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Newbie's Linux Manual
The Setup Utility
by Laurence Hunter
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Easy Peasy

One of the easiest things you'll ever use in Linux is the Setup Utility. In fact the only reason I'm mentioning it is so that you're aware of its precence. And I know you'll thank me for it.

To start it, enter:

su - -c "setup"

...followed by the root password.

Note:

The setup program is located at /usr/sbin/setup. If you were logged-in as root you would simply enter setup to start the Setup Utility. If you were a user you would enter the full path: /usr/sbin/setup to run the program, but because you don't have the privileges to access any of the options it would be pointless.

So why does root only need to enter setup to run the program? It's because /usr/sbin is on root's PATH but not on a normal user's, so it knows where to find it. Even when you su to root you don't inherit root's PATH. To su to a user, with that user's environment, you add a - immediately after su.


Here's what each of the options does:

Authentication configuration
Password settings.

Keyboard configuration
Hmmm, I wonder?

Mouse configuration
Ditto.

System services
The services automatically started by Linux when booting.

Sound card configuration
Definately your first port-of-call.

Timezone configuration
If you set the wrong timezone during installation or have moved to a different country then you'll want to pick this. ;)

X configuration
Here you can change your monitor and video card settings. And also whether or not Linux automatically boots into X.

Tip:

During X configuration you'll be confronted with a huge list at the "Monitor Setup" screen. Press the first letter of your monitor's name to save scrolling through this huge list. (This will also work for the Keyboard, Mouse, and Timezone configuration lists.)

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