Topic: colours

[rhys]

I'm having difficulty seeing the blue against black colours of the text on the screen. Is there any way of changing the colours? I'm in the administration settings mode.

[Terry Brummell]

Where would this be rhys?  My server manager is black on while and putty is grey on black.

[rhys]

When I plug the monitor into my server (it's not normally plugged into this particular computer), I run Linux and I get to the administration menu and the text is all very dark on a black background. The problem lies mainly (i suspect) with an (almost) 6-year-old monitor being a bit dim. I can see the display clearly at night under atrificial light but during the day the difference between blue and black is so minimal I can't see any. I'm running a video card but am relying on the generic drivers within SME 5.6 to cope with it. I haven't figure out yet how to get past the administrator screen into something remotely useful. I've got all the gubbins - not really sure how to use them though. Is there a book recommended for this version of linux (I've downloaded and printed out the Installation Manual and followed that - had to reinstall as I accidentally raided the drive (which is already hard-raided). Any way of changing the colours or do I have to do everything at night?

RhysTerry Brummell wrote:
>
> Where would this be rhys?  My server manager is black on
> while and putty is grey on black.

[Ray Mitchell]

Rhys
Did you try turning up the brightness on your monitor, or adjusting the contrast control ?

By the way, if you connect to your server from a workstation on the network, using http://servername/server-manager, then you use the nice good monitor on your workstation with a nice GUI.
Alternatively make a ssh connection with putty.exe and log in as admin or root depending on what you want to do. No need to use the old worn out monitor directly on the server at all then.

Regards
Ray

[rhys]

Thanks for the suggestion Ray,
I'll have to check whether the generic driver for my Ethernet card works - if not, I'll have to work out how to install the Linux driver supplied with my card. At this moment, how to put that on isn't clear. I've not yet found a command-line mode in SME Linux.

Regarding the monitor, it's my only monitor. The alternative is the screen on my laptop but I'll have to use a working Ethernet for that. The brightness of my monitor is turned up fully. The contrast is also on maximum. As I said, it's an ancient monitor. It came with my original PC, back in June 97.

My plan (such as it is) is to run Windows software installed via a network connection onto the Linux box from my laptop (which runs NT Workstation).

Is putty.exe a Linux program? I can't find it on my Win 98 PC.

What's an ssh connextion?

Rhys
(who's now feeling particularly ignorant)

[Ray Mitchell]

Dear Rhys
Sounds like we need to start at square 1.

Read the manuals on the CD in documentation folder. There are 2 manuals now. You will find out a lot about using and configuring the sme server.
Have a look at www.e-smith.org and read all the links especially the FAQ.
Ther are a few HOWTO's at http://www.e-smith.org/cgi-bin/contrib.cgi which may give you some useful information, and there are a lot more howto's at other users sites.

When your server starts you will either be presented with a server console screen with some menu choices OR you will se a command prompt (depending how you set it up when you did the instal).

If you see a menu, select
option 2 Configure this server, and step through all the choices until finished.
One of the screens allows you to select the appropriate driver for your network card
ie Select local network ethernet driver
which is generally set automatically by the system.
You will need to have  a NIC that is sme/red hat compatible though.

If you see a command prompt, then you can log on as either the user "root"or the user "admin", using the admin password that you created when installing sme.

If you log in as admin you will see the Server console mentioned above.
If you log in as root you will see a linux command prompt, and then you can issue whatever commands you want. Type mc to open a file browser.

Keep in mind though that sme is designed to do most of the administrative work involved with setting up users and just about everything else using the Server Manager. Server Manager is very powerful, and removes the need to use the command line for typical users set up needs.

After you have Configured your server (as above) you will have a domain name. It can be a real name (ie registered externally), or a "fake" name which only works on your local network (ie not registered externally).
To use server manager it can be accessed 2 ways.
Via Server console (log on as admin) select option 6 Access server manager
or
via web browser on a workstation. You obviously need to set up your network first and have a workstation connected. Open a web browser and type in a URL of http://www.yourdomainname.com/server-manager or http://servername/server-manager.

You would usually access the server manager directly on your server the first time, and set a few basic parameters to allow you to access your server in different ways. Make sure you set Remote access to allow ssh access, and also configure the Workgroup panel with an appropriate workgroup and server names.
Read the tech manual for further configuration options you will probbably need to set also.

You can also access the server using a ssh (secure) connection from a workstation or remote location via Internet. Download putty.exe (a windows client) from a shareware site on the Internet and instal it on a workstation.
Open putty and use your host name of www.yourdomainname.com, and select port 22 (ssh). Then log in to your server as admin or root depending what you want to do.

That should get you started, but pleae do read the manuals !

There is also a lot of useful information in old postings on these forums. Remember to search for All Dates, not just the last 30 days.

Regards
Ray Mitchell