There are far better pages scattered around out there, but this is the page I wish I'd found to begin with; a linux newbie guide based on a RedHat6 workstation install. I've used Linux at home only since '99 but use UNIX at work. LL: This is for You. A Choice of Operative System is traditionally based on what we'll use a machine for, but borders between OS aspects of usability are fading. Consider Linux if security, uptime, server- and multi-user abilities, automation, tunability or low costs matter. If you're the only user on your PC and mainly use it for office tasks, games and occasional mail and web browsing - stick with Windows, it's excellent for that use. Then again.. if you can't afford an Office suite, Linux offer a lot. But if you're a designer and used to Mac's.. hmm.. well.  Some call Linux a "do it yourself" OS - there's some truth to that. You may have to undergo a steep learning curve to unlock it's treasures. But the hype is hot, the kids screaming for drivers.. I decided to take a harder look. And I'm impressed. Linux is getting ready for the desktop.

 
 

Since Aug. 26th 1999  © RKAA 1999, 2001

Before you begin.. Partition hints A user called root Users & groups Mounting a partition File types - file modes Some UNIX commands How to maneuver on disk Configuration of X How to abort the X session Copy/Cut/Paste shortcuts Fix garbled fonts X terminal windows Colors in X Taking screenshots Access DOS disk/ette, NTFS Large ZIP files   Multiboot LILO screwed up? Modem and PPP Modem and FAX Connect via remote dialup Netscape plugins Netscape java crash? Unpacking files: archive formats

Compiling programs TrueType fonts Fuzzy fonts on web RH8 upgrade: Font problems (sep. page) My Mozilla 5 FAQ (sep. page) Character Map IRC MS Word documents KDE quirks. A date with PICO core and kcore A common misunderstanding Processes, PID's, signals Find help, files, programs 3D RedHat path quirks RedHat fixes and upgrades Security My desktop (updated) [248KB] HARDWARE STUFF   UPS: APC and PowerCom USB related links QuickCam - digital photo (links) Portable Linux: Laptop links Hauppauge WinTV/PCI

On Nov. 1st The Linux Counter will be cleaning up
the user database. Over 98,000 old registrations with
mail accounts that are no longer valid, will be deleted.
Forgotten to update an entry? Simply wish to register?

NOW is a very good time.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

• To ensure a painless install: Verify that your hardware is compatible!
• Installation routines are not as smooth as for MSWindows and demand more attention.
• There's still not as many drivers and applications available as for Windows.
• The documentation can be confusing. Some outdated. Even if not inaccurate there may be newer and easier ways to do things. Choose a well reputed distribution and stick to their documentation before looking elsewhere.
• There is no single help-file system but a variety of formats. They are quick - you may even prefer them to MSWindows helpfiles. But Linux is more advanced than Windows: more programs, commands and syntax to get aqainted with. At some point you'll want a paperback on the subject. Most programs you install you hardly know are there - takes some detective work to find.
• Some think everything Linux is free. Commercial Linux software vendors of course exist. (Linux and Windows people live on the same planet.) You will, however, find good free GNU licensed applications for most thinkable tasks.

When you know your hardware is OK, partitioning disk(s) is next "obstacle". Give that some thought - it can prove invaluable when you later upgrade your PC. The RedHat Installation Guide is good but there are some points I think could have been made clearer:

• The installation does not check for disk space. If you choose more rpm packages than there's room for, the install simply hangs. If you install a lot of rpm's, you need more space in /usr than the 500 Mb's the Guide mention. I stuffed 700 Mb in /usr in no time.
• The Installation Guide is correct about not needing much space for /tmp on a single user system. I set up 100 MB but 50 would have been more than enough. NOTE: Let the system administer what happens in /tmp: Files "older than..." are eventually deleted.
• Rule of the thumb says the size of your swapdisk(s) should equal your RAM, and not be smaller than 16MB. Earlier versions of Linux didn't accept swap disks bigger than 128MB and making several swapdisks was a solution. Current Linux'es accept swapdisk over one gig. Note: New Linux kernels version 2.4.* should be given a swap-disk TWICE the amount of your physical RAM.
• The day may come when you want to compile a newer kernel, or at least need a kernel configuration file. The kernel IS Linux and you'll want space for the kernel source files. These happily chomp around 50 MB, placed in /usr/src/linux-nn.nn.. Don't get so cramped you can't install them.
• For future flexibility: Do make /home a separate partition.
• Read the Installation Guide about partitioning with this in mind. Jot down your own partition layout before you do the actual partitioning. When it's partition time in the install: use fdisk - not DiskDruide. Fdisk leaves you in control. If you ever used DOS fdisk, it won't be too unfamiliar.

Linux indicate partition names different than MS operative systems. A Linux partition name also tells what kind of disk we're dealing with, and which partition of that disk it is. There are different types of disks. Single user systems normally use (E)IDE and/or SCSI disks.

If a partition is named hda1:
hd indicates an IDE type drive
the next letter - a - indicates which IDE drive it refers to, alphanumeric.
the following number - 1 - indicates which of the partitions it is on the that drive.

hda is the first IDE drive
hda1 is the first IDE drives first partition, what Windows would know as C:
hdb is the second IDE drive
hdb1 is the second IDE drive's first partition

SCSI disks on Linux have names starting with sd
SCSI disks would be sda1, sda2, sdb1 etc.
The quickest IDE disks are as fast as SCSI disks. SCSI's benefit is "unlimited" number of HD's. Most mainboards only have controllers for up to 4 IDE disks, one of these normally used for a CD-ROM.

A real RAID disk setup is not worth considering on workstations. Typically used on servers demanding 100% uptime, mirrored disks, hot swapping etc. and they require expensive RAID disk-controller cards. Linux, however, also support "soft RAID", providing the mirroring abilities from the RAID system but used on "normal" disks. Private users aren't very likely to need this either.

Example:
My install look like this after just some months. I considered this a test-install and I was right - it's not an ideal partitioning of a 2 gigabyte disk for a single user machine.

$ df -h

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1              97M   57M   35M  62% /
/dev/hdb3              97M   72M   20M  78% /home
/dev/hdb5              97M   28M   64M  31% /tmp
/dev/hdb2             1.3G  875M  412M  68% /usr
/dev/hdb7             208M  133M   64M  68% /usr/local
/dev/hdc1             3.0G  2.4G  635M  79% /mnt/fat32
/dev/hda1             811M  785M   25M  97% /DOS

The /tmp dir is too big: a separate partition for /tmp was overkill on a single user machine.
Let install create it as a plain directory under / *unless* you plan to have more users added to the system later.
Mind you: we're now talking about *simoultanous* users - in other words networking.
The /home partition is too small - but it IS a partition :) Means i can replace /home with a 20 gig disk later. Netscape saves your cached files under your homedir so if you set up a big cache you can run out of space if /home is too small.
 

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda12            197M   60M  127M  32% /
/dev/hda1             197M  4.8M  182M   3% /boot
/dev/hda5             6.0G  2.3G  3.4G  41% /home
/dev/hda8             988M  286M  652M  31% /opt
/dev/hda11            296M  128k  281M   0% /tmp
/dev/hda7             1.9G  1.7G  159M  91% /usr
/dev/hda6             1.9G  1.0G  832M  55% /usr/local
/dev/hda10            486M   25M  436M   5% /var
/dev/hdb               12G  2.2G  9.2G  19% /home/dark/DISK

When the installation guide refer to the root partition it means the partition called just /
In addition, a user called root is a basic concept in unix. A home directory for the user root will automatically be created under / and named /root
Again: That is the user root's home directory. Do not make a separate partition called /root

User root is the superuser with "a license to kill" - the system administrator, with all priviledges. During install you will be prompted for a password: It's the root password you then set.
The root account is NOT the account you use on a daily basis. Your first vital task as root, after install, is to create a private account for yourself. After you've created your account, you from then on log in as your private user and only change to user root to do serious system work, installations etc. (and then you swiftly log out from root again). Using root as your normal login would sooner or later prove disastrous. One slip of the finger can erase vital files and mess your system up for good. The user "root" is a key security concept on unix based systems.
 

Linux by default create common users home-directories as sub directories under /home
What you assign as the new users login-name will become the name of  his/her home directory.
Each user is set up to belong to a certain group or groups. These group associations give the user certain rights and restrictions. A set of default groups and users are predefined. If a new user is to be a common user on the machine, assign this user to the group "users".
Someone you want to only be able to ftp into the machine, you would assign to the group "ftp" to restrict their access to ftp only.

The user identification is called UID . The group identification is called GID. Internally, Linux use numbers to say something about users or groups: root always has UID 0. The first common user root creates on the system will be assigned UID 500, the next one UID 501 and so forth. There is no reason to change that on a fresh install UNLESS you're already in a permanent network and a mailserver for instance know users by different UID's. If that is the case, you should probably conform to UID's already in use, and you will find them on the existing system in a file called /etc/passwd  (if you don't find it consult the network administrator.)

For each new user you create, a set of default initialization files will be copied to that users home directory. The user can later modify these to her own liking. These files often start with a dot when found in a home directory, and can later be modified by the user. The basis for them can only be changed by root, and are located in /etc and various sub directories there, like /etc/skel.

Usernames should be unique, alphanumeric, and no longer than 11 characters. Longer usernames are possible but NOT practical. They must not contain special characters, like spaces. Usernames longer than 11 characters are possible but NOT practical! Keep them short. If you want a mail address with a full name, that is arranged via mail aliases and not the system username.
Don't use space's in passwords either. A good password is "impossible" to guess. It shouldn't be something you read elsewhere. Instead, compose it from of a mix of upper- and lowercase letters and numbers. This would be a good password, if it hadn't been for the fact that you just read it here: ^D#s*iPL8

Then we're about ready to create a new user account:

<[walktrough to come]
 
 

Workstation users will typically want a GUI (Graphical User Interface). For that, you need X configured. Three different configurators are installed:

/usr/X11R6/bin/XF86Setup
/usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config
/usr/X11R6/share/Xconfigurator

• XF86Setup: the one you maybe used when you installed: An X app, low resolution, with setup options for mouse, language, monitor and all that is X related. The most "advanced" of the setup apps.
• xf86config: basically the same as above but a simpler VGA presentation of it.
• Xconfigurator: Deals with setup of graphic card and monitor only. Handy when you don't want to mess with the other settings. Can be started with --expert parameter if you need to modify for instance memory settings manually (without probing).

During install you are given an option to start X by default. I advice you don't select that till all your setup is guaranteed correct. Most fiddle around for a week before settling down with X, tuning resolution and fonts. During that you're "safer" if you've made a habit of logging in from commandline (at runlevel 3) instead of from an X-enabled login-manager (at runlevel 5). More about runlevels later - just remember X can get grumpy if it disagrees with your typos.

startx from commandline starts an X session.
The startx command is a front-end to something called xinit. Xinit reads the script .xinitrc - a prototype script provided with the installation, with heaps of settings you'll never use. When you get smarter you can edit that and for instance remove redundant lines, which will cause slightly less text fly by as you start X. Just never experiment without having a backup of some sort. To force X to start with another colordepth than your default, here's a sample to start with 32 bits per pixel (your card must support it): startx -- -bpp 32

Mouse:
If you have a two-button mouse, select "emulate three buttons". This makes it act in special ways when you click both buttons. In Unix, that third button is used to paste with, drag scrollbar buttons and more. You'll want this! To set up a wheel mouse correct, add the line "ZAxisMapping 4 5" as the last line under "section pointer" in XF86Config, or select "5 button mouse" in the setup menu. It doesn't actually have 5 buttons, but it does in effect have three, and events the wheel generate (scroll up/down) add for two more types of behavior.  Most applications understand the wheel.

Virtual Resolution
With enough memory on your graphics card, you can set up a virtual desktop larger than the actual display size. You can have a display resolution at 1024x768 on a 15" and a *virtual resolution* of 1280x1024. The effect of this is NOT the same as the "desktop" options (1,2,3,4 etc.) where you can "jump" between desktops via a pager (or sensitive screen-edges). Virtual desktops are valid for the current desktop and let you "slide" or "pan" the visible area, so when your cursor hits the edge of the screen it will move slightly right/left etc. and display the rest of the virtual resolution you set it up for. Personally I detest that feature - makes me sea-sick.

Desktop Environments and Window Managers
X is the fundament for any GUI [Graphical User Environment] on Linux for now. KDE, GNOME, or any other of those more or less good looking desktop environments and also the window managers utilize X. RH6 comes with KDE/KDM, GNOME/Enlightenment, fvwm, fvwm2 and AnotherLevel. In RH6 the default GUI is GNOME. It's worth while to also test out KDE. You find RPM packed upgrades of GNOME and KDE at the RedHat site and I strongly recommend to install these.
X also has it's own minimalistic GUI: If no desktop environment is specified, a simple X session with one instance of the Xterm terminal window will start.

A desktop environment is a complete GUI solution, providing toolbars, icons, applets, applications, and abilities like drag/drop. A window manager is just an application, working in cooperation with the desktop environment and specializing in "makeup and behavior". It deals with wallpapers, frames, handles, borders and let you choose how you want windowing events to perform: whether a window shall rise to top when the mouse is over it, be transparent while moved etc. A desktop environment can run with one of several different window managers. KDE is a desktop manager and comes with its own window manager called KDM, but you aren't obliged to run KDM under KDE.
Gnome doesn't have a window manager of it's own and the RH6 version comes bundled with a setup that gives you the choice of several window-managers. I fell flat in love with Enlightenment :)

Since a desktop manager provide programs, it has to conform to some suitable programming language. GNOME is based on GTK+ , an Open Source GUI toolkit primarily developed for use with the X Window System.
KDE is based on QT   - a GPL licenced cross platform GUI toolkit by a norwegian company called Troll Tech. QT2.0 got the 1999 LinuxWorld Editor's Choice Award for Best Programming/Library Tools.

If you want to compile programs made for GNOME or KDE on your own, you need these libraries installed. Both are found on the RH6 disk, but newer versions exist.

In addition to applications the desktop environments provide there's a plethora of "pure" X applications and widgets included. As a new user I kept wondering about why there were so damn many filemanagers, editors and process viewers added - it took me days to get oriented in menus...even learn the names. A wilderness . Then again - there's something for every taste and CPU so.. why not.

Switchdesk:
Let you select between KDE, GNOME and AnotherLevel as the desktop environment to start the next time you run startx.  Start it by writing "switchdesk" from a terminal window.

"Runability":
>Programs written for X run under any Desktop environment. In addition a Desktop environment can use extra libraries that X don't know too much about. Applications written for KDE *may* not run under GNOME and vice versa. Most do, however. If you're on KDE and start a GNOME application, just avoid using it's docking features or the GNOME toolbar will start and mess up your display. (it's gone again next time you start x though.)

Toggle Resolution:
Monitor resolution toggles on the fly with "ctrl alt +" and "ctrl alt -" IF you set up more than one resolution when you configured X. You can also define your own F-keys for resolutions.

For the curious:
To save the text that flicker past your screen as you startx, redirect the standard output- and error messages to a file. This syntax is valid for the shell called bash:
startx > startx.txt 2>&1

If you don't want to see it at all you can dump the output to /dev/null (think of it as a trashbin with no recovery)
startx > /dev/null 2>&1

Multiple monitors:
Linux doesn't mind and leaves that to the X server. Check out the XFree86 homepage for compatibility. Keywords: Xinerama, dualhead. This tehcnology as GPL is currently in beta versions. For broader card support there are commercial solutions: MetroX and AccelleratedX .

Multiple terminals: Each display has a "tty" number. A practical excample: To direct log-output to one special display, and have that as the permanent log-terminal, add a line like the following to your syslog.conf file

*.*		/dev/tty5

Takes you down to command line level and you can run startx again. It does NOT necessarily stop running processes. If you were online via a modem - you're still online. If you were running single user licensed StarOffice, you may have to kill it's processes to restart it.
 

In applications you will normally find that Alt+c  Alt+x  Alt+v  will copy/cut/paste.
Some Linux-app's even use MSWindows standard, for reasons unknown. (Ctrl instead of Alt)
In virtual terminals it suffice to select the text with the cursor and then click the middle button to autopaste. Watch out for linefeeds if you're pasting commands: If you select a whole line you also copy a linefeed.
 

Sometimes your font display gets messed up and look all cryptic. For instance if you by mistake run "cat" on a binary file. Control sequences in that file can happen to set your display wrong. To reset it write:

^V^O

That's ctrl+v followed by ctrl+o (the letter). Add a linefeed and you're back in business.
 

In a virtual terminal window you can run commands and start programs. A common icon for virtual terminals is the "X" or an image of a monitor. Linux comes with a variety of terminal apps.
What happens when you start a terminal window is comparable to what happens when you choose "run DOS in a window", but you can only start one shell called command.com this way in Windows, and the terminal emulator  will always look and behave the same way (apart from fonts). Linux has plenty of terminal types AND shell-options, highly adaptable. Xterm is "the mother of all virtual terminals". It's unlikely that you will need all it's features. I use rxvt instead - a smaller and quicker xterm clone. (The transparent borderless terminals you see on many screeshots are either Eterm or Gnome Terminal. You need a "wall to wall" wallpaper to get a full background shine through - tiled wallpaper doesn't translate right.)

I made a kdelnk to start rxvt, containing the following command

rxvt -sr -fn fixed -bg black -fg white -sl 2000
(if you already found a terminal program and test this from command line, add a & and push enter

rxvt will now start with:
-sr scrollbar on right side (default is left)
-fn fixed  the "fixed" font - a font alias that's available on all unix systems
-bg black a black backgroud
-fg white a white foreground (the text)
-sl 2000 a buffer of the latest 2000 lines that displayed.

A better look, valid if you installed the RH6 type1 fontpack:
rxvt -sr -fn lucidasanstypewriter-12 -bg black -fg grey -sl 2000

The parameter -pixmap somepicture.xpm will load a "wallpaper" inside the terminal window.
The -bg color must be indicated even so, to give correct reverse effect when you select text.

Virtual terminals are not smart about font spacing, they like order and will place variable fonts too far apart according to their own ideas about a grid. Don't use - looks weird.

Now... write: ls -latr --color and see what happens
Then write xlsfonts

To exit a terminal window you write exit or simply click the close-button.
To terminate a process running in the window you can break it use ctrl+C. This isn't considered a nice way to do things but at least it gives you the prompt back.
 

The RGB color names your system know are listed in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
Read it with more /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
Click spacebar on full page to proceed the listing. Ctrl+C terminates.

Wonder what OliveDrab2 look like? A utility Color Browser added with GNOME convert RGB (red/green/blue) values in rgb.txt and display them as colors + names. ColorBrowser runs OK under any X desktop.
 

Quick and easy:
Download Xview - an image browser and snapshot utility, and a "must". Free for private use and supports all common file formats and then some. The rpm is found under the powertools section at the RH ftp site. Start it with the command "xv" - or "xv filename"

Already on disk:
X comes with a heap of utilities - amongst others xvd for snapshots of windows, and xmag for magnifying.
xwd will default dump a snapshot of the active window.
To make a snapshot of the whole display: Use in combo with xmag, running at 1:1 ("xmag -mag 1") - select the whole display (or whatever portion is relevant) and then run an xwd of the root window (being "xmag") - with forinstance:
xwd > filename
Display the file: xwud -in filename
Or pipe it to a postscript file at "snapshot time":
xwd | xpr > filename.ps

The overkill:
The Gimp and ImageMagick are two good but BIG graphics applications that also do screenshots.
Later Gnome versions have an applet found under applet/utilities, simply called ScreenShooter. If you use Gnome, this may be the quickest method.
 
 

A package you want from the RH6 CD is mtools. mtools let you access DOS type files on unmounted partitions. See the manpage; here a basic example:
To read all files from a diskette in "a:"  to the directory you're giving the command from in Linux:

mread a:* .
There's a space between the * and the dot.

The mtools package contain a little bunch of "well known" DOS commands, all with an additional "m" in front of the command name. If the thought of doing this from command-line puts you off: Get MToolsFM . A small but efficient GUI based (GTK) file-manager utilizing mtools.

Linux has native support for DOS and fat32 formatted HD's. Linuxconf let you choose what type you want to mount a disk as, and whether it shall mount during boot or not. Remember: Whatever you want to mount a partition as: you must create that directory first. (For instance "mkdir /DOS") It's "tidyer" (but no "must") to put mounting-point directories under /mnt.

NTFS - NT's generic filesystem - - is incompatible with about everything but itself. NTFS Read-Only drivers have been written for Linux as well as DOS and BEOS. If you need to network versus NT machines, check out SAMBA.

There's a file-manager style utility to let you access Linux disks from Windows . It's in beta - go easy.
 

If you're at the point where NOTHING boots and you only want your Windows back, use a DOS system formatted diskette with fdisk copied onto it. (fdisk is in the windows/dos dir) Boot from that. After booting and still on A: write:
fdisk /mbr

This writes a DOS Master Boot Record to your C-disk, in effect wiping out LILO - and your PC is back to it's "pre-lilo" self. You could check BIOS settings before the fdisk-stunt to verify it still looks like a DOS partition. Or just go for it.

NOTE: Separate NT description for multiboot/recovery yet to come. The above is not valid for NT.
 
 

Alternative 1

What follows is written with RH6.* and XFree86 3.* in mind. It does not fully cover Redhat7* and XFree86 v 4.*. If you use these, the additional info in my little Netscape6/Mozilla FAQ should be read as an appendix.

-

RedHat6 has support for displaying TrueType fonts. It won't automatically let you print with truetype fonts but things sure look better. xfsft - a truetype fontserver - is made a part of xfs, the x fontserver. In order to make this work you should install the Freetype library and ghostscript rpm from the install CD. To install a rpm package you must be user root. Logged in as a common user: just write su in a terminal window, provide root's password, write gnorpm & and a graphical rpm administration program starts. Mount the CD-rom, click "add", find freetype and ghostscript and install. So far, so good.

Quirk 1: Font-names must be in lowercase and contain no spaces. If you already have tt-fonts on a partition containing Windows, a quick way to copy them all in lowercase is to mount the partition as a DOS filesystem instead of fat32. This way they'll all seem to be lowercase without spaces, whatever they might look like on a fat32 partition. Afterwards you can change partition type back to whatever is relevant. The file that needs modyfying if you want to do this is /etc/fstab. Unmount first - change filesystem - remount and the files will be 8.3 type DOS files se seen from Linux. If you don't feel comfortable with editing this file by hand, use linuxconf to unmount. change filesystem, and remount. That way you don't risk typos.

Quirk 2: Fonts can be more or less broken, and not so "true" to their type as the name indicate. Below is a reference to a little program you shall run: "ttmkfdir". We testrun this first and watch the output, to see if some fonts look completely crappy. You'll know when that happens IF it happens - it looks pretty wild. Delete offending fonts and try again. If you think it ALL looks wild, it's probably OK. If unsure, compare with an existing file called fonts.dir in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc

Here the suggested approach to get TT fonts up and running. Commands are done as user root. What you write is annotated in bold fonts. Open a console window, su root, then:

cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
ls -la
If a directory called TrueType is not there - make it with
mkdir TrueType
then
cd TrueType
Now copy your truetype fonts to the new directory
cp /dir/with/ttfonts/*.* .
(the last dot is a pointer to "current directory" - here applied as your target directory)
When that is done (still in the TrueType directory) we do the mentioned testrun of ttmkfdir, to see that the font descriptions we store afterwards is set up ok in the long unix-wise manner. If one or more fonts seem to vary wildly from the other descriptions there's something crappy with the internal font description of that font. Delete it (rm somefont.ttf) and try again - till the output seems reasonable uniform. The line-lengths can vary but should contain the same "elements".
ttmkfdir
If the output seem to follow the same type of pattern for all fonts we proceed:
ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale
Now for the smart part: For some reason ttmkfdir sort the font entries in reverse. This cause problems with character cell truetype fonts when the font also contain proportional characters: TT charcell fonts are not well handled under X. If you ONLY use the command above when creating fonts.scale, you won't run in to problems: The character cell letters won't be included for the common MS webfonts. But often we want to include decorative fonts in fonts.scale. These often lack many characters, and ttmkfdir by default only tolerate 5 missing characters in a font. However, we can tell it to be more tolerant with the parameter -m nnn where nnn is the number of missing characters we want to tolerate in a font. A "ttmkfdir -m 100 -o fonts.scale" will make a much larger file, however, and since it sorts them in reverse, the character cell fonts will now be listed before the proportional variants within the same font. This plainly sux, because applications can "jump to conclusions" and grab the first and best occurance of a requested font - and if that is a TT charcell font it will look like there's heaps of white space on both sides of it. Bad bad bad.
So as a good rule - before we proceed now - we reverse the content of the file fonts.scale to put it right again, like this:
tac fonts.scale > fonts.dir
If you write "head fonts.dir" now you will see the first font begins with an "a" (most likely).
Since the first entry in a fonts.dir and fonts.scale file should be a number listing how many entries there are in the files, we must do a little manual editing to perfect it.
Open fonts.dir in an editor
Go to the bottom of the file
Cut out the number there
Go to top of the file and paste the number in there, so it is alone on the first line.
Make sure the file ends with a linefeed. Then SAVE it and exit the editor.
NOW we have an OK fonts.dir file! But we still have the old topsy turvy fonts.scale file. Since these two files in our case are meant to be identical anyway, we now overwrite the original fonts.scale file we made:
cat fonts.dir > fonts.scale
We are ready to rehash xfs, which happens automatically whenever a fontpath is added or removed with the utility "chkfontpath".
/usr/sbin/chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType

(Remember Linux "fill out" paths/filenames for you when you hit the tab, once you've written enough to make it unique. However: Do NOT let the fontpath end with a /)

Your fonts should now be readable in X . If you have arial there, check it with:
xlsfonts |grep arial

xfs can be rehashed/restarted in different ways, here are two other approaches:
The "old" Linux way: /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
The politically correct X-way: xset fp rehash

If you later add/remove fonts in the truetype dir, you must make a new fonts.scale and fonts.dir file. BTW: It is only proportional fonts - variable width fonts - like truetype fonts, that you should make a fonts.scale file for before you make the fonts.dir.
 

• Potential Pitfall

NOTE: RH6 version of xfs now listen to a different port than earlier (now set to -1) If you've upgraded from an earlier version of RedHat: Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and replace all references to fontpaths with:
FontPath  ``tcp/localhost:7100''
You must also make sure that xfs runs and is started at boot time - to ensure that write:
sbin/chkconfig --add xfs
Those with fresh installs do not have to bother about this point.

Alternative 2

xfstt is another truetype fontdisplay server for X and doesn't require any additional libraries. It's easy to set up and can use the fonts right from your windows-disk, if you have fonts there.

In the Makefile for xfstt a default path to your windows fonts is given. Modify the relevant line to reflect where your Windows disk is mounted, if you want to use the fonts located there. (they're in /whatevermount/windows/fonts)  Then "make" and (as root) "make install". Then - as whoever you want to - from the commandline run:
xfstt --synch &
Now WAIT... some 4 seconds BEFORE starting X, so xfstt gets time to unwind :)

After X is started - with startx or what you use - you must set a fontpath that xfstt will find fonts at. xfstt doesn't cooperate with the native xfs fontserver. Write:
xset fp+ unix/:7101
This tells X that there's an additional fp = fontpath found at that port. Since xfstt runs independently of xfs, the command "chkfontpath" does not affect it.

NOTE: It is only the very first time you start xfstt you need the --synch parameter. This creates a database of the installed fonts. Synchronizing is only required when xfstt needs to know about added or removed fonts.
 
 

Some webpages use tiny fonts, unreadable in Netcape4.* unless we tune for them. X and MSWindows interpret tt-font sizes differently. Netscape under MSWindows display a larger font at "12 points" than the Linux version does - it seems the error is off by approximately 2 points. What this means in practical life is that TT fonts smaller than 9 points aren't readable under Linux. But many sites use them, since they appear larger on MSWindows.

A "font deuglification" page is out there, but I found the suggested fix of perm "swapping" the 100 and 75 dpi fonts caused way too big fonts in menus and elsewhere. Instead: Here is THE fix for those with the MS truetype webfonts installed:

The fix assumes:
RH6* xfs already working
TT fonts in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
ISO8859-1 character set.
(easily adjustable to other dir's / character sets.)

Before we start the TT fontstuff i have to correct an error i wrote here earlyer:
I used to recommend this line in .Xdefaults in your homedir:

Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement:  5

REMOVE IT! It's no good.
INSTEAD of sizeIncrement we will add aliases for helvetica! I just discovered they are lacking in RH6. And that's why helvetica fonts on typical unix sites on web look way bad and scale as smooth as...a brick. If you recognize the problem: Do this to check whether there at all are aliases for helvetica:
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.alias
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/fonts.alias
If it isn't already aliased: Check that you have it installed:
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.dir
grep elve /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/fonts.dir
If you didn't have aliases, but did get filenames listed after the last two commands (lines mentioning helvetica outside filenames) - you have it aboard, all is well and we will proceed:
Use the contents from these pages 75dpi and 100dpi
Then start by taking a copy for safekeeping of the original fonts.alias files you already have in the mentioned directories.
Then - as root:
-fire up your favourite editor
-open the fonts.alias files in the above directories
-paste the content into the corresponding files AFTER what is there from before
-make sure the files end with one linefeed
-save the files in their respective directories.

Reminders:

OK. That was the basics. Rehash xfs with "xset fp rehash". And then we go for the good stuff:
Tuning for TrueType fonts
We will create (or add to) a fonts.alias in your TT fontdir. Sample content for the font Arial is given below. The sample contains a little "trick" we add to avoid too small font-sizes. We will get back to that later.

Making a correct fonts.alias file in the truetype directory provide more sizes as options under preferences/fonts in Netscape.

Here are the sample contents of a fonts.alias. Must end with one linefeed and be saved as user root:

-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--6-60-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--7-70-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--8-80-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--6-60-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--7-70-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--8-80-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--10-100-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--11-110-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--11-110-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--12-120-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--13-130-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--13-130-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--14-140-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--15-150-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--15-150-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--18-180-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1    
-monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--24-240-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1

NEW:

Roman Sulzhyk [roman@starmedia.net] sent me a nice mail including a python script he wrote to ease the creation of a fonts.alias file. And after I had edited this page to include the script, he read the page here once more and modified the script to take into account the error with fontsizes rendering smaller under Linux than under Windows. I am still not sure whether this is a bug in FreeType or whether MS have bumped up the sizes on Windows, but as long as we can compensate for it, it doesn't matter too much. So thank you Roman, and thanks again :) It works like a dream.
I added names for common MS webfonts to it earlyer, so this is already version 0.3 ;)
It is easy to add other fonts it should map, follow the same syntax. Roman Sulzhyk's script is perfect for making an initial fonts.scale file for tt-fonts. You should not, however, use it for native X-fonts, due to the TT specific compensation it does.

To use the script you need python installed.
(There are perl scripts that do the same thing, but noone ever mailed me one.)
NOW:
- Save mkfontalias.py and then..
su root
- copy the file to a directory in your path. (echo $PATH). I copied it to /usr/local/bin
cp mkfontalias.py /usr/local/bin
- change filemode on it so it becomes runnable:
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/mkfontalias.py
- cd to your TT font-dir, e.g.
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
- run the script by simply writing:
mkfontalias.py

Depending on how you ran ttmkfdir the first time, you can now end up with a pretty large file: mkfontalias.py use the existing fonts.dir file as basis for creating a fonts.alias. If you ran ttmkfdir with for instance the "-m 100" option mentioned earlyer, you now got a lot of aliases for character sets you will never use, and thus don't need aliases for.
So what we do now do is filter the file down to something that suits our language and won't torture X too much. In my case iso8859-1 do nicely, so I now wrote:
grep 'iso8859-1"' fonts.alias > newfonts.alias
cat newfonts.alias > fonts.alias
This trimmed fonts.alias down to contain only the iso8859-1 entries.

If you want both iso8859-1 AND another set - say iso8859-3 - we do this a little different by filtering in two steps and *appending* the output (with >>) from the last grep to the newfile. This of course assumes you have iso8859-3 fonts there in the first place:
 grep 'iso8859-1"' fonts.alias > newfonts.alias
 grep 'iso8859-3"' fonts.alias >> newfonts.alias
 cat newfonts.alias > fonts.alias

So far so good. We now have a valid fonts.alias file.
Now remember the fontsize issue: A 12 point font under MSWindows will look approximately like a 10 point font under Linux. This isn't a real problem untill the fonts get very small. You *may* want to edit the fonts.alias file to become 100% consistant, and alias ALL fonts with an offset of 2 points. But this isn't really required, and personally i find the bigger fonts become too big for my taste if i do that.
The script has already made aliases for 6, 7 and 8 pt. fonts refer to what's really the 9 point version of it. Applications that want to use them, now "find" the small fonts, but what they display is size 9.

For the sake of comparision: Here is my own fonts.alias for TT fonts, but it may contain fonts you don't have, so do NOT copy it as such! Use mkfontalias.py and then finetune It's quick, and if fonts you don't have are defined in the script, it simply ignores them.

When all filemaking and editing is done: To activate the aliases we restart xfs. You don't have to exit X first, just:
xset fp rehash

Then the final makeup:
After the file is created: Restart Netscape.
Open "preferences/fonts" and select:
"Allow Scaling" for variable width font
Check the checkbox for "use document-specified fonts".
Then select "Arial (monotype)" as your Variable Width Font and choose font-size 12 in the upper dropbox.
Click OK.

If after all this some fonts still look crappy: It's CSS bugs! Go to prefs/advanced and disable stylesheets to cure it. The only bad stylesheet page i know of is Altavista where the error seems to occur for fonts defined as a % of a size. The new Netscape will handle this beautifully however, and Mozilla already does.
There is of course a lot more to dealing with fonts under X. Later you may want to add aliases for larger fonts, for instance. I'll add more info later when i get in the spirit ;)

A little WARNING to the incurably curious:
If you get bloodthirsty after the success with TT-fonts: Be aware that you must be very very careful if you mess around with fonts.alias files in *other font directories* than the truetype one. Some aliases must be available at all times! In particular you should keep your fingers away from the fonts.alias in the /misc directory. There the vital aliases for "fixed" and "variable" must be the first two entries mentioned. Mess that up and X won't start. Also be careful with fonts.dir and fonts.scale files - don't fool around with them unless you mean it ;)

If you once configured TrueType fonts correct under Linux, you've gotten used to crisp clear smooth fonts. But with RedHat8 came Xft2 - with the possability for anti-aliasing (AA) set as default. Sorry to say, but IMO, both AA and non-AA fonts under Xft2 look like crap. Even the far superior cleartype technology used on MS Windows looks a little blurred to me so I never used it there either.

In order to get non-aliased fonts without the Xft2 hinting making the fonts look like barbed wired:

In KDE: Run qtconfig and disable antialiased font rendering in it for QT. In GTK/Gnome: Add "export GDK_USE_XFT=0" to .bashrc Personally i don't load the "freetype" or "type1" module in XF86Config, but instead use xfs. Then add the truetype fonts you have to a local ~/.fonts directory and while there, run "fc-cache"

(Or else (basically) KDE/Qt or Gnome/GTK doesn't "see" your TT fonts)

Make sure you don't have any funny font-rendering code added in your After a restart all my TT fonts looked like I prefer them; crisp clear and smooth. I've enjoyed TT fonts on RH for the past 4 years and am very pleased with the quality - now also in RH8 :)

If you can't get it going and things look like shit: Compare to this screenshot (COMING) for how things should look. Do NOT believe people who say you should recompile the freetype library in order to make this look good - they are false prophets!

• To see characters a font contain (while in X): xfd -fn fontname. Use full X fontname, a masked version, or a font alias. To list the fonts seen by X: In a terminal window key in xlsfonts. Then use xfd with for instance xfd -fn -*-arial* & When you click on a font, the hexadecimal, decimal and octal value displays on a line. Ascii fans who miss the direct access you have with "alt 0222" in Windows: The similar approach under Linux is keying in the octal value. An echo -e "\336" will produce the "irc tongue". (Different IRC appliations interpret characters differently though: In Xchat you get the irc-tongue by keying in %222)
• A simpler applet: write xfontsel & from a terminal window.  (Click name, foundry etc for option menus)
• Or: In Gnome you find "font selector " in the menu, under utilities
• Gnome also has a panel utility character picker. Use it by keying in characters that *resemble* the one you want. Sample: Activate a letter there and key in ctrl+r to make it display ®. The last character you clicked is automatically copied to your "clipboard."
• Gnome Character Map (gcharmap) is what I normally user, however, and is ditributed as a part of gnome-utils.

StarOffice and WordPerfect of course import MS doc files, but are large applications. Here is what I'm using for the moment:

1: ImageMagick
2: WV
3: Abiword

If you only want to read doc-files you only need Abiword, which implements WV. But for extended usage - and the hint below on how to read doc files from Netscape: Might as well install them all.

Abiword uses the wv engine to import MS Word doc's from version 6,7,8 and 9 - in other words Word6, Word95, Word97 and Word2000 documents.

Abiword doesn't save as .doc files but can save as .rtf
MS-Word can read .rtf files.
As a matter of fact, using .rtf (rich text format) is safer, since no macro viruses can be attached that way.

Files listed as dependencies you need to have installed.
To find what you have and not use "locate blabla.so.6" etc.

Here you find the mentioned files:
WV:
http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/freshmeat/wv/wv-0.5.43-1.i386.html
ImageMagic:
http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ImageMagick-4.2.9-3.i386.html
Abisuite:
http://www.abisource.com/dl_linux_intel.phtml

Read Winword doc's in Netscape 4.*:
Having WV 0.5.44 installed, i modified /usr/doc/wv-0.5.44/helper-scripts/mswordview.wrapper to look like this, basically:

#!/bin/sh
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
HTML=/tmp/mswordview.$$.html
/usr/bin/wvHtml "$*" > $HTML
netscape -remote 'openUrl(file://'$HTML')'
(sleep 30; rm -f $HTML)&

Description: Winword-file
MIMEType: application/msword
Suffixes: doc
Handled by:
Application: /usr/doc/wv-0.5.44/helper-scripts/mswordview.wrapper %

There are countless other editors and word-processors. Ranging from console based to full fledged GUI based windowing applications. One GUI based one that impress me ever more is Ted . It looks and feels a little odd at first, but isn't at all difficult to figure out. Ted is a tuneable RTF editor (Rich Text Format) that saves as HTML as well. It's quick, reliable, and handles images, columns, hyperlinks and pagecounts. With some tweaking it also saves PDF files - and let you print right to a faxmodem.

This is an area with a few pitfalls and I'll give you a link covering it better than I could. There's a variety of protocols for dialup connections. PPP is the one you'll want for Internet use with a modem. RedHat has an excellent and up to date howto full of hints and details about how to see what responses the modem in the other end expect. There is no such thing as a "windows" or "Linux" ISP. If they can be connected to - they CAN be connected to. However, it's common that ISP's won't know up from down on a Linux system, so their support for Linux users can be meager.

Before you start you need to know the IP of your ISP's nameserver. In my case, it turned out all I needed of info apart from that IP was the instructions under "Setting up PPP with Linuxconf". After having read that it took me 5 minutes to connect to my ISP first time and I had never done this before.

Windows users who never struggled with modem configuration under DOS may wonder about drivers:  In normal cases you don't need a "driver" for a modem. The drivers you install under MS Windows are in many cases basically  just some strings added to the register, adding info about which port the modem is on and what initialization strings it requires under various conditions. (When it's used to dial an ISP, when it's used for voice, fax, how it's supposed to be reset etc.)

I use a Rockwell v90 based modem and have this line in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0
'' 'AT&FM0+MS=56'

That works well. The "FM0" here simply tells the modem to use default factory settings. This may vary from modem to modem. If FM0 doesn't work - try FM1 or FM2.
In addition, the basic reset-string in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 is:
INITSTRING="ATZ"

I'll add the whole set of files to compare with, but again: It shouldn't be neccesary to worry too much about them.

--
If you notice errors about missing compression - it's there but not yet  aliased: Add this to /etc/conf.modules (may be called modules.conf on non-redhat  systems)

alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp
alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate
alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate

Hints:

• Choose hardware compression. Most modem support it and it's quicker than software compression.
• Set connection speed to the highest number you find, like 115200 bps. Never hurts - probably helps.
• Your assigned IP when online via PPP is found by writing "/sbin/ifconfig". It's the number found between "inet-addr" and "P-t-P"

Modem and FAX

After a half hearted encounter with mgetty+sendfax, I took a closer closer look at efax and xfax. Efax is a commandline based send/receive fax application. Xfax is a GUI for efax, allowing edit, attach, preview, send, log and save, amongst others. Once an xforms beauty she may appear slightly faded now, but let's call it the "retro unix look". The Real Neat Thing is that this is simple - and works!

Flowers to xfax author Kees Lemmens and co-author Jean-Pierre Demailly, who both swiftly mailed me hints and URL's after an xfax compile misbehaved.

-Install the Xforms library. xforms-0.88-9.i386.rpm is found at rpmfind.net.

- netpbm-8.0.tar.gz is acclaimedly needed, but I am not convinced this is correct. Seems efax can run without it. Anyway: If you need ppmtoxbm, ppmtoxpm and others, know that they are compiled and included in Kees Lemmens' static version of xfax linked to further below. Get that instead.

- efax you want. efax-0.9-3.i386.rpm seems to be the latest.

-xfax: get  xfax-2.11.tgz
Read INSTALL, edit accordingly
make, su, make install - then chmod u+s /usr/bin/xfax or wherever you determined to put it. Perhaps a quick and dirty fix but I couldn't make it work right as non-root. I assume you are aware of the security implications.

Install the ghostscript and ghostview packages, found on the RH CD. I have ghostscript-5.10-11 and gv-3.5.8-7. They are needed for some browsing, printing and converting postscript files to fax format. To see what's installed:
rpm -q gv
rpm -q ghostscript

If these are missing: put the RH CD in the player, start gnorpm, select "install", roam around on the CD, find the files and install.

1: Get a copy of an efax RPM
 Netscape users then right-click on the link efax-0.9-3 RPM for i386 and select "Save Link As"

The efax homepage is in Canada at http://casas.ece.ubc.ca/efax/
Efax require /bin/sh and glibc. This is most likely installed but if you aren't sure, issue these commands and see if the files are found:

locate libc.so.6
locate ld-linux.so.2
ls -la /bin/sh

If any are missing you're in trouble and probably not reading this page.

2: Install efax

su
[password]
rpm -Uvh efax-0.9-3.i386.rpm

3: Get the binary xfax.1.11Linuxbin.tar.gz from ftp://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/pub/dv/lemmens/
We don't need xforms or netpbm when using the static binary.

4: Unpack the file and change working directory

tar -zxvf xfax.1.11Linuxbin.tar.gz
cd Xfax_linux

5: Configure xfax
Now is when you have to read and edit. The whole procedure is described  crisp clear in the file "INSTALL". The files you shall modify are:
xfaxrc
faxdirect

In case you would like to compare, here are samples of how i edited them to look, without the personal information. Values you may want to modify are BOLD - leave the rest.

Sample: modified .xfaxrc

Name: My Name
Title: My Title if any
Department: Home Office
Email: myname@myisp.com
AsciiCmd: /opt/lib/xfax/efix -ve -itext -ofax -p21x29.7cm -d0,0.2 -l62 -n %s.%%03d %s
Editor: xterm -e pico
EmailFlag: False
FrontPageFlag: True
Header: /opt/lib/xfax/faxheader
SpoolDir: /var/spool/fax
FaxSend: /opt/lib/xfax/faxsend
FaxPrint: /opt/lib/xfax/faxprint
GifCmd: /opt/lib/xfax/giftog3 %s.001 %s
PSCmd: gs -q -sDEVICE=faxg3 -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=%s.%%03d %s quit.ps
G3ToXpm: /opt/lib/xfax/g3toxpm

If the directory /var/spool/fax/ does not exist, as root: create it.
----
Sample: modified faxdirect
for a Class 2 modem capable of 14400 bps, which is about all of them now. If you have an old old modem, you have to read that file more thorough, but all you need to possibly modify is explained. efax has a manpage - xfax a html based help-page.
Only the editable part is here, original comments mostly deleted and my own added. Comments are prefixed by a #. [The very first line in a script often states which shell the script uses - never remove a leading #! line]
Again: Remember that descriptions here are for RedHat 6.* installations.

#!/bin/sh
XFAX=/opt/lib/xfax
#BELOW: The path to EFAX is modified!!
#We use the newer version we installed via rpm instead!
EFAX=/usr/bin/efax
DEV=modem
CLASS=2
# Your fax number in international format, 20 characters maximum.
# Use only digits, spaces, and the "+" character.
FROM="+47 0123456"
# Your name as it should appear on the page header.
NAME="MyName"
# Dialprefix "T" for TONE, "P" for pulse.
DIALPREFIX="T"
DIALSUFFIX=""
LOCK='-x /var/lock/LCK..$DEV'
# Uncomment one of the following lines to force xon/xoff flow
# control if you have one of the types of modems listed.
# FCINIT='-j\Q4'  # AT&T (Dataport, Paradyne)
# FCINIT='-j\Q1'  # Motorola (Power Modem, 3400 Pro,...)
# FCINIT='-j*F1'  # QuickComm (Spirit II)
# FCINIT='-j&H2'  # USR (Courier, Sportster)

# ****************************************************************
# The remaining options probably won't need to be changed.
# ****************************************************************
## well...so it says.. Actually there's ONE more line you want to change
# for a 14400 capable fax
# scroll down till you find this line:
TXCAP="1,3,0,0,0,0,0,0"
# and change it to this:
TXCAP="1,5,0,0,0,0,0,0"

6: Create the proper directories
The static version is compiled for some predefined directories we have to comply with. These directories aren't  created during a RedHat installation, so we make them by hand now instead:

(as root)
mkdir -p /opt/lib/xfax
mkdir /opt/bin

7: Move the files to their new homes
Still as root, cd to the directory where you unpacked xfax

cd /home/mylogin/Xfax_linux
mv xfax.static /opt/bin
mv * /opt/lib/xfax
cd /opt/lib/xfax

The directory the files were originally unpacked, Xfax_linux, should be empty now.

Still as root, make a textfile in /opt/lib/xfax/ called faxheader. Edit the content be whatever you want your faxheaders to display.

8: SUID xfax so you don't have to be root to use the program

cd /opt/bin
chmod u+s xfax.static

9: Now exit from user root
write exit and then cd
Now you should be "yourself" - check that with the command "whoami"
If you are still root, write "exit" again and another "whoami" till you become your ordinary login.
When you are "yourself" again make sure you are in your homedir (cd)