A new reader Welcome to comp.os.linux.misc, read this first if you're new here FAQ 43

Netiquette 2005-12#1

New reader? Great! Welcome! Here's how to make best use of this newsgroup and get yourself a slice of the best help available. Now read on ...

TESTING YOUR CONNECTION

Errm, first a delicate point. Often users accessing a forum like this for the first time don't realize that posts don't show up immediately, certainly not for several minutes, and maybe not for some hours. In the old days, it took as long as the camel bearing the news took! So they tend to post "test" messages. Please don't!

It really is a netiquette faux pas; it gets on the regulars' nerves and will get you flamed. It's much like switching a light switch on and off would get on the nerves of the people in the room!

Just sit back and wait for the post to show up, or be subtle enough to post something that at least looks like a sensible post, not just a "hello, testing, testing"! And if you really want to post "testing, testing" messages, post to the approved test group next door or above in the news hierarchy. Those groups include at least:

alt.test gnu.gnusenet.test misc.test

By all means, experiment and test - in the proper place.

YOUR POST

You may notice that we get many hundreds of posts a week here. That's a lot of posts, and a lot of reading for the people who read these groups, who, after all, are the people who are going to answer your questions. So it's in your interest to reduce the amount of reading they have to do. Often, you can get an answer faster without posting your question at all! Before you post, you should try:

a) Reading the manual for your system.

Some day you will encounter the phrase "RTFM", which stands for "Read the Fine Manual" (except 'F' doesn't really stand for "Fine"). If you ask someone a question and they tell you to RTFM, it's an indication that you haven't done your homework and you should look harder (or for the first time!) at the material they indicate.

By the way, when these people use terminology like "read(2)", they are referring to the man page in section 2 of the manual which deals with the "read" command, and you would access this page by the command "man 2 read", typed at a command line. Yes, there is a command line. Let's not go through that just now ...

By the way, regular posters use a lot of acronyms. "BTW" means "by the way", BTW. Try "The Jargon Lexicon" as reference:

b) Searching the archives.

Your question almost certainly has already been answered in the past, because you are not alone in the universe! Other people have used the same software as you. Other people have bought the same hardware. Go here, fill in the search field with likely words, hit return and see what comes up:

What? No answer? You're ET. Naw ... you need to practice using search engines. Use words that are likely to get a response, and repeat the search refining each time the keywords you use until you get just the responses you want. It's a very good idea to let "linux" be the first of them! For example

linux debian faq

should pull up references to this FAQ.

Still no success? OK. Then you're down to

c) Posting on the newsgroups.

To which newsgroup should you post?

Don't ask why there are so many. Perhaps it's part of Linus's "World domination" plan. Who knows? ;)

If you are unsure, try in comp.os.linux.misc or alt.os.linux and with a little luck, some wizard will answer your question or-and direct you to the proper place.

How should you post? Here is what the technical experts want to see;

i) data, data and data, but not your impressions. That is, no "narrative description" but instead an exact reproduction, by copy and paste with the mouse, of each and every datum that you are basing your ideas of what is going on on. Do not trust yourself to type! Use the mouse. You will miss data of great significance to others that will mislead (and annoy!) them, such as a space, a capital letter, a digit instead of a letter, etc. etc.

ii) This is already implied by the above, but include debug logs or-and full error messages (repeat, the originals, not hand copies). Do not "attach" them! Include them in-line in the text because people need to see them simultaneously with your commentary, and in the context of your narrative. ease up things if you include which distro you are running, if unsure 'catetc-*release', 'catetc-*version' or-and 'lsbrelease -d' should tell (most distro).

ii) Again, this got implied above, but it's worth emphasizing. Use ASCII (text) only! Don't use HTML or add any vcards or alike. Please use a maximum line width of 65-72 (characters), except where the log line or error message you quote is longer (it shouldn't usually be), in which case preserve it exactly in preference to confusing the issue by adding your own line breaks, no matter how long it is.

How would such a beast look like? Go to:

USEFUL SUBJECTS

The