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This means that Linux will assume your BIOS clock is set to the UTC or GMT time zone. More than likely, the clock is set to your local time zone, and you need to change the UTC line to the following:

UTC=false

Q: When the system boots up, I see a message that says I have unknown PCI hardware. What does this mean?

A: The error “unknown PCI device” can occur for several reasons. The first and most harmless one is that PCI isn’t responding to Linux’s queries in a way it understands, but Linux is able to keep going. The more common occurrence is that the system hangs on, querying PCI bus cards, and cannot get any further.

Because this is a hardware problem in the kernel, there is not much that Red Hat can do except point you to the maintainer of that section of the kernel. That person might be able to let you know what is going on and might want to look at what hardware you do have in your system so she can better handle it in the future. The maintainer can be reached at:

[email protected]

Include the following information

/proc/pci

which is your exact hardware description. Try to find out which device is unknown. It may be your main board chipset, your PCI-CPU bridge, or your PCI-ISA bridge. If you can’t find the actual information in your hardware booklet, try to read the references of the chip on the board.

Q: Linux isn’t detecting my NE2000 compatible network card.

A: It has been found that some NE2000s that worked with earlier kernels do not work with the later 2.0.x kernels. For some, the following workaround will enable them to work.

You can try to get the card to work by entering the following settings:


insmod 8390



insmod ne io=0XXXX irq=Y

(Note: Replace XXXX and Y with your IO address and IRQ. Most common values for the IO address are 0x300 and 0x310. The IRQ can be anything.)

After this, use ifconfig or netcfg to configure the card. Sometimes, even though the card is recognized, it fails to transfer TCP/IP packets. This is being looked into.

If the above settings work, add them to /etc/conf.modules. It should look something like this:


alias eth0 8390

alias eth0 ne

options eth0 io=0xXXX irq=Y

Q: I have installed Linux, and it seems to initially start booting. However, when it gets down to something called sendmail, the machine seems to hang. What is happening, and what should I do?

A: If after the install the machine seems to hang when it reaches certain processes like sendmail, apache, or SMB, there is probably a network problem. The most common cause is that Linux cannot look up the name of the machine you have called the box (if you set up networking to have a machine name). The machine is currently paused waiting for the network timeout of DNS lookups and will eventually bring up the login prompt. When you get the prompt, log in as root and check the usual culprits for a problem.

If you are directly on a network with a DNS server, make sure that the /etc/resolv.conf file has the correct values for your machine’s DNS server. Check with your systems administrator for the correct values.

If you are using Linux on a network without a DNS server (or if this box is going to be the DNS server), you will need to edit the /etc/hosts file to have the hostname and IP address so that the lookups will occur correctly. The format of the /etc/hosts file is like the following example


      127.0.0.1               localhost localhost.localdomain

      192.168.200.1           mymachine mymachine.mynetwork.net

where the example machine is called mymachine.

From Here…

When you have your system up and running, you can read the following chapters for further information about Linux:

  Chapter 5, “Running Linux Applications,” gets you up to speed on the various programs you just installed.
  Chapter 6, “Upgrading and Installing Software with RPM,” provides instructions on how to reinstall packages you may have left out during the initial setup of your Linux system.
  Chapter 21, “Installing the X Windows System,” provides you with information on installing X if something went amiss during your Red Hat installation. Although designed for the Slackware distribution, the XFree86 software is the same for any Linux distribution version.
  Chapter 22, “Using X Windows,” is interesting if you’ve installed the X system.
  Chapter 31, “Surfing the Internet with the World Wide Web,” briefs you on the basics about how to get to the Internet.


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