Red Hat Mailing Lists and Newsgroups

Many mailing lists and newsgroups are available to assist you with your problems. After you have been doing Linux for a while, there might even be questions that you can answer. Newsgroups are a great source of information. Before I list newsgroups that are available to you, I want to first mention the Red Hat mailing lists (http://www.redhat.com/support/mailing-lists).

These lists are maintained by Red Hat, and they are also monitored by Red Hat. Currently, there are thirteen different lists. Direct from Red Hat's Web page, here they are:

• redhat-list For the general discussion of topics related to Red Hat Linux.
• redhat-digest This is the digest version of the redhat-list. Instead of getting mail that goes to the redhat-list as individual messages, subscribers to this list receive periodic volumes that include several posts at once.
• redhat-announce-list This is the most important list. All Red Hat users should make it a point to subscribe. Here, security updates and new RPMs are announced. It is very low traffic and moderated for your convenience.
• redhat-install-list For the general discussion of installation-related topics only. This can include appropriate hardware, problems with hardware, package selection, and so on.
• redhat-ppp-list For the general discussion of PPP under Red Hat. This includes configuration, installation, changes, and so on.
• redhat-devel-list This is for general discussion of software development under Red Hat Linux. This is where Red Hat will announce the availability of alpha- and beta-quality software that is being made available for testing purposes (with the exception of RPM; it has its own list).

• sparc-list This is for SPARC-specific issues only. This can be kernel development, SILO, and so on.
• axp-list This is for alpha-specific issues only. This can be kernel development, MILO, and so on.
• rpm-list This is for discussion of RPM-related issues. This can be RPM usage in general, RPM development using rpmlib, RPM development using shell scripts, porting RPM to non-Linux architectures, and so on.
• applixware-list For Applixware discussion only. Mostly related to installation, usage, macro writing, and so on.
• cde-list For CDE discussion only. Mostly related to installation and usage.
• forsale-list This list is for posting for sale and wanted items of a computer nature. This includes software and hardware and should be limited to items that work with Linux.
• post-only This "list" is a fake list. It has no posting address, only a request address (post-only-request@redhat.com). You can subscribe to this list and then you will be allowed to post to any of the Red Hat mailing lists without receiving any mail from those lists. This is because Red Hat doesn't allow posts from folks who aren't subscribed to the list, but frequently people want to read the list via local gateways and so forth and don't need to subscribe themselves. This way you just subscribe to post-only and you are allowed to post to any list.

So, how do you subscribe? For each of the preceding lists there is a subscription address. It is the list address with -request on the end of it. For example, for redhat-list, you would send your subscription or unsubscription request to redhat-list-request@redhat.com. For the RPM list, you would use rpm-list-request@redhat.com. All you need to send is the word subscribe in the subject line of your message to subscribe, and unsubscribe in the subject line to unsubscribe. You can leave the body of the message empty.

Other Newsgroups

Other newsgroups require a newsreader to read them. Most of the current browsers supply some kind of newsreader. There are somewhere around fifteen to twenty thousand newsgroups. Following is a list of some that are of interest to Linux users:

The preceding list consists of maybe a third of the actual newsgroups specifically dealing with Linux. Most of the others are similar to those listed. It is probably best to scan the newsgroups that you have access to for Linux.

In addition to newsgroups, there are myriad Web pages devoted to Linux, and specifically, Red Hat. When I performed a search on WebCrawler (www.webcrawler.com) for Linux, I got back 9107 documents; and searching on Linux AND Redhat, I got back 294 documents. With so many to choose from and considering the volatility of the Web, it might be helpful if I point out and briefly describe a few Web resources I feel will be around a while.

The first one, which should be obvious, is Red Hat's home page. It is located at http://www.redhat.com. It is, of course, the first place to look for any information concerning Red Hat Linux.

Another great source for information about Linux (as well as every other type of UNIX) is http://www.ugu.com. This is the UNIX Guru Universe page. According to the site's front page, it is "the largest single point UNIX resource on the Net!" This Web site is highly configurable and provides a great deal of information on everything of value to the UNIX community.

The Linux Documentation Project(http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/linux.html) has a tremendous number of links providing everything from general Linux information, to Linux user groups, to Linux development projects. Although I do not think there is much, if anything, unique about this site, it is complete. It has information on just about everything there is associated with Linux.

Knowing how much the Web changes on a day-to-day basis, I am reluctant to share any more Web sites. If you go to the three listed, I think that if they cannot answer your questions, they will, somewhere between the three, have a current link to the location that can.

Problem Solving—Logs

Many times, when trying to diagnose a problem, it is helpful to look at log files of various activities. As an example, consider the following scenario: