To enjoy your new Linux installation forever without any worries, it is
important to take a few simple precautions. You must do these as soon
as you complete installing Linux on your machine for the first time. Create a
boot
diskette and a rescue diskette.
Utilities for creating these diskettes are available along with
your Linux distribution. If you are the paranoid type (like me), you
can make two copies of each of these diskettes. Diskettes are
notorious for failing when they are most needed. Test out your boot diskette.
Make sure you can boot into Linux using the boot diskette. Remember
Murphy's Laws may strike at you just when you least expect. Checkout thoroughly your new system. Try all major packages. Try out the X windows system, and the desktop, and
the windows manager, if you have installed these. Try out the connection to your LAN, and to the Internet. Create at least one "non-root" account, for
testing and debugging your installation. Perform ALL the above
checkouts once again, using the non-root account you created. Join a local Linux Users Group (LUG). You must
find out if there is a LUG close by. If there is none, start an
informal LUG yourself, in your neighbourhood, your campus, your city,
or your town. Join one or more
mailing
lists for Linux updates and news. There are literally hundreds of
them. Register yourself and your machine in the worldwide
Linux Users Counter. And finally...Download the
Section 3 and run it. Make a safe copy (on a removable
medium) of the directory: /root/postinfo which
the script will create. You may also like to make a printout of the
summary report /root/postinfo/summary created by
the shell script. You must run this shell script: as soon as you have
installed Linux for the first time, and after every major revision or
upgrade to your Linux system. You can also set up the script as a
cron job, so that it runs itself periodically and automatically. This
will avoid you a lost of hassles later, in case something gets messed
up later.
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