Lately there seems to be a surge of user posts that contain absolutely NO HOWTO information what-so-ever. Please remember that this section of the forum is for (as stated on the forum index:) "Instructional HowTo's posted by users."

This means, do not come in here and ask for help. The purpose of this area is to inform other users of your successful installations/modifications/updates etc... If you need help with any of these posted HOWTOs, please post replies within the respective thread.

If you are a newbie, please note that EVERYONE here was in your position at some point. That means, everyone here can relate to where you are coming from. But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do NOT post your questions or requests in the area.

Not only do requests and question threads make extra work for our already busy moderators, it distracts people who are viewing this area for it's intended purpose.

So, for those of you who only skim-read, and totally skipped the whole body of this message:
[list=1]
[*]Howtos ONLY
[*]Howtos ONLY
[*]Howtos ONLY
[*]NO REQUESTS
[/list=1]

Thank's for your cooperation, we greatly appreciate it.

A lot of newbees lately Newbees are the greates danger to RS's network, cause they have no clue how to manage their boxes.

I am afraid they are gonna take us all down and out of bussiness soon.

Are you serious, Albo?

I'm a newbie and the only one I'm taking down and out of business is myself. lol


Edit add in: I was making fun of myself. Don't mind me.

If you new guys don't get firewalled (ipchains or iptables) and then set the boxes up correctly... ie block spammers from using your smtp server etc... then you make it risky for those of us here who do that...

A comprimised box on a network can work at the other boxes within that network easier than from outside.. spam complaints from ip ranges get them blocked in many places..

So, newbies are a risk at any datacenter..

Shortz

[RANT]WOW It's COLD outside!!![/RANT]

Now that I got that out of my system..
I suppose Albo was born with an inherit knowledge of Linux and how to operate and manage it.. cool for you..
Without newbies we would have no challange to keep learning, without newbies we wouldnt be here ourselves as we were all newbies once ourselves..

This is the very nature of what has driven Linux to the level it is today, and what continues to drive it and simliar OS's to a level we havn't yet imagined.. the ongoing self education and education of others through contstant asking and answering of questions.. the only truly stupid or ignorant questions are the ones not asked..
To all newbies here at the RS forum, welcome and keep asking questions and do not let yourselves be detered, you can learn linux, and you must in order to safely run your own server as well as safely allow your server to exist in a manor that doesn't cause harm to others around you..
Buy a book or two, get to know google.com intimatly.. and for all our sake.. keep asking questions!! Mouse

AMEN

Stupid = you ask questions before reading/searchin and doing your homework.

Smart = you buy books and read as much as you can on the subject.

Nice = You share your knowledge with them who want to learn.


I have no problems with neebees who are willing to learn, i have a problem with newbees who only ask stupid questions even for things they can learn from google.

maybe someone should write a how to for using google.com and RS forum and how to structure keywords to have the best chance at getting the correct answers/material in the results..
surprisingly there are still people who dont know how to use a search engine.. my Mother is one of them, used computers for the last several years but new to the internet and asking a seemingly endless stream of questions you or I think of as common knowledge... Mouse

Right on mouse!

I been there and I am still learning. Ignorants is bliss.

One of the frustrating things for someone who's new to something is that they don't know what to call whatever it is they need.

If I know what I'm looking for, I can write Google queries with the best of 'em. But I come from a software development background (it's still my primary focus), so managing a Linux box is new to me. Luckily, I know enough generic admin terms that I can usually find a command/article that does what I need. Not everyone has the same background.

Posting a specific "How do I" question here, or in usenet, or wherever, is a last resort for a lot of people. In my case, I've done searches, checked my books, etc. Unfortunately, there occasions when the answer is quite simple -- if I'd only known what terminology to use.

Anyway, mouse, I really appreciate the helpful people here. There are alot of us "newbs" lurking out here and trying to learn it as we go. Unfortunately, there's also the category of those whose first reaction to any error message is to post a message online.

I just hope that the l33t-ist types out there who are ashamed to share a rack with the rest of us don't assume that everyone's in that latter category.

jdonnici, I was no linux guru either, just like you, I spent my time writing java/c/c++ code and also worked on a web community as a hobby. In two years, my sites grew so much in trafic that I couldn't find a shared host that could host them for me cause it would drain their resources and bw. I wasn't ready either to spend $400 a month for one of manages host deals, so I decided to go with RS and be the admin of my own dedicated box. Scary thought

It is not an easy task believe me, I would rather have someone else do this stuff for me, but it is fun at the same time. You learn new stuff, you buy a bunch of linux sys admin books, you read a lot of stuff here in thi forum, do some research on your own with google, a couple of screwups (restores) along the way, and you will make it.

Bump - n00bs aren't reading it - just wanna keep it up top so it is noticed.

Its a sticky thread its always on top

Maybe u need a catchy title or something, like

Newbies: Get Your Free Servers HERE!!!

wow free servers?? where???

We were all n00bs once. I don't consider myself a newbie overall but in some aspects I am. The good newbies are those that ask questions to learn, those that are ignorant or just want someone else to do it for them shouldn't be a *nix admin.

Nice idea, but somewhat misleading :-P. The reason I bumped it is because Stickys have ranking positions also. If someone posts in another sticky, it will move above this one.

Actually if it was considered the most important thread someone could set it up as an announcement ... Then it would always be at the top above the stickies ...

when I first started I had no idea what info to search for, where to search for it, what words to enter into the search to find what I was trying to do (try searching for what "su" means) or even where to search for it. I also didn't know who I could trust and who was going to take advantage of the fact that I'm a major newbie and tell me to do something completely drastic such as rm -rf / and screw myself over.

Half the time I was trying to do the how-tos in the plesk forum, the other half the time I was trying to do the how-tos in the cobalt forum. And I'm on an Ensim server.

It took me quite a while to figure out what people were saying when they told me to "RTFM"

I was completely lost and am still not too sure that I've completed securing my server, but have several server admin books already that I'm busy reading and several more in the mail on their way to my house and I probably only have about 10,000 more pages of reading to go.

I think that what the newbies need is one clear cut official guide from rackshack, that says, ok, this is how it is. It would only take them maybe a half an hour at the most to make the page and they wouldn't even have to put any time critical information in it that would need to be updated.

I even clearly told Rackshack people on the phone before I ordered my server that I was a complete newbie and had never done anything on the admin side of a server before, and he said "oh it's ok you'll be able to do everything you want just fine in the control panel without any problems".

I just about left rackshack when I asked support "I see people saying in a how-to that we need to edit a file, what command would we use in linux to edit a file?" and I got the response "THis is beyond the scope of support, we can not help you with third party software, this is not our problem". Now I know that rackshack is unmanaged hosting and that this is not their problem, but it took them longer to type out than it would have taken them to simply say "Pico -w" would that have really hurt? maybe, because I would have kept coming back asking questions expecting them to answer them, but with all these newbies coming in with the $1 setup fees, and the fact that nowhere does their webpage clearly state that this is unmanaged hosting with no support whatsoever, I think that it would be benificiary to all parties involved if they simply gave the newbies a little bit more information than "here's your server IP# and here's where you log into Ensim at"

Anyway, Rackshack really is a great place, however I know of a few people here that have had servers here for a few months that have never even SSHed into them, applied a single patch, or anything of the sort. Why? because they don't know that they are responsible for that sort of thing. Oh well.

No matter what, there will always be a time when some newbies will miss this thread and still post the wrong stuff in here. I still see this happen often.

Just because you're new to Linux doesn't mean you're an idiot. Newbies aren't the problem...they learn...n00bs are the real problem, they don't, and refuse to. Anyway, onward.

I learned linux on a home comp, and I learned by trying things and making mistakes. Now I have a server here, and still make mistakes, but now I can fix them =).


Without new customers, Rackshack would go out of business.

Agreed and without new people in this forum we would stagnate.. Mouse

heh, I am a noob, so I guess I aggree

MattDH
Regular RS-Forum Member<==== does that say moderater??????

Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 365




i think you need to let the ACCUAL MODERATERS POST THIS STUFF

and get your head out of your *****beep*****



grow up,

timmylc

(ps the only reson i just registerd to the forum is couse i saw your post "been with rackshack for 6 months" heh never needed the forum till now....)

------[EDIT]------

There's no need for my reply any more - all posts from timmy's first post, to webcite's post are unrelated to the subject of this thread. My apologies for enabling the mindlessness to continue longer than necessary. Sorry for the inconvinence.

jeeze going a little harsh on the guy ...

hitler ... nazi ... wow someones a freak!

heh....nazi is fine with me....wow strong words....and yes i canot spell...

bringin yourself down with makeing public fun of me



well mabe im not the smartest person in the wourld but you do have anger issues


heh mom's gone foo "make fun o that"

OK, stop right there!

Each of you said what he felt and we leave it with that.
This post is a sticky because it is a very good post and I want to keep it that way and I don't want to close it because it goes completely off topic.
We don't need to go off topic with two guys bashing each other; you guys can take that to PM from here on.

Any further post about bashing will be deleted.

If you are quick to jump on someones case about a post and basically start a flame war...you should be prepared for a rebuttal. And since that was your first post it makes us suspicious that you are a troll and just looking to start trouble. We do not tolerate those type of posts.

And as Cyborg stated above all the mods agree this was a valid post which is why it was "stuck". MattDH has been a contributor to the forums for some time and we appreciate his posts.

If you have some type of grudge against MattDH, I suggest you take it elsewhere.

heh okie dokey

I've just got my first server this month and I went with RackShack for price reasons. I'm newly married (October 26th ) and low on money and so I'm just here trying to make a buck so that my new wife doesn't have to work so many hours. I'm the perfect example of a newbie. I'm no idiot having taught myself everything computer-related under the sun it seems but not Linux. So here I am with a Linux server and a great desire to create a quality product and protect my customers but without any money to buy books (the internet is my best friend) and as somebody posted earlier I don't know very much Linux terminology.

In fact, the first time I started reading through these forums about 10 days ago I didn't even know what you guys were trying to communicate by typing "su -" or "pico whatever.fil" so it is hard sometimes to read through the HowTo's when you are getting started unless they realize that those are actually commands that you are supposed to type in and oh yeah, you are supposed to login though an SSH utility first before you can type those in. You can't imagine how hard it was for me to figure out where those commands go once I realized they were commands. These are the things you need to take into consideration when creating a HowTo because those HowTo's are just as much, if not more, for the newbies than anybody.

All that said, I am EXTREMELY grateful for you regulars who are taking the time to help us out. Not only does it help a guy like me, just trying to make an honest buck, but it's also in your best interest if you are one of those people who are ashamed to share an IP block with a newbie. Anyways, just want to say thanks and keep up the good work guys.

I've been through the Checklist and have done my research and I know that is not an end all to security so I have a couple of questions that maybe would benefit some other newbies:

1. Where would you suggesst a guy like me go on the net to find out about the latest vulnerabilities in Linux and any other software and how to patch them?

2. What is a good Anti-Virus for Linux? I am from the Windows world and I trust Norton Anti-virus but I don't think they have a version for Linux so I'm stuck. And by the way, I don't want to install some stupid anti-virus that blocks all exectuable files and such because some executables are legit attachments and my clients want them.

3. SPAM is a Huge concern of mine. The last thing a guy in my position needs is to have his server yanked because he got taken advantage of by a customer. I've already closed the open relay holes as best as I know how...my question is this: Is there any way to limit the number of emails sent out per domain or email account per day and then automatically disable the SMTP server for that domain if that limit is exceeded?

4. What does "RTFM" mean anyways? Seriously, what does it mean?

Thanks guys,

Jon

If a new security issue is found, someone on these forums will probably post about it.

There are tons of sites for linux newbies.. www.linuxnewbie.org is just one of them. http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/ has a bunch of linux commands and the entrie oreillynet.com site is very good.

www.google.com will become one of your best friends also.. search for linux security and you will probably find a ton of sites.. i cant name any offhand.. im tired.

RTFM mean Read The Fine (or Fu*ing) Manual..

In other words... read the documentation on whatever..

Doobla, first of all welcome to the forum.

The way this forum works best, is to ask answers in the appropriate sections.
You should not use a thread and take it off topic, but rather start your own thread, this way you will get help much easier, since people know what to expect when they read your topic.

I advise you to post those questions again in the specific server section (letting people know what kind of server you have) or in the "General Comments/Suggestions".

BTW this thread tells you exactly to do just that.

To help ease some How-To Request, why not setup an area
for noting but request on How-To, have a sticky at top with
a list of already made how-to's, and if someone
does not see the how-to they are looking for they could
add it to the request area. Just a suggestion

The How-To should be asked in the appropriate section for whatever you need help with.

That's what the How-To section is there for.

First let me thank the person that answered my question.. Thank you

My DNS was handled by my former ISP which I had a T1 line from. DNS is not something I ever had to bother with.

Am I a newbie to Rackshack and DNS? Yes.

Do I own and have I read books dealing with Linux, Apache, Perl, Frontpage, PHP, MySQL Assembly Language, Basic, C, C+, Pascal, Cobol? Yes I have. shall I go on?

The reference to the red green and yellow lights was apparently bad humor.

I have one problem.. I don't know everything about everything so I will always be a newbie in one area or another.

Hi,

I just thought i would let you all know there are loads of us out here that are total newbees, with little or no knowlegde of the linux system.

Some might say what are you here for then ? TO LEARN FROM PEOPLE HERE.

I am at present just a reseller, and i need my own server now.

I was told its easy, just pay for the server, its setup the same day you get an ip and it comes with Ensim and everything works through web admin.

I have never been told what and how i would log into a server and that it works with dos command line data.

I use xp, the last time i was in dos was to make a menu system bat file.

For me when you all go on about rpm, pico and command line data i am totaly lost.

Perhaps when you explain these commands you could make then a bit moredetailed for us.

As you get more advanced you forget about explaining the really basic stuff, You belive everyone knows that dont they?

Well we dont, call us thick, tell us to read books search google etc but the quickest way i have found to learn is from someone that has made a mistake then shares it.

Sorry for posting here but someone has to stick up for the complete NOVICE.

Its great to find a forum where so many people are willing to help others.


Jaroma

Jaroma, as to learning the basics, I have to stand by RTFM.. reading the MAN for given commands, getting a book or two and then using them is the best and fastest way to learn..
Most of the how to's in this forum are as simple as it gets, 90% can be copy pasted command by command and its just a matter of reading the whole thread first to see any possible issues you may expect and seeing if people have posted solutions for said issues..
The fastest shortcut to being a wiz on Linux is using it one day at a time and learning a little bit each day and then using what you learned yesterday again today so that it gets imprinted into your memory.. Mouse

Hi,

Thanks mouse, and of course if we get stuck and mees up our server we could call upon a good server managent team !

The points made here that Ensim vendors tell you that you won't need to know anything beyond the control panel are valid - I got the same spiel from another provider.

As soon as I switched everything over my bad spam problem was suddenly much worse so I went into the CP and deleted the catch-all alias and maybe postmaster? I don't remember now. I also rerouted the other defaults somewhere. Then all my email went iffy.. I found out via forums that I shouldn't have done it like I did, so I had to go in and reconfigure the alias files. And I still needed a spam solution that didn't involve pasting every addy one-by-one into every site's CP (though in retrospect that probably wouldn't have taken more time than I spent searching and being frustrated..)

But first I too spent hours & hours trying to figure out what SSH was and how to use it, and it wasn't fun.

Even after you're lucky enough to find "to log in as root, type su -" it really doesn't cut it when you are fresh from the shared reseller hosting world and have no idea what that means. I'm still not sure how to replace a file effectively as root (I've managed to do it but it changes the file's permissions to admin. I dunno if this is bad and if so, how bad.)

Let's not even go into the fact that it's not easy to test things before going live.. some might even be impossible for all I know. I just closed my eyes and hit the gas and got lucky.

Point being: those of us who chose Ensim based on unrealistic expectations (lies) told to us don't necessarily have the time or inclination to start from scratch learning Linux just to make our sites functional.

This is by far the best board for general noob help that I've found (huge thanks all!) but a REAL BASIC absolute beginners board wouldn't be a bad idea for those of us who need fast information and weren't told we'd need to learn a ton of new stuff. Much of the New Ensim Checklist post is still over my head.. I figure I'm lucky since I date back to DOS days so I at least had a clue about syntax and non-windows directory structures, but it's still not been fun at all, and it's definitely not what I was told I was getting into. That's not your fault obviously, and your help is soooo appreciated, but try to realize where some of us are coming from and why we seem so stoopid & frustrated sometimes

well that is the point of rackshack
rackshack is cheap but Unmanaged
most people see the cheap but don't notice the unmanaged, unmanaged means you are expected to have some minor knowledge although at RackShack the users do try to be extremely helpfull to each other.
but we can't teach everything there are some extremly good admins here and there are some that can't find C: drive on their linux server, but if you read through the forums you will find answers to 90% of your questions in a very easy explenation.

heh, 'newbie'...one of my friends is a great programmer, In 1996 he was the first person to accept CC payments over the internet in Seattle, the city where Microsoft is now, used icverifty and wrote own front end with a modem to dialup and do the transactions then add accounts instantly. I talked to him a few days ago. He told me how it is now...he says that he feels like a complete newbie, everything changed, whole computer thingy changes so fast it's unbelieveable...my personal opinion is that we are all newbies, some of us more than others but whole computer world is too big today, and without newbies RackShack would be nada, zero.

I must add that RS are superb. Yes there will always be problems (like yesterday when the router issue hit a few of us and our boxes couldn't be hit by certain sub nets), but they are 24/7 in IRC and always willing to help. I haven't come across a company like this ever and I want to stay here for as long as possible. I now have 2 accounts with RS which cover 4 servers (soon a 5th).

So thanks RS and all the ppl on these forums as without ppl knowing more than u you wouldn't learn anywhere near as quick or get your boxes updated, while without ppl knowing less than u you wouldn't feel like a part of this community but forever a n00b. I help as much as I can on the forums (time permitting) and would say I'm a newbie even though I manage 5 boxes (4 at RS). Everyone is a newbie tbh. Just some ppl know that little bit more No one's perfect!

To all the extreme regulars out there:

I have played the lurking noob for quite awhile. You folks have offered what would amount to thousands of hours of support on this board for free. Hell, I've learned more from lurking here about Linux server administration than anywhere else. Thanks a bunch all of you!

I do have a question that I think would help in this thread:

What would be your choice of, say, the top ten forums (not including this one) that are a great help to newcomers through advanced admins? I've found this board wonderful and try to give back from time to time. But, there are MANY MANY other boards but I just don't have the time to lurk in them all to see if they're worth the effort.

The question pared back: What other forums have you guys found useful and worthwhile?

(on the verge on un noobness)
jeffro

I use http://www.savageforums.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=7 all the time if I have any questions generally. It's a Game's forum but hardly anything is posted about games these days

I have read enough, I will now go and join this place,....brb..... Done........I will now read on.......... I like this place.

I also think it would be a good ideato include what platform the howto is for. we all that there are howtos in this forum so instead of ppl postingthe topic like

HowTo: Whatever Howto this is

to maybe something like

CPanel: Whatever Howto this is
Ensim: Whatever Howto this is
Plesk: Whatever Howto this is

to make it easier to distinguishe

The only problem I see with that is that many people post HowTo's that are relevant to every control panel but because they use a specific one then they would specifiy that it is for that panel. It may be misleading and some might lose out on useful info.

Just a thought to throw into the mix.

Jon

I know im a little late on this one. But it seems there are more users with this sale coming in everday by the hundreds it seems.

And i bet 70% are newbies 10% total n00bs the other 20 is people that know their stuff or are pretty advanced.

The simple fact of the matter is just becuase you see a n00b not willing to learn but get hand fed doesnt mean we all are that way.
Im a complete newbie in my own opinion. Ive went from shared virtual to reselling to upgrading my reselling buss. to a VPS and now i finaly got a DS. I thought ok this will be no different from a VPS but what i learned is that you cant call the support staff or the techies becuase you dont understand soemthing now. The only support tickets you put in are for reboots and upgrades or crashes. That blew me away. Talking about hitting amazon real quick and purchasing some books. But even though buying books helps and you can memorize it. You have to remember a few things. For one the book does not tell you what to do if your compiling a software program and you make a typo and it goes haywire. But you can jump in the forum and say "ok this is what i was trying to do can someone give me any pointers? ... this is what i did to cause the problem" yadda yadda. You will end up getting more then one way to fix the problem then that book.

I may be a newb but i do not look for hand outs i would rather learn my own then have a sysadmin doing it. Yes they know exactly what they are doing but woops i cant afford him no more something messes up im SOL.

This is to the first person that said oh gawd newbs (not exact quote but means the same). Yep we came as newbs and hope to learn and be at the level your at some day. Your a newb yourself even though your thinking pattern doesnt let you know it. YOu learn something everyday which infact makes you a newb. You may think different about it but its true. You dont know everything none of us do we will always be newb's.

To the n00b's let go of the hand get a book learn something knowledge is power ... power is success.

Sorry if this post was out of order or lame just my thoughts on the newb subject. Me goes back to google

My sig says it all.
Im a noobi, remember its noobi not newbi as in Linux nor linux.
Rackshack would certainly not be as big as it is to day with out the noobi's.
God bless all the noobi's everywhere.