isoinfo:

This is the one that saved me from wasting (a lot of) media so I’ll start with it. Since I need to create DVDs that can be read both in Windows and Linux I create my media utilizing both the MS Joliet specification and Rock Ridge standard. Basically, both of these extensions to the ISO9660 standard allow for additional file information to be stored on CD/DVD (long filenames, permissions and so on).

Initially I was attempting to create an ISO containing files with names exceeding 64 characters. Joliet technically only allows for 64 and was doing awful things to my file names (umm hello, truncating the extension?). Isoinfo (isoinfo -i <iso> -lJ) allowed me to see that the Joliet filenames were broken. Had I burned that DVD it would have appeared fine on my Linux machines (as they would be referring the RR data on the DVD) but would have been been a problem on my Windows boxes. Just that command saved me at least two discs

Handy isoinfo commands:

isoinfo -i <iso> -lJ: View info from Joliet extensions
isoinfo -i <iso> -lR: View info from RR extensions
isoinfo -i <iso> -d: View ISO’s properties

isovfy:

Isovfy’s man page states: isovfy is a utility to verify the integrity of an iso9660 image. Most of the tests in isovfy were added after bugs were discovered in early versions of genisoimage. It isn’t all that clear how useful this is anymore, but it doesn’t hurt to have this around.

Lack luster description, I personally don’t know how useful it is either but I figure that if you download an ISO, it couldn’t hurt to run this proggie on it for a quick sanity check.

isovfy <iso>

isodump:

Yeah, this one is a mystery to me. I personally couldn’t find a human use for this one at all. isodump is a crude utility to interactively display the contents of iso9660 images in order to verify directory integrity. The initial screen is a display of the first part of the root directory, and the prompt shows you the extent number and offset in the extent.

Feel free to try it on your ISO, just keep in mind that the man page is accurate, it’s crude. Personally, I get what I need from the other two utils so I’ll just forget about this one.

That’s all I have on ISOs for now, check out the wikipedia links throughout the post, if you’re a little geeky it’s interesting reading

Note: I did all of this as root

First, creating an ISO image. What I need to do is create an image from a directory of goodies that I need to back up. The directory I’m backing up contains 4.4G (or one single layer DVD) of random MP3s and I want them written to the root of the DVD when it’s finalized.

I started by reading the man page for mkisofs. That got me started, and then a quick read of http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Mkisofs finished me off. My first few attempts just gave me ISOs containing MP3s with short filenames or short filenames in all CAPS. Not what I wanted, these are all descriptively named files and I want to retain the names. The command below worked perfectly.

mkisofs -r -J -l -d -joliet-long -allow-multidot -V Mp3_003 -o ./Mp3_003.iso _Archive/Mp3_003/*

All of those options are important, -r makes the files publicly readable (among other things), -J preserves case (upper/lower), -l allows long filenames, -d doesn’t add a period to the end of files that don’t have them, -joliet-long allows up to 103 characters (vs 64), -allow-multidot allows files to contain multiple periods and -o specifies the output file name, . Optionally, (but why wouldn’t you) -V sets the DVD’s Volume name (up to 32 characters). As is typical, there are many more options available to you, spend a little time reading the man page for more info.

Note: -joliet-long was key for me. I found that when I attempted to read files with filenames longer than 64 characters on Windows, they would be truncated and NOT in a good way. The filename would be truncated in reverse, starting with the file extension. A 65 character file with a .MP3 extension would end up with a .MP extension. Ugly. That said, the man page warns that this breaks the joliet specification and to use with caution. You’ve been warned.

After a few moments you’ll have an ISO image containing all of the files you specified. In my case, all of the MP3’s I’ve collected since I burned my last backup.

Now to write it to my media:

cdrecord -v -sao dev=/dev/dvd Mp3_003.iso

-v sets verbose mode, -sao enables session at once (no multi-disc), dev=/dev/dvd specifies the device to use and finally, the input file; Mp3_003.iso. There are A LOT of options available to you, you’ll want to spend a little time with man cdrecord.

Note: You don’t need to specify the device if you have a properly configured /etc/wodim.conf. If you’re wondering why it isn’t /etc/cdrecord.conf, the answer is that cdrecord is nothing more than a sym link to /usr/bin/wodim on Debian (and possibly other distros). You can verify this on your box with which cdrecord | file -f -.

My first write failed but it was because I have two VMware virtual machines running on this box and they were attempting to poll the CD-ROM drive for media. The fix was to disconnect the drives in the VMs and then burn.

The resulting CD should be readable in any modern OS. I have no problem accessing the files from Linux or Windows and feel confident that I have a solid solution for creating DVD archives.

host anapnea
hostname anapnea.net
user fakeusername
identityfile ~/.ssh/id

When I want to log in, I open my terminal program of choice and enter ssh ana<tab> and press enter. Pressing tab expands to anapnea and I make my connection saving 4 keystrokes.

Note: For those interested, SSH tab-complete will expand to the value of host or hostname. That’s handy if you can remember the actual hostname of the machine and you’ve forgotten what you entered as the value of host (yeah, I’ve done it). If that makes no sense to you, you can get more information on SSH config files with man 5 ssh_config.

Tab complete also works with lftp and some other programs when using Ubuntu. I’ve found the lack of it in Fedora a little frustrating (I keep pressing tab and get nothing). I did a little Googling to find out just what program sets up this functionality and checked the Fedora repos for it. Thankfully it can be found in all it’s glory and awaiting installation in Fedora extras.

su -c 'yum install bash-completion'

A few seconds later, you’re ready to bank your keystrokes and tab complete to your heart’s content.

Note: Any terminal sessions that were open when you installed the package won’t utilize it until you either restart the session or enter bash at the prompt. It seems that your shell needs to source the newly created /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh script. This is done when you invoke BASH by opening a terminal prompt or executing bash at the command line.

Get to a shell prompt, and execute the following commands:

sudo update-alternatives --config usplash-artwork.so

You’ll be prompted with the following:

There are 2 alternatives which provide `usplash-artwork.so’.
Selection Alternative
———————————————–
1 /usr/lib/usplash/usplash-theme-ubuntu.so
*2 /usr/lib/usplash/usplash-theme-kubuntu.so
Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

I entered 1 to select usplash-theme-ubuntu.so and hit Enter.

Now enter the command below:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-$(uname -r)

You’ll receive a few status messages, and then a few moments later you’ll have your prompt back. Now go about your business, you’re done! The next time you boot, you’ll have the default Ubuntu boot splash staring back at you.

I figure sharing a system with others can teach me a few things, I looked at it from a newb’s point of view and here are some of the reasons I came up with for checking out Anapnea.

Community: The IRC channel is full of people buzzing about the service, asking questions, and giving each other help. It seems to be a combination of newish to seasoned Linux/Unix users that are excited about the service. If you’re just getting started with Linux, this is a great way to get some help. Everyone using that service is using the exact same software as you. If you have a question, ask, you’re almost sure to get an answer.

Introduction to Console Applications: You’ll have access to several well known communication applications. IRSSI, CenterICQ and others. These are common Linux tools for communicating on IRC and IM networks. You can read about some of them on the Anapnea home page. The apps are already installed for you, all you have to do is try them out. See what you like or don’t like. I would suggest reading up on IRSSI, if you’re totally green, it’s not the easiest application to configure. That said, it’s the IRC client I’ve been using since I first gave Linux a shot. It’s terrific!.

Resource Sharing: By sharing a system with others, you get a feel for the right and wrong things to do when on a multi-user system. Poking around in other people’s home dirs would fall into the “wrong” category. That is a sure way to get your account revoked. I watched somebody lose his account today because he was doing just that. You are permitted to protect your directory from peekers, and I would do so (chmod 700 $HOME).

Introduction to SSH: SSH (Secure Shell) is the most common way to remotely log into a Linux server. If you haven’t yet made the jump to Linux, you might not even be aware of how useful SSH is (trust me, it’s amazing). Why not try it out, you can use an app like PuTTy on your Windows box to log into your account and muck about with Linux applications.

Customizing a BASH Environment: OK, this may not be for the super newbie, BASH is the shell you’ll be using to interact with the computer. There are [insert some insanely high, random number] of things you can do with BASH. Again, this comes in really handy if you haven’t got your own Linux box to play with but want to poke around. Not to worry if you really are 100% new to Linux, BASH doesn’t require customization to use it.

An account on Anapnea isn’t a replacement for your own Linux machine, you will only have 5 MB of storage and access to a limited number of applications. It is however, a great way to get your feet wet AND have some free web space out there on the Internet.

Another cool note, when asked if you’re a Gentoo user, you can proudly say Yes!

About Anapnea.net:

This morning, I spent a few minutes talking to cyraq, I wanted to know just why the hell he was offering this service, and maybe find out a little bit about him. It turns out his reason for starting Anapnea, was to help people who needed a shell account but didn’t necessarily have the means to buy one. If you’re not sure why anyone would need/want a remote shell account, I can offer an example. I have a friend who’s university won’t permit the use of IRC on their network. Being a student, he doesn’t have extra money for a shell account. This is a perfect solution for him, he can use IRC resources without violating the University’s rules.

The first two weeks of Anapnea’s life went well. News spread of its existence through word of mouth, people would sign up (who wouldn’t?) and a small community began to develop. Eventually, it was Dugg and In a period of 12 hours, cyraq went from being the sole administrator of 48 accounts, to the leader of a 3 person administration team that now had to manage 370 accounts (one of which I own). I can’t tell the story better than he, so…

(16:26) (mattds) and this was pretty much overnight?
(16:26) (cyraq) yeah, woke up at 3AM to get some water, and on the way checked my email
(16:26) (cyraq) You have 126 new emails.
(16:27) (cyraq) stayed up till 3PM
(16:27) (cyraq) went back to sleep at 6PM
(16:27) (cyraq) at one point, the emails were coming faster than i could answer them

I don’t have any info on the newest members of the team (lightdifference and Mike42), but I do know that cyraq is a young admin and by his own admission, very passionate about Linux. I think it’s great that he’s giving back to the community by offering this service. Another reason to embrace Linux and the people involved with it.

Disclaimer: I’m not a reporter, my apologies if that’s the lamest summary of an interview you’ve ever read

Now, ubuntu is only accessible from the LAN, so to make my life a little easier, I want to allow password-less logins, this is how it’s done.

This builds off of DD-WRT: SSH Remote Management with Public Key Authentication and DD-WRT: Samba Startup Script / Reconfigure Dropbear SSHd. Just to keep things fresh, the router only allows logins via public-key authentication, the machine ubuntu hosts the script that the router launches at startup on a Samba share (smb://ubuntu/ddwrt). The local path to that share on ubuntu is ~/ddwrt. The router will map that share to /tmp/smbshare during startup and will execute the dd-wrt-startup.sh script located there.

Configure public-key authenication on the Linux machine:

Since I used this machine to create a keypair earlier, I’m just going to recycle. Up until now, I’ve only configured this machine to make connections to other hosts using public-key authentication. Now I need to accept public-key auth connections from other hosts.

To do this, I need to create an authorized_keys file in ~/.ssh/. The command below will write my ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the bottom of a pre-existing authorized_keys file or create a new one if it doesn’t exist. This file allows me to authenticate with my private key on the computer ubuntu.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Copy private key to router and convert it:

Next, I need to get my private key someplace accessible to the router, I’m just copying it to the Samba share that auto-mounts when the router starts up.

cp -v ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/ddwrt/

Now, I remove the password from the copy of the private key, this is mandatory. DD-WRT’s Dropbear client has its own format for private keys and cannot convert encrypted (password protected) OpenSSH keys. Not to mention that I actually WANT password-less logins . Just follow the prompts provided after executing the next command.

ssh-keygen -p -f ~/ddwrt/id_rsa

Note: This key will NEVER leave my personal network so I’m not worried about it getting into the hands of anyone I don’t trust.

Next I SSH into the router.

ssh root@192.168.1.1 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Using dropbearkonvert I convert the OpenSSH key to a Dropbear key.

dropbearkonvert openssh dropbear /tmp/smbshare/id_rsa /tmp/smbshare/id_dropbear

Install private key to home dir at router startup:

The last step is to have the key installed to the /tmp/root/.ssh/ directory on the router whenever the router starts up. I could opt to leave the key on the Samba mount, but I decided to put it on the router because I actually have more than one machine I want to get to. If for some reason the machine running the Samba server is off-line, I wouldn’t have access to the private key.

To automagically install the key, I need to add the lines below to the router’s startup script, this can be done from the router, vi /tmp/smbshare/dd-wrt-startup.sh or from my desktop using my editor of choice nano ~/ddwrt/dd-wrt-startup.sh.

## install dropbear private key for passwordless login to other machines
cp /tmp/smbshare/id_dropbear /tmp/root/.ssh/
chmod 600 /tmp/root/.ssh/id_dropbear

You can reboot the router to test the script or you can manually enter cp /tmp/smbshare/id_dropbear /tmp/root/.ssh/ on the router and test it by entering ssh [username]@[hostname] -i ~/.ssh/id_dropbear. This should bring up a prompt similar to the one below:

Host ‘ubuntu’ is not in the trusted hosts file.
(fingerprint md5 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
Do you want to continue connecting? (y/n)

Answering “y” will add the host to ~/.ssh/known_hosts and I won’t be prompted about it again until I reboot the router. If I want to permanently add all of my machines to known_hosts, I can connect to each one of them and answer “y” at the Do you want to continue connecting? Prompt. After all of my hosts are known, I copy the file from the router to my Samba share (cp ~/.ssh/known_hosts /tmp/smbshare). Lastly, I go back to my startup script and add the line below.

cp /tmp/smbshare/known_hosts /tmp/root/.ssh/

that’s all folks, the router will install the files I need whenever it reboots and I have access to all of my machines through ONE tightly locked door.

Fedora:

rpm -ql firefox

This query will give you a lot of information (you might want to pipe it to less). What you want to zero in on is the directory that is referenced most, on my system it’s /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.9/. You’ll notice a lot of references to /usr/share/ and can pretty much ignore them. That directory holds icons, .desktop files and other shared objects.

I did the same for SeaMonkey (rpm -ql seamonkey), the install location for the current version of the monkey is /usr/lib/seamonkey-1.0.7/.

Ubuntu:

dpkg -L firefox

That’s another command that will hand you TONS of information. Again, I only care about the installation directory, I know from using Ubuntu that the standard application install location is /usr/lib/[installdir]. So to clean up the output, I used grep to filter out the data I don’t need (you could do the same on the Fedora example above).

dpkg -L firefox |grep /usr/lib

That gave me something that looked like:

/usr/lib
/usr/lib/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox/libgfxpsshar.so
/usr/lib/firefox/libgkgfx.so
/usr/lib/firefox/libgtkembedmoz.so
/usr/lib/firefox/libgtkxtbin.so
/usr/lib/firefox/libjsj.so
[snip]

From that I can see that Ubuntu installs Firefox to /usr/lib/firefox.

I also use SeaMonkey on Ubuntu, but I had to manually install it. For that reason, dpkg has no clue as to where the software is. I chose to install it to /usr/local/seamonkey, which is the location that the SeaMonkey installer suggests. I just keep that in the back of my mind or I could enter a locate seamonkey. That will return a lot of hits as well and will look something like:

/usr/bin/seamonkey
/usr/local/seamonkey
/usr/local/seamonkey/install.log
/usr/local/seamonkey/registry
/usr/local/seamonkey/libplds4.so
/usr/local/seamonkey/libxpcom.so
/usr/local/seamonkey/libmozz.so
[snip]

Now that I know where my browsers are installed to, I can run the Flash installer and give it the correct path to each browser when asked.

The script I’m creating is only useful if you have your router configured for remote SSH management (see DD-WRT: SSH Remote Management with Public Key Authentication for my how-to). The configuration process applies to setting up any startup script on a Samba share.

The script I want to execute on startup is going to change the configuration of the Dropbear SSHd. By default, when you connect to the router via SSH, you’re presented with a pre-login prompt advertising the firmware’s version. I prefer not sharing that info with anyone (not in such a blatant fashion at any rate), so I need to kill off the dropbear process and restart it without the banner flag. You might be wondering why I don’t just edit dropbear’s config file on the router… The simple answer is that there isn’t one.

I’m going to be using a Samba share I’ve created just for DD-WRT on the machine named ubuntu (also my desktop). The local path is ~/ddwrt and the network path is smb://ubuntu/ddwrt

Create the script:

Create a script on your Samba share named dd-wrt-startup.sh. One way to create the file is to enter the commands below in a terminal.

cd ~/ddwrt
touch dd-wrt-startup.sh

Open ~/ddwrt/dd-wrt-startup.sh with your editor of choice and add the text below (each command should be on its own line):

#!/bin/sh
## kill/restart dropbear; remove pre-logon message
killall dropbear
dropbear -r /tmp/root/.ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -d /tmp/root/.ssh/ssh_host_dss_key -p 22 -s

Be sure that when you specify the port (-p 22), you use the same port that you have configured in the DD-WRT control panel.

The difference between the command to launch dropbear that I wrote, and the command the router defaults to, is that I’ve removed the banner file flag (-b [path to loginprompt]). If you want to see what the exact command line is on your router before you make the change, SSH in and enter a ps, someplace in the process list you’ll see the dropbear command line.

Configure Samba FS Automount:

Before going on, be sure that the Samba server has a static IP or (better yet) a static DHCP address. If you don’t use static DHCP, you may want to use the machine’s IP address instead of its name when configuring the share below. Check out the DD-WRT DNSMasq wiki page for more info.

Log into the DD-WRT Control Panel, Click Administration then select the Management tab. Scroll down to the Samba FS Automount section and configure as follows:

• SMB Filesystem: Enable
• Share: //ubuntu/ddwrt
• User Name: [valid smb user]
• Password: [smb user's password]
• Startscript: dd-wrt-startup.sh

Now all you need to do is click Save Settings and Reboot Router. The next time you SSH in, you’ll notice that no information about the router is given until you’ve provided your credentials and successfully authenticated. You will also notice that entering the mount command will show you that your Samba share is mounted to /tmp/smbshare.

When I set up a personal Internet facing SSH daemon, I only allow logins via public/private key files. This greatly improves security by eliminating the potential for brute force password cracking. If you aren’t familiar with public key authentication, the quick of it goes something like this; you have a key pair that consists of a public and a private key. The public key lives on the server you want to log into, and the private key lives on your computer (the client). You can share the public key with anyone, and you should physically protect the private key with your life. You can choose to encrypt the private key with a password (you will need to enter the password each time you attempt to authenticate with the key) or leave the password blank (which allows you to log in without a password). Note: It’s strongly suggested that you password protect your private key.

So what’s the point of it? Your public key can only be used with its partner private key. As long as your private key is safe (only you have access to it), nobody can crack your account and log in (even if they have the public key, you can’t generate a private key based on the data in the public key). This is why I suggest encrypting the private key with a password, if you have it on a thumb drive and lose the drive, the dweeb who picks it up and wants to see what you have access too will still need to get past the password on the private key. This gives you time to create a new keypair and update the machines you connect to.

I hope I made that clear, it makes more sense once you start using it. If you’re confused at all after going through all of this, please let me know in the comments of this post, I’ll clear up what I can.

Creating a keypair on your Linux box

If you haven’t previously used SSH to connect to a host, you won’t have a ~/.ssh/ directory on your machine. If you aren’t sure whether or not you’ve used SSH before, open a terminal and enter ls -lad ~/.ssh. If the folder doesn’t exist, you’ll want to create it and set the proper permissions now. The command below will create the directory with a mode of 700, only you as the owner will be able to list the contents of ~/.ssh

mkdir ~/.ssh -m=u+rwx,g-rwx,o-rwx

This next command will create a keypair in ~/.ssh/ as long as you have the OpenSSH Client package installed (chances are, you do). Basically we’re creating a (standard) 2048-bit RSA keypair with a custom comment (-C [comment]. If you decide not to customize the comment, ssh-keygen will insert your [username]@[host] as the comment). If you don’t enter a password for your key when prompted, you won’t need to enter one when attempting logins with this keypair. As convenient as this sounds, I would (again) suggest using a strong password to keep this keypair safe.

ssh-keygen -C [comment] -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Now that we have a keypair (~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub), we need to log into the DD-WRT control panel, enable SSH and paste in our authorized key.

Configure SSHd

Open ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub with your editor of choice, select all of the text and copy it.

Next, open your browser and enter the address of the router, Click on the Administration tab, and then on Services. Scroll down to the Secure Shell section and set it up as follows:

• SSHd: Enable
• Password Login: Disable
• Port: 22
• Authorized Keys: Paste in the contents of your id_rsa.pub file. The actual key (the ugly part of the file) must NOT wrap, it needs to be on one line.

Note: I ALWAYS change the port from 22 to some high number that’s easy for me to remember. It cuts down on attempted break-ins, do whatever works for you.

Now that SSHd is configured, click Save Settings and then Reboot Router. At this point, you can only use SSH to log into the router from your LAN (in other words, we haven’t opened SSH up to the world yet).

Once the DD-WRT control panel is visible again, open a terminal and enter the command below:

ssh root@192.168.1.1 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa

If all goes well, should see a login prompt like the one below. You’ll need to enter the password for your private key. After that you should be at a shell prompt. If yes, Congrats! You’re communicating with your router via SSH.

DD-WRT v23 SP2 std (c) 2006 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 09/15/06 (SVN revision: 3932)
Enter passphrase for key ‘/home/[username]/.ssh/id_rsa’

Now that it’s all tested, we can open SSH up to the Internet. This is optional of course, if you don’t want SSH access to your router from remote locations, then skip it.

Log into the DD-WRT control panel and select the Administration tab and then the Management tab. In the Remote Access section configure as follows.

• Web GUI Management: Disable
• SSH Management: Enable
• SSH Remote Port: [same port you selected in the Secure Shell configuration]

Again, click Save Settings and Reboot Router. After the reboot, you’re SSHd is available to you from anywhere

Extra bit to make life easier

Finally, if you think that’s an annoying amount of text to enter whenever you want to SSH into your router, create an SSH Config file. Use whatever editor you like, enter the text below and save the file to ~/.ssh/config

host ddwrt
hostname 192.168.1.1
port 22
user root
identityfile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Now all you need to do is enter ssh ddwrt to connect to your router.

Finally, I should mention that allowing remote “root” logins is a really bad idea. I’ve made an exception in this case as DD-WRT is unique in that it only has one user account. There are ways of renaming the account, if I explore them, I’ll (of course) tell you about it.

Vim is the editor I’ve been forcing myself to use since jumping into the Linux ring. I chose it because I had heard of it before, I had actually used a GUI version of it in Windows for a while to maintain a Windrop IRC bot, and because everything I had read online made it clear that Vim was a very common and powerful UNIX editor.

There are tons of sweet commands in Vim that allow you to keep your fingers on the keyboard at all times. IMO, much preferable to mousing around an editor (even when I couldn’t type, I still found the keyboard faster). The commands do (of course) require a little practice to really nail down. The good news is that there’s an extremely simple to follow tutor built into the program. To run it, simply enter vimtutor at the command line and follow the on-screen instructions. I did find this tutor back when I started using Vim, I went through it once to collect enough information to make using the editor bearable, now I’m actually taking some time to get this down. Unless you’re an elephant, you’ll probably need to run the tutor a few times.

I’ve re-read the last two paragraphs, it almost sounds like I dislike using Vim. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s got a learning curve to it, it requires some thought in the beginning and (fortunately) that eventually leads to muscle memory. It was a moderately tough road at the start. So indeed, in the beginning I had to force myself to use it and at times it was as frustrating as hell. That ends, and I’m very comfortable using it on a daily basis now (I admit that I’m still looking up commands from time to time). The more you use it the better it gets.

Whatever you do, don’t go starting up Vim without (at the very least) going through the tutor or checking out some online tutorials. One of the things that make it such a powerful editor is that it has two modes, command and input. When you first launch it, you’re in command mode. Unless you happen to enter an i, a or o as the first character, you’re going to find yourself a little confused and probably annoyed.

Vim is certainly worth snuggling up to if you want to hone some of your skills. If you’ve been exploring your system, you know that almost every configuration file is comprised of plain text and you need an editor to make changes to them. Since you’ll find Vim on just about any distro, you’ll want this weapon in your arsenal.

Note: If you’re using Edgy, perform a sudo apt-get install vim before getting started, it seems that Ubuntu defaulted to Vi (the inspiration for Vim) and IMO, it’s just a bit more difficult get used to.

For more help with Vim check out the links below:

*http://www.apmaths.uwo.ca/~xli/vim/vim_tutorial.html

*http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html (neat cheat sheet)