Introduction

[Draciron Smith]

Greetings folks.

Wasn't born wth Draciron as a name. Made it up to use as a pen name and a
stage name (Play guitar & bass).  I'm a 40 year old long haired Linux
enthusiast.

My qualifications besides willingness.

Made my living for last 17 years or so by cussing at computers. Believe it
or not people pay pretty good for that. Sometimes I even made them work :)
Started as a programmer. Then being one of the few folks willing to learn
SQL in the early days I got trapped into being the DBA of test systems, then
small production systems, then full scale millions of records type systems.
Just when I got good at it they made me a project manager. I had a nasty
habit of caring a bit too much about the customer. So I went back to being a
programmer/DBA/Project lead AKA cussing at computers. Unlike sys admins who
get to cuss at computers in public sometimes they'd stick me in a cube with
other cussers or way back in the artic circle otherwise known as offices
next to or in the server room. One day I show up for a new programming job
and they make me a System architect. Not quite sure how that happened but
turns out I was pretty good at it. So of course nobody wanted to let me do
that again. Once I was done archetecting (Is that a word?)  I showed up for
a programming job. Turns out the guy I was replacing wasn't actually a
programmer. They only called him one. He was a pretty good robot builder and
Sys Admin.  I made the mistake of admiting I'd built and run small test
networks. So I became the backup admin for a major lab and an entire
department. In the years I was there I actually forgot most of what I knew
about coding despite my job title for the first few years having developer
in it.  I never wrote code. I filled out more lines on forms than wrote
lines of code. Turned into a pretty good Sys admin. Also served as DBA for
the groups I was attached too, pushed paper and did lots of network
security. Enjoyed that and was pretty good at that as well. I guess this
means nobody will hire me to do that either now.

On the serious side. I've been doing IT for a long time proffesionally.
Before that as a hobby and semi-pro. I am also a writer. Novels tend to be
more of what I write. Not all of them are emails either. Contrary to this
email I do know where the spell and grammer checkers are and use them for
anything I turn in to be read by an audience. Most of my technical writing
has been documenting programs I wrote, System arch that I designed,  how
to's on various topics for companies I've worked for and articles on network
security. My favorite way to write a technical how to is to walk somebody
through the process I'm trying to describe in the doc. The hardest part I
have is that things which for me are instinctive and second nature are not
always universally understood by my intended audience. By walking somebody
thorugh it and taking copious notes during the torture session, I remember
those little steps that make a big difference if you don't do it and gain
the benifit of questions that I would not have thought to answer otherwise.
Sometimes questions I do not know off hand, even with software I wrote. I
can tell you how it worked but sometimes the why behind it wasn't always so
clear in the specs I worked from.

My experience with Linux started with a friend trying to convince me to
convert my 386-sx-40 to use Linux. I only had a meg of ram on it but this
didn't seem to phase my friend. I read up and it needed way more RAM than I
had. A few years later, around 96 I bought a Slackware CD. I was curious
about Linux. Even got it to install on a 486 DX2-66. Took me a week. The
biggest problem was that the CD controller wasn't IDE. It was on the Sound
card. A very common way of doing things back then. After I got it installed
I said cool and could not find any reference to the commands. X wasn't
installed. So my next foray was with either Caldara 2.0 or RedHat 5.0 I was
running both distros on different machines for a time. I actually got
usefull things done with these distros. Wasn't until RH 6 that I actually
really got into Linux. By RH 6.3 I was doing most things on Linux but still
relied on Windoze boxes for Internet and several other tasks which I
couldn't find Linux equivs or they didn't exist yet. In 2000 I started
working in a Linux shop. That was when I finally went all Linux. I still had
RH 6.3 on my main home machine as late as 2001. I have run several distros
but RH/Fedora has always been the best distro out there. Ever since
6.3there's been nothing close.  I am just now trying out FC6.  In fact
that is
why I don't have this email signed.  Yum has my machine a little handcuffed.
Soon as I'm down getting all of the hundreds of apps I want installed on the
machine then I can generate the critter. Yum's kinda busy until then :)
I've used every version RH has put out from 5.0 to FC5 extensively except
FC1 which I never even tried and FC4 which I used for a week and took the
machine back to FC3 until FC5 came out. Currently I run two FC5 boxes and
just moved this machine from FC3 to FC6. I've also used RHE but not
extensively.

I am a musician, and can also probably help with sound related stuff.
Security related stuff. Database related work. Server related configuration.


Well hopefully that gives y'all a pretty good idea about me and my technical
background.  I hope it'll be handy with one documentation project or
another. Will be happy to submit a sample of more formal type writing. I do
spell and grammar check when writing formally.  Also please don't ask me to
write docs on old school nix stuff like vi. I'd rather chew my leg off with
a dull vampire bat than use vi.


Good to meet y'all, at least the ones still awake after opening this email.
My ex-used to say that all she needed when she couldn't sleep was to ask me
about computers. She'd be sound asleep in minutes.

Drac

[Karsten Wade]

On Fri, 2006-11-17 at 03:24 -0600, Dan Smith wrote:
>  Greetings folks. 
>  
>  Wasn't born wth Draciron as a name. Made it up to use as a pen name
>  and a stage name (Play guitar & bass).  I'm a 40 year old long haired
>  Linux enthusiast. 
>  
>  My qualifications besides willingness.  
[snip lots of good quals]

I can see we are going to introduce you to some editing-for-brevity. ;-D

>  I am a musician, and can also probably help with sound related
> stuff.
>  Security related stuff. Database related work. Server related
>  configuration.  
We've been doing most collaborative writing via the Wiki.  FWIW, XML in
CVS is actually easier to collaborate on, but you just can't convince
people of that when they are looking at a Wiki with an [Edit] button.
So, I accept that. :)

From your intro, I can guess you might enjoy working on the 'Fedora
Administration Guide', which is targeted at syadmins:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide

OTOH, there are a few documents that are programming oriented, and which
we have no one with expertise to work on them.  For example, this needs
*serious* reworking (about four releases out of date):

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/developers-guide/

(It should be called 'Developer Guide' instead of 'Developer's
Guide'.)

If you feel like getting dirty with actual programming, we have a nicely
complex toolchain and some other work that we do directly ourselves or
working with the Fedora Infrastructure team.  Something to contemplate.

>  Well hopefully that gives y'all a pretty good idea about me and
> my
>  technical background.  I hope it'll be handy with one documentation
>  project or another. Will be happy to submit a sample of more formal
>  type writing. I do spell and grammar check when writing formally.
>  Also please don't ask me to write docs on old school nix stuff like
>  vi. I'd rather chew my leg off with a dull vampire bat than use vi.  
Oh, never.  We don't want to repeat all that stuff that has been written
already; a hyperlink is just so much easier to write.  Our focus is on
Fedora, what is in Fedora, and what can be done with Fedora.  This is
true whether the audience is newbies or deep-mode hackers.

>  Good to meet y'all, at least the ones still awake after opening
> this
>  email. My ex-used to say that all she needed when she couldn't sleep
>  was to ask me about computers. She'd be sound asleep in minutes.  
*schnore, zzzzzzz, snup* Huh, what?  Oh, yeah, thanks, good to meet you,
too.  Come visit us on #fedora-docs on irc.freenode.net for questions or
related-to-anything chat.

- Karsten (quaid)
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
////////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

[Draciron Smith]

> [snip lots of good quals] 

Thank you.

I can see we are going to introduce you to some editing-for-brevity. ;-D


LOL.. Must admit it's a weak point of mine.




>  I am a musician, and can also probably help with sound related
> stuff.
>  > Security related stuff. Database related work. Server related
>  > configuration.
>
>  We've been doing most collaborative writing via the Wiki.  FWIW, XML in
>  CVS is actually easier to collaborate on, but you just can't convince
>  people of that when they are looking at a Wiki with an [Edit] button.
>  So, I accept that. :) 

Do I have rights to use the edit button yet? Is that the best place to
submit to first?
Which CVS should I use?
Any good tools for exporting to XML?  I can export to HTML easily enough.
Never had a need to export a document to XML before.


> From your intro, I can guess you might enjoy working on the
> 'Fedora
>  Administration Guide', which is targeted at syadmins:
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide 

Took a look and have already started on two topics. Almost done with a first
draft actually on both. One was easy, the file system heirachy. I took the
approach with that of writing for novice and mid-level users. Advanced users
are going to already know the hiearchy or not going to really care or both
:)  I did delve into detail about areas that users are most likely to visit.
Would it be at all usefull to go into binaries that might be located in
those structures or would a high level desc and a reason why a user would be
interested in entering/using/what is normally contained in those dirs?  Not
sure if it's approrpriate but I stepped away from the official line and
described the dirs in terms of real life usage rather than the theoretical
but sometimes inaccurate purpose of certain dirs. /usr/local for example.
That is really the dumping grounds for apps. Half the world installs there
not the very specific apps which are supposed to install there. How many
games do you see installed in var/games? LOL. I have one. All the rest
install to places like /usr/local and /usr/share. My aim is for practical
use.

The other I am writing with all levels in mind. That is on storage and
partitions.

Questions.
How in depth should I go with LVM?  Right now I've stayed at a high level.
Why you'd want to use LVM and what NOT to use LVM for. I also speak heavily
of of LVM in common partitioning schemes.
What about uncommonly used file systems. Any point in going into any depth
with those?
Non-standard Fedora software, for example NTFS utilities. Should I just link
or should I spend some time on them?

References. If I want to refer a user to more detailed information on a
topic should I just link external, link to a stub article in the wiki or not
link at all?  An example, in the file system heiarchy I did find a page that
did a very good job of describing the traditional uses of the file systems.
Reminds me. Never did find out what the /sys dir is supposed to do. It's
there. No references to it in first ten pages from google. I've never used
it myself. Just know it's there. Have zero files in my FC6 and FC5 installs.
So no clue there. I found a reference for what the /srv dir does the only
other one I didn't know well. So if anybody knows what the /sys dir is used
for please let me know. Anyway  my question is should I link them there and
should I ask permission of the maintainer to link to them?

Any good templates to use? Currently all my stuff is in text.


OTOH, there are a few documents that are programming oriented, and which
>  we have no one with expertise to work on them.  For example, this
> needs
>  *serious* reworking (about four releases out of date): 
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/developers-guide/
>  (It should be called 'Developer Guide' instead of 'Developer's
> Guide'.) 

:)  I'll take a look but I dropped C as a programming language about the
time Win95 came out. I still muddle through an occasional Python or Perl
script. Most of what I do nowdays is PHP, Gambas, CLIPs and stuff like
that.  Except for occasionally cussing at an occasional broken make file I
don't mess with C/C++ any more.  Nothing more frustrating than finding a
wicked app that does exactly what you need and it's using hard coded
references to obsolete lib versions or doesn't recognize the rpm installed
package of the dependancy :(


>  Oh, never.  We don't want to repeat all that stuff that has been
> written
>  already; a hyperlink is just so much easier to write.  Our focus is on
>  Fedora, what is in Fedora, and what can be done with Fedora.  This is
>  true whether the audience is newbies or deep-mode hackers. 

Coolness.


>  *schnore, zzzzzzz, snup* Huh, what?  Oh, yeah, thanks, good to meet you,
>  too.  Come visit us on #fedora-docs on irc.freenode.net for questions or
>  related-to-anything chat. 

LOL...  Drac Slaps Karsten awake.

Coolness. Will deffinitely pull that up today. Dived right into writing
those two peieces. Just finally had to surface and check mail. That and get
my Wesnoth fix :)

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2006-11-19 at 12:45 -0600, Dan Smith wrote:
>  
>  LOL.. Must admit it's a weak point of mine.  
Mine to. :)

>  Do I have rights to use the edit button yet? Is that the best place
> to
>  submit to first?  
>  Which CVS should I use? 
>  Any good tools for exporting to XML?  I can export to HTML easily
>  enough. Never had a need to export a document to XML before.  
I just added some stuff about the Wiki and refreshed this page in
general:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/NewWriters

If you have any questions not answered through that page, let's bring
them here, answer them, and then get it all updated. :)
 
>  
>          >From your intro, I can guess you might enjoy working on the
>          'Fedora
>          Administration Guide', which is targeted at syadmins:
>          
>          http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide
>  
>  Took a look and have already started on two topics.  
Another guide to look at for ideas for source material ... maybe as an
additional reference?  What could we do if we could pull in some of this
content directly?

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/admin-guide/

>  Almost done with a first draft actually on both. One was easy, the
>  file system heirachy. I took the approach with that of writing for
>  novice and mid-level users. Advanced users are going to already know
>  the hiearchy or not going to really care or both :)  I did delve into
>  detail about areas that users are most likely to visit. Would it be at
>  all usefull to go into binaries that might be located in those
>  structures or would a high level desc and a reason why a user would be
>  interested in entering/using/what is normally contained in those dirs?
>  Not sure if it's approrpriate but I stepped away from the official
>  line and described the dirs in terms of real life usage rather than
>  the theoretical but sometimes inaccurate purpose of certain
>  dirs. /usr/local for example. That is really the dumping grounds for
>  apps. Half the world installs there not the very specific apps which
>  are supposed to install there. How many games do you see installed in
>  var/games? LOL. I have one. All the rest install to places
>  like /usr/local and /usr/share. My aim is for practical use.  
I think it's worth noting the ideal and actual usage, yes.  We probably
don't need to specify all of what is in a directly, that's what 'ls' is
for.  But we can give people some clever steps to learn more, e.g.:

"To find out what a binary 'foo' is, there are several methods of
research:

man foo

or

info foo

show manual and info pages for 'foo'.  

Since software in Fedora all comes in a package, looking to see where
'foo' came from can be useful:

which foo
/usr/bin/foo
rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/foo
foo-2.7-1.3.fc6

Packages also have some useful information, especially where the binary
is a non-obvious component in a larger package:

rpm -qi foo

To find out what other packages need that package:

rpm -q --whatrequires foo

..."

Anyway, that kind of thing. Or more advanced, or stepping to more
advanced.

>  The other I am writing with all levels in mind. That is on storage
> and
>  partitions. 
>  
>  Questions. 
>  How in depth should I go with LVM?  Right now I've stayed at a high
>  level. Why you'd want to use LVM and what NOT to use LVM for. I also
>  speak heavily of of LVM in common partitioning schemes. 
>  What about uncommonly used file systems. Any point in going into any
>  depth with those? 
>  Non-standard Fedora software, for example NTFS utilities. Should I
>  just link or should I spend some time on them?  
Are we including NTFS now?

I'd first stick with what the community supports.  But we can certainly
provide some nice, comprehensive, quality content on using parts of
Fedora that many people aren't aware of or haven't been covered because
they were not in the shipped kernel before.

>  References. If I want to refer a user to more detailed information
> on
>  a topic should I just link external, link to a stub article in the
>  wiki or not link at all?  An example, in the file system heiarchy I
>  did find a page that did a very good job of describing the traditional
>  uses of the file systems.  Reminds me. Never did find out what
>  the /sys dir is supposed to do. It's there. No references to it in
>  first ten pages from google. I've never used it myself. Just know it's
>  there. Have zero files in my FC6 and FC5 installs. So no clue there. I
>  found a reference for what the /srv dir does the only other one I
>  didn't know well. So if anybody knows what the /sys dir is used for
>  please let me know. Anyway  my question is should I link them there
>  and should I ask permission of the maintainer to link to them?  
Just link out.  If there is a Fedora project that needs a Wiki page on a
subject, you could create a stub and email a maintainer there with a
suggestion or even actual content.  Or just create it, depends on what
the page is and what is needed.

>  Any good templates to use? Currently all my stuff is in text. 
We're drafting this one in the Wiki.  Read through the New Writers page
for links to how to write in the Wiki, markup usage guidelines, etc.

Sounds as if you are happy with this document for now, let's keep you
here for now until something else sparks your interest directly.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
////////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

[Rahul Sundaram]

Karsten Wade wrote:

>  I think it's worth noting the ideal and actual usage, yes.  We
> probably
>  don't need to specify all of what is in a directly, that's what 'ls' is
>  for.  But we can give people some clever steps to learn more, e.g.:
>  
>  "To find out what a binary 'foo' is, there are several methods of
>  research:
>  
>  man foo
>  
>  or
>  
>  info foo
>  
>  show manual and info pages for 'foo'.  
>  
>  Since software in Fedora all comes in a package, looking to see where
>  'foo' came from can be useful:
>  
>  which foo
>  /usr/bin/foo
>  rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/foo
>  foo-2.7-1.3.fc6
>  
>  Packages also have some useful information, especially where the binary
>  is a non-obvious component in a larger package:
>  
>  rpm -qi foo
>  
>  To find out what other packages need that package:
>  
>  rpm -q --whatrequires foo
>   
I already documented some of this in 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate.

>  Are we including NTFS now? 
Yes, we are. The userspace ntfs-3g is now in Fedora Extras.

Rahul