On Mon, Jan 18, 1999 at 12:41:18PM -0000, ayeats said something like:
> Hello again
> 
> I just wanted to thank you all for all your help with the trials and 
> tribulations of my poor mac IIci :)

Yayyy! You finally got it working!

> 
> I was able to set up rc.conf (all I did was set rc_configured=YES as I 
> don't quite know what the other things mean)

You should read through rc.conf and try to decipher stuff. Mostly, rc.conf
just sets flags for what services and options should be started. It sets
variables for other /etc/rc scripts to use.

> 
> I logged in as root, gave myself a password.. And now I have a BSD Box! 
> Wahoo!
> 
> The only thing to figure out now is what to do with it :)
> 

If you have another computer at home with an ethernet card, there's lots
you can do. If you have a modem and an ISP account, I've found that a
NetBSD box makes a great NAT machine so that your other computers can
transparently see the internet all at the same time.


> 
> I do have one question for the group however. 
> AFTER I configurd the rc.conf file, and chose exit, it loaded for a while 
> and gave me a login prompt. I logged in as root and it did its thing.
> 
> Then it said what terminal(I hit return for vt220)
> and then it said"Don't login as root, use the su command" 

I think that's in some config file somewhere. It is considered good practice
to not log in as root directly, but to log in as yourself first, then use
the su command to become root. 

In the "real world" where you have multiple admins on the same machine, it
helps keep track of who did what. For a home machine, particularly one
that isn't on the Internet directly, this rule means nothing, unless you
just want to establish good habits so that you don't have a problem when 
you get a job as an admin.
 
If you haven't created an account for yourself yet, that should be
the first thing you do.

> 
> What does this mean, Aren't I already logged in as root???

Yup, you're already root, but the program that tells you not to log in
as root doesn't know that.

> 
> I ignored it and played around, frolocking from directory to directory 
> and saying to myself I finally have a UNIX-Like computer!

Not even unix-like, BSD is _real_ unix. :)


> 
> Then I typed exit, assuming that it would   give me another login prompt, 
> but it said "Jobs have been stopped" so I chose exit again, and it just 
> went to white. I clicked return a few times, and there was nothing I 
> could do. Is this normal? If I were to telnet to my machine and choose 
> exit, would it send the machine into a state where I would have to 
> physically restart the machine, or would I just be able to telnet to it 
> again? Anyway, maybe I'll have my cousin over, he has set up many a UN*X 
> box.

It sounds like at some point you hit control-z and stopped a running program.
If you have a stopped program, and try to log out, it will give you 
that message. 
 
You should learn about background processes, if you haven't. Here's a quick
example:
 
If you have a program that takes a long time to run (one that I do a lot is
a script that splits a whole file of USENET messages and renames them 
according to their subject), if you want to do other things while it's
running, you can do this two ways:
 
The clunky way:
% splitmessages 
^Z
% bg
 
Now if you type jobs, it will show you that it's running in the background.
 
A better way is like this:
 
% splitmessages &
%
 
the & tells it to run in the background. One easy step. If you know ahead
of time that you want to run it in the background, use the & method. If
you find that something is taking longer than you thought and you get
impatient, use the ^Z method. If you don't type "bg" after the ^Z, you'll
just "pause" the process. 
 
All this stuff is covered in any beginner's unix book, and there are several
beginner's guides to unix on the web, also. I don't know where they are,
though.

Now, why it appears to have hung your machine is a mystery. It could 
have just messed up the display. On the other hand, if you were logged
in as root, and typed something semi-destructive, you could have messed
the machine up temporarily. Hard to say.
 
Chances are that if you logged into the machine remotely, and didn't do
anything dangerous as root, you wouldn't have hung the machine. My Mac
running NetBSD crashes more often than my other unix machines, but it's 
still not easy to hang it. It's also overloaded, so who knows.

Hope that helps.


> 
> Thanks for all your support!
> 
> I'm sure that this won't be the last of my questions!
> 
> Happy MLK Day!
> 
> -Andrew
> 
> ---------------------- Andrew Yeats -----------------------------------
> 
> Freedom Is Slavery   -   War Is Peace   -   Ignorance Is Strength
>          -1984, George Orwell
> --
> 
> Go to http://www.acalltoaction.org 
> and sign the petition to end this crazyness in the congress!
> 
> If it does not work ther (it may not be up yet)
> 
> go to:
> 
> http://people.ne.mediaone.net/ayeats/acta/

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jeffrey Dunitz                 | Ex-Crayon;           | orpheus@avalon.net
BOFH Emeritus, Avalon Networks | Network Engineer     | Eagan, MN, USA
http://www.avalon.net/~orpheus | EXi Corporation      | 651-686-9974 (home)