debian installation. It includes:
1. the bash and flin shells, user and root accounts, 3 virtual consoles
2. unix utilities: find, grep, cut, vi, tr, sed, awk, sort, wc, gzip, tar, diff , lpr ...
3. network configuration for fixed IP, dhcp, ppp
4. network utilities: ping, telnet, ftp, mail, ssmtp, fetchmail, links, ssh, ipfwadm, traceroute, host, netstat
5. daemons: inetd, tcpd, telnetd, ftpd, icmplogd, tcplogd, klogd, syslogd, cron, lpd
6. Debian system initialization setup with S and K scripts and runlevels
7. support for ext2, msdos and vfat filesystems on floppy diskettes
8. mount, mke2fs, e2fsck, umount, smbmount, smbumount, du, df, dd, stat
9. system logs (on tty8)
10. simulated man pages
Floppix can be used safely because ALL hard drive support is disabled.
For the most part the commands are taken directly from Debian 2.1 with these exceptions:
1. email is handled by a script that determines whether the mail should be delivered locally or forwarded to an SMTP server
2. man is a script and the man pages are usually the internal help for each command.
3. date is not the real date command; it does not deal with timezones or support any options.

B. What are the system requirements for floppix:

At least a 486DX with a 3.5" floppy and 16Mb RAM.
A network card is NOT required. The supported network cards are: 3c503, 3c509, 3c905, DEC21*4*, NE2000 (PCI), SMC Ultra, Via-Rhine.

C. Are there instructions for making a mini-distribution?

The instructions for creating a floppy based version of Linux are available from the Bootdisk HOWTO at the Linux Documentation Project.

D. Are there other mini-distributions?

There are many floppy based distributions of Linux and more appear each month; each distribution has different goals. Some of my favourites are:

tomsrtbt The most Linux on one floppy; a single disk Linux that can work as a rescue disk.
Linux Router Project a Linux router on one disk
LOAF Linux on a floppy
muLinux a single disk Linux with Internet applications and ppp support
Trinux: A Linux Security Toolkit

E. Can you suggest other Online Linux/Unix courses?

UNIXHelp: Information for users of the UNIX operating system, developed at the University of Edinburgh from work funded by the ITTI. UNIXhelp is mirrored around the world and freely available for local installation.
Basic Linux Training: A free online course aimed at the DOS/Windows 95 user.
USAIL - Unix System Administration Independent Learning: An excellent course from Indiana University.
85321 Systems Administration: an online system administration course from Central Queensland University.

F. Can you recommend a linux textbook?

Everything from the Linux documentation project.
For the Floppix labs, which are setup for the beginner, I particularly recommend Linux Installation and Getting Started
Learning the UNIX Operating System, 4th Edition
By Jerry Peek, Grace Todino & John Strang
ISBN: 1-56592-390-1, published by O'Reilly
This book is about 100 pages and deceptively simple. It provides a quick and painless introduction to unix.
Running Linux, 3rd Edition
By Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer & Lar Kaufman
ISBN: 1-56592-469-X, published by O'Reilly
This book a classic. It is not recipe book but you will not find a better overall introduction to all aspects of Linux.
A Practical Guide to Linux
by: Mark Sobell
ISBN: 0-201-89549-8, published by Addison-Wesley
A very thorough comprehensive introduction to user-level Linux.
LINUX® For Dummies® Quick Reference, 2nd Edition
By Phil Hughes
ISBN: 0-7645-0422-3, published by IDG
Phil Hughes is the publisher of the Linux Journal and not a dummy. Make sure that you get the quick reference!
A-Z of Linux, 1st edition
Phil Cornes, Staffordshire University
ISBN: 0-13-742867-7, published by Prentice Hall
60% of this text covers programming under Linux but even if you are not a programmer, the first 40% has wonderful clear conceptual explanations.