Entries this day: Linux

Linux

7:21am CDT Friday 29 June 2001

I know I've been f-in' around with linux for a while, but I've still never really hacked into it and tried to figure shit out. I don't know how to use RPM, and I have no clue how to rebuild the kernel.

In November, Marcel helped me set up the network configuration of eth0, so that the system would automagically be connected to the DSL line when it booted. When we changed to cable modem, I was still using DSL, but needed to use DHCP instead of setting specific IP addresses.

It took me long enough to figure out how to get DHCP to work at all. Then I found a daemon dhcpcd which I could just run as root and then tada! we're connected.

However, I still wasn't sure how to make DHCP start at boot time. This would cause the boot process to take super way too long as sendmail would wait for something to timeout - about 3 minutes it seemed. Maybe more.

So I trial-and-errored my way to finding the directory and config files that Marcel worked with in November. Found them, and then pored over the code to see what called what with what options, etc etc until I found the solution:

In the eth0 configuration file, I set the boot protocol to dhcp.

That was it! Yay linux and red hat for being so precise in configuration; yay me for figuring out how to do it!

PS: while I searched through the directories to find the files Marcel had changed, I found how to change the system version number and name when one is at the login prompt. Now it says (thunderrabbit) instead of (Hurricane)