Not 3D related.. but Unix related

[RancidLunchmeat]

The company I work for currently uses Real World (which was eventually purchased by Great Plains which was eventually purchased by Microsoft) as its accounting software package. It's a unix based system and we use facetwin in order to interface the unix server to all of our windows machines.

Nobody knows anything about Unix and we have to continually pay a third party for any kind of support that we want. I'd like to be able to dig around and pull out the information that I want, without having to pay thousands of dollars to somebody else.

So my question to the experts here is which books should I buy as a complete beginner, in order to learn unix so I can start looking around, understanding what I'm looking at, and be able to extract the information that I want in a format that is desirable so as to be useful?

[darkblu]

that's a rather broad question. i suggest you start by getting familiar with the most common command-line shells out there, 'bourne again', aka bash, for sure. once you know it sufficently you'll be able to write quite powerful scripts, which, in combination with the powerful common utils, are already likely to be able to solve your data extraction'n'manipulation task. i suggest you check o'reily's series.

[RancidLunchmeat]

i suggest you check o'reily's series.

Thanks for the reply, dark.

If I get any more specific questions, I'll be sure to ask you! :D

[Nite_Hawk]

You might want to try installing linux on a home system and playing with it. That's really the best way to learn. If you have specific questions, try looking them up on google groups. Generally usenet has the answer (along with 2000 unrelated ones). The trick is finding the right one. :)

Nite_Hawk

[RancidLunchmeat]

You might want to try installing linux on a home system and playing with it. That's really the best way to learn. If you have specific questions, try looking them up on google groups. Generally usenet has the answer (along with 2000 unrelated ones). The trick is finding the right one. :)

Nite_Hawk

We just installed a new server at work (the past couple of days) and we had to upgrade to a different version of Facetwin, and apparently also had to upgrade to an SCO version of Unix.

And right now? The damn geniuses that put in the system don't know what the hell they are doing and the system keeps kicking everybody out because of something having to do with amount of "file locks" that are in place.

File locks, or user licenses, or whatever.. THEY don't even know how to fix the damn problem.

It's absurd. It can't be all that damn difficult to understand how an OS works and how its interface works and how to get everybody on the same page.

We're paying this guy thousands of dollars a WEEK because he "kinda" knows unix and what is going on (and calls other people to try to trouble shoot his problem), and it's just damn ridiculous.

As far as installing Unix on a home computer, I guess I'm going to have to do that on my extra folding@home computer just to see what happens and how I can play with it.

edited for content

[RollingBalls]

"and apparently also had to upgrade to an SCO version of Unix"

If your company is paying for 'nix and other third party tools why did they go 'nix in the first place? You don't need SCO or FacetWin. Those cost money and litigation. I can't find anything solid about Real World, but so help me god, if it's anything SQL you don't need to pay for it.

Free 'nix OS
http://www.redhat.com/
http://www.freebsd.org/

Free 'nix tools for Windows (Look into SSH)
http://cygwin.com/

Free SQL Servers
http://www.mysql.com/
http://www.postgresql.org/

Free GUI Front End for MySQL
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/

[RancidLunchmeat]

"and apparently also had to upgrade to an SCO version of Unix"

If your company is paying for 'nix and other third party tools why did they go 'nix in the first place? You don't need SCO or FacetWin. Those cost money and litigation. I can't find anything solid about Real World, but so help me god, if it's anything SQL you don't need to pay for it.

Thanks RB! I'll get to checking out those links. As far as why they are paying for it? That was the very first question I asked the 3rd party supplier, because I was under the impression that was one of the primary benefits. And when mentioned SCO I almost fell out of my chair because I've read a bit about their lawsuits and the history.

[Nite_Hawk]

Thanks RB! I'll get to checking out those links. As far as why they are paying for it? That was the very first question I asked the 3rd party supplier, because I was under the impression that was one of the primary benefits. And when mentioned SCO I almost fell out of my chair because I've read a bit about their lawsuits and the history.
I'd run not walk away from SCO. They've basically said they are not above suing their customers over what they feel are "linux infractions". Granted at this point they've got bigger things to worry about, but it definitely isn't worth paying them, and this bogus contractor tons of money.

As far as running linux on a server, there are a couple of options. You can go with a supported OS like Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 (Redhat EL4), or wait for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 to come out in July. You can also choose various free options, such as CentOS (basically Redhat Enterpise Linux 4 with the commerical bits removed and non-official patches), openSuSE, Debian, and even Ubuntu now has a default server install with their new 6.06 (Dapper Drake ) release.

Personally I run Ubuntu and am quite happy with what they've done with it. It's considered a very good beginner linux distribution. I've run linux for over 10 years and find it to be one of the best distributions out there for experienced users as well. At work we are migrating from CentOS and Redhat EL3 to SLES as we can get an academic license and want the official patch support.

Nite_Hawk

[Saem]

I highly recommend running suse's or redhat's enterprise offerings. They provide some pretty good support and their platform stability is nice -- when you upgrade something the chances of breakage are very, very low. And again, the support is good.

You'd have to work out which platforms your accounting software supports -- from what I've seen on Google, you might have to look towards migration.

[RancidLunchmeat]

You'd have to work out which platforms your accounting software supports -- from what I've seen on Google, you might have to look towards migration.

Can you expand on that thought?

[euan]

I did some work on a CNC tooling management program for a machining company. It's the life blood of the company. Instead of paying £10'000 for a new tooling package, they wanted the system fixed. It was running Xenix!. A cyrix 486, and several ancient full length isa cards, serial, ethernet, and video...

All I could do was make a mirror image of the harddrive (which I couldn't mount by they way), and put the old HD in a new PC. Which actually worked by the way!

It's surprising what some companies are limping along on, with no regard as to the consequencies when the system finally dies.

[Saem]

Sorry for the late reply. But from what I remember with my google'ng, there is no Linux support. Hence the need to migrate data.