This section lists packages that provide various utilities for your Red Hat Linux system. Because there are so many, we've split them into different subsections.
This section lists packages that provide utilities for data archiving.
Bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block-sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the PPM family of statistical compressors.
The command-line options are deliberately very similar to those of GNU Gzip, but they are not identical.
cpio copies files into or out of a cpio or tar archive, which is a file that contains other files plus information about them, such as their file name, owner, timestamps, and access permissions. The archive can be another file on the disk, a magnetic tape, or a pipe. cpio has three operating modes.
dhcpcd is an implementation of the DHCP client specified in draft-ietf-dhc-dhcp-09 (when -r option is not speci- fied) and RFC1541 (when -r option is specified).
It gets the host information (IP address, netmask, broad- cast address, etc.) from a DHCP server and configures the network interface of the machine on which it is running. It also tries to renew the lease time according to RFC1541 or draft-ietf-dhc-dhcp-09.
This is the popular GNU file compression and decompression program, gzip.
This is an archiving and compression utility. It is mostly used in the DOS world, but can be used under Linux to extract DOS files from LHA archives.
ncompress is a utility that will do fast compression and decompression compatible with the original *nix compress utility (.Z extensions). It will not handle gzipped (.gz) images (although gzip can handle compress images).
GNU `tar' saves many files together into a single tape or disk archive, and can restore individual files from the archive. It includes multivolume support, the ability to archive sparse files, automatic archive compression/decompression, remote archives and special features that allow `tar' to be used for incremental and full backups. If you wish to do remote backups with tar, you will need to install the `rmt' package as well.
The unarj program is used to uncompress .arj format archives, which were somewhat popular on DOS based machines.
unzip will list, test, or extract files from a ZIP archive, commonly found on MS-DOS systems. A companion program, zip, creates ZIP archives; both programs are compatible with archives created by PKWARE's PKZIP and PKUNZIP for MS-DOS, but in many cases the program options or default behaviors differ.
zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Windows NT, Minix, Atari and Macintosh. It is analogous to a combination of the UNIX commands tar(1) and compress(1) and is compatible with PKZIP (Phil Katz's ZIP for MSDOS systems).
This section lists packages that provide utilities that manage your Red Hat Linux system's console.
SVGATextMode allows the screen mode of the Linux console to be controlled in detail. This allows more characters on screen, more stable text, less characters on screen, less stable text, etc. also, on badly designed hardware, you could sometimes achieve a melted monitor.
Extra fonts are required to work fully, though without them useful effects can still be achieved.
This program runs a command on an given virtual console number. It can also run the program on the first virtual console which isn't already in use.
vlock either locks the current terminal (which may be any kind of terminal, local or remote), or locks the entire virtual console system, completely disabling all console access. vlock gives up these locks when either the password of the user who started vlock or the root password is typed.
This section lists packages containing file-related utility programs.
This package is useful for finding out what type of file you are looking at on your system. For example, if an fsck results in a file being stored in lost+found, you can run file on it to find out if it's safe to 'more' it or if it's a binary. It recognizes many file types, including ELF binaries, system libraries, RPM packages, and many different graphics formats.
These are the GNU file management utilities. It includes programs to copy, move, list, etc, files.
The ls program in this package now incorporates color ls!
This package contains programs to help you locate files on your system. The find program can search through a hierarchy of directories looking for files matching a certain set of criteria (such as a filename pattern). The locate program searches a database (create by updatedb) to quickly find a file matching a given pattern.
GIT is a file system browser for UNIX systems. An interactive process viewer/killer, a hex/ascii file viewer, an auto-mount shell script and a per file type action script are also available.
The standard ANSI color sequences are used where available. Manual pages and info documentation are also provided.
This is a set of utilities for manipulating files from the Macintosh. Popular utilities like macunpack, hexbin, and binhex are included.
Mtools is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from Unix without mounting them. It supports Win'95 style long file names, OS/2 Xdf disks, ZIP/JAZ disks and 2m disks (store up to 1992k on a high density 3 1/2 disk).
The shar utilities can be used to encode and package a number of files, binary and/or text, in a special plain text format. This format can safely be sent through email or other means where sending binary files is difficult.
This package includes the tools necessary to mount filesystems from SMB servers.
The stat program prints out filesystem level information about a file, including permissions, link count, inode, etc.
This program check for a number of problems with symlinks on a system, including symlinks which point to nonexistant files (dangling symlinks). It can also automatically convert absolute symlinks to relative symlinks.
This program is basically a UNIX port of the very useful DOS utility 'tree', which prints out a view of the specified directory tree, along with the files it owns. Includes support for 'color ls'-style listings.
Give it a program name, and it tells you if it is on your 'PATH'.
For example, 'which ls' would print '/bin/ls', because the ls program, which is in one of the directories listed in your PATH environment variable, is located in the /bin directory.
This section lists packages that provide utility programs related to printing.
mpage formats multiple pages of ASCII text onto a single page of PostScript. It supports many different layouts for the final pages.
This section lists packages that provide utilities that perform various system-related functions.
The /dev tree holds special files, each of which corresponds to a type of hardware device that Linux supports. This package contains a script which makes it easier to create and maintain the files which fill the /dev tree.
adjtimex is a kernel clock management system. It is useful in adjusting the system clock for accuracy.
This is a Advanced Power Management daemon and utilities. It can watch your notebook's battery and warn all users when the battery is low.
I have added an unofficial patch for shutting down the PCMCIA sockets before a suspend.
cabaret is a friendly text-mode program for manipulating /etc/fstab. It allows you to add, delete, and modify mount points. It also lets you mount and unmount partitions through its graphical interface.
Includes configuration files for bind (the DNS nameserver) which make it behave as a simple caching nameserver. Many users on dialup connections use this package (along with bind) and make the it's own nameserver to speed up name resoultions.
chkconfig provides a simple command-line tool for maintaining the /etc/rc.d directory hierarchy by relieving system administrators of directly manipulating the numerous symbolic links in that directory.
The Red Hat control panel is an X program launcher for various configuration tools. Other packages provide information which allow them to show up on the control panel's menu of available tools.
Includes the cracklib dictionaries for the standard /usr/dict/words, as well as utilities needed to create new dictionaries.
dump and restore can be used to backup extended 2 (ext2) partitions in a variety of ways.
This package includes a number of utilities for creating, checking, and repairing ext2 filesystems.
This program allows the user to eject media that is autoejecting like CD-ROMs, Jaz and Zip drives, and floppy drives on SPARC machines.
This is a package to allow for hacking of your extended two file systems. It is for hackers *only* and should only be used by experienced personnel. If you aren't sure if this is you, it isn't. Also, do not smoke near this software. You have been warned. This is not a recording.
The fstool is a X program for manipulating /etc/fstab. It allows you to add, delete, and modify amount points. It also lets you mount and unmount partitions through its graphical interface.
getty and uugetty are used to accept logins on the console or a terminal. They can handle answer a modem for dialup connections (although mgetty is recommended for that purpose).
Glint is a graphical interface to the RPM package management tool. It allows you to browse packages installed on your system, verify and query those package. It allows allows you to update packages with new versions and install new packages.
This is a utility for setting Hard Drive parameters. It is useful for tweaking performance and for doing things like spinning down hard drives to conserve power.
The help tool provides a unified graphical interface for searching through many of the help sources available, including man pages and GNU texinfo documents.
The GNU project uses the texinfo file format for much of its documentation. This package includes a standalone browser program to view these files.
This is the IP firewall and accounting administration tool. It is useful if you need to run a firewall (a machine that acts as a secure gateway to the Internet).
These programs allow ISA Plug-And-Play devices to be configured on a Linux machine.
This program is suitable for all systems, whether or not they include a PnP BIOS. In fact, a PnP BIOS adds some complications because it may already activate some cards so that the drivers can find them, and these tools can unconfigure them, or change their settings causing all sorts of nasty effects. If you have (for example) plug and play network cards that already work, I suggest you read section 4 on the format of the configuration file below very carefully.
This package contains utilities to load console fonts and keyboard maps. It also includes a number of different fonts and keyboard maps.
This is a terminal mode program for setting the keyboard map for your system. Keyboard maps are necessary for using non US default keyboards. Kbdconfig loads the selected keymap before exiting and configures your machine to use that keymap automatically after rebooting.
Red Hat Linux kernelcfg provides a GUI interface which allows you to easily administrate your kerneld configuration.
ldconfig scans a running system and sets up the symbolic links that are used to load shared libraries properly. It also creates /etc/ld.so.cache which speeds the loading programs which use shared libraries.
Lilo is repsonsible for loading your linux kernel from either a floppy or a hard drive and giving it control of the system. It can also be used to boot many other operating sysetms, including the BSD variants, DOS, and OS/2.
Linuxconf has an easy-to-navigate user interface that is accessible from a text console, a web interface, and a GUI interface.
Linuxconf has the ability to manage:
Networking: Host information: IP Address, Hostname etc. IP Subnet allocation Resolving Name Servers Routing and Gateways NIS IPX Interface Setup PPP and Slip Dialout NFS File Systems Named (DNS) Zones and Secondaries Reverse Lookup Sendmail Virtual Email Domains UUCP IP Aliasing DCHP/BOOTP Server RARP Server Input Firewalling Output Firewalling Blocking Firewalling IP Masquerading Packet Accounting Mail to Fax Gateway User Accounts: User and Group management PPP Acounts Slip Accounts UUCP Accounts POP Only Accounts Virtual Email Domain Accounts Email Aliases For Normal and Virtual Domains Policies For Passwords and User Accounts Available User Shells Crontab Management Shadow Management File Systems: Local Partition Management (/etc/fstab) NFS Volume Management (Samba Volume Management coming soon) Swap File and Partition Management User and Group Disk Quotas File Permissions Boot Mode: Lilo Configuration Default Boot Mode Runlevel Definitions
And more...
Logrotate is designed to ease administration of systems that generate large numbers of log files. It allows automatic rotation, compression, removal, and mailing of log files. Each log file may be handled daily, weekly, monthly, or when it grows too large.
Linux supports a special block device called the loopback device, which maps a normal file onto a virtual block device. This package contains programs for setting up and removing the mapping between files and loopback devices.
Block loopback devices should not be confused with the networking loopback device, which is configured with the normal ifconfig command.
This package manages printing services. It manages print queues, sends jobs to local printers and remote pritners, and accepts jobs from remote clients.
The man page suite, including man, apropos, and whatis. These programs are used to read most of the documentation available on a Linux system. The whatis and apropos programs can be used to find documentation related to a particular subject.
mingetty, by Florian La Roche, is a lightweight, minimalist getty for use on virtual consoles only. mingetty is not suitable for serial lines (the author recommends using `mgetty' for that purpose).
This package creates a self-contained boot disk for booting a system. It assumes that the boot disk should use the root partition mentioned in /etc/fstab. The resultant boot disk includes all of the SCSI modules needed to use the system.
This is the mkdosfs package. You can use this under Linux to create MS-DOS FAT file systems.
Generic kernels can be built without drivers for any SCSI adapters which load the SCSI driver as a module. To solve the problem of allowing the kernel to read the module without being able to address the SCSI adapter, an initial ramdisk is used. That ramdisk is loaded by the operating system loader (such as lilo) and is available to the kernel as soon as it is loaded. That image is resonsible for loading the proper SCSI adapter and allowing the kernel to mount the root filesystem. This program creates such a ramdisk image using information found in /etc/conf.modules.
This is the mkisofs package. It is used to create ISO 9660 file system images for creating CD-ROMs. Now includes support for making bootable "El Torito" CD-ROMs.
mktemp is a small utility that interfaces to the mktemp() function call to allow shell scripts and other programs to use files in /tmp safely.
The modem tool is a graphical simple configuration tool for selecting which of your serial ports is connected to a modem.
The Linux kernel allows new kernel pieces to be loaded and old ones to be unloaded while the kernel continues to run. These loadable piecs are called modules, and can include device drivers and filesystems among other things. This package includes program to load and unload programs both automatically and manually.
Mount is used for adding new filesystems, both local and networked, to your current directory structure. The filesystems must already exist for this to work. It can also be used to change the access types the kernel uses for already-mounted filesystems.
This package is critical for the functionality of your system.
This is a text based mouse configuration tool. You can use it to set the proper mouse type for programs like 'gpm'. It also can be used in conjunction with the Red Hat Xconfigurator to setup the mouse for the X Window System.
The mt program can be used to perform many operations on tapes, including rewind, eject, skipping files and blocks, etc.
Red Hat Linux netcfg provides a GUI interface which allows you to easily administrate your network setup.
Popt is a C library for pasing command line parameters. It was heavily influenced by the getopt() and getopt_long() functions, but it allows more powerfull argument expansion. It can parse arbitrary argv[] style arrays and automatically set variables based on command line arguments. It also allows command line arguments to be aliased via configuration files and includes utility functions for parsing arbitrary strings into argv[] arrays using shell-like rules.
The printtool provides a graphical interface for setting up printer queue. It manages both local printers and remote printers. Windows (SMB) printers can also be configured.
procinfo is a package to allow you to get useful information from /proc. /proc is the kernel filesystem. This is a place you can go to acquire information from your running kernel.
A package of utilities which report on the state of the system, including the states of running processes, amount of memory available, and currently-logged-in users.
The tools necessary for accounting the activities of processes are included here.
This package contains programs to display a tree of processes, find out what users have a file open, and send signals to processes by name.
Quotas allow the system administrator to limit disk usage by a user and/or group per filesystem. This package contains the tools which are needed to enable, modify, and update quotas.
rhbackup is a backup utility that can be used for local and remote backups. This should be considered alpha quality software and should be used with care.
rhmaskR is intended to allow the distribution of files as masks against other files. This lets new versions of software be freely distributed on public internet servers but limits their usefulness to those who already have a copy of the package. It uses a simple XOR scheme for creating the file mask and uses file size and md5 sums to ensure the integrity of the result.
A package of utilities which report on the devices of the system. PnP probing of serial and parallel devices is supported. Useful for reporting errors to Red Hat concerning hardware.
The Red Hat print filter system provides an easy way to handle the printing of numerous file formats. Meant primarily to be used in conjuction with the Red Hat printtool.
The fake "service" created by rhsound allows sound modules to be loaded in contrallable runlevels and preserves mixer settings on shutdown/restarts
rmt provides remote access to tape devices for programs like dump, restore, and tar.
RPM is a powerful package manager, which can be used to build, install, query, verify, update, and uninstall individual software packages. A package consists of an archive of files, and package information, including name, version, and description.
setconsole sets up /etc/inittab, /dev/systty, and /dev/console for a new console. The console may be either the local terminal (directly attached to the system via a video card) or a serial console.
Setserial is a program which allows you to look at and change various attributes of a serial device, including its port, its IRQ, and other serial port options.
setup is a friendly text-mode menu program that gives you easy, instant access to all the text-mode configuration programs in Red Hat Linux.
The GNU shell utilities provide many of the basic common commands used (among other things) for shell programming, hence the name. Nearly all shell scripts use at least one of these programs.
This package includes the programs necessary to convert standard UNIX password files to the shadow password format, as well as programs for command-line management of the user's accounts. - 'pwconv' converts everything to the shadow password format. - 'pwunconv' unconverts from shadow passwords, generating a file in the current directory called npasswd that is a standard UNIX password file. - 'pwck' checks the integrity of the password and shadow files. - 'lastlog' prints out the last login times of all users. - 'useradd', 'userdel' and 'usermod' for accounts management. - 'groupadd', 'groupdel' and 'groupmod' for group management.
A number of man pages are also included that relate to these utilities, and shadow passwords in general.
Attaches a SLIP interface to standard input. This is often used to allow dialin SLIP connections.
The Red Hat sound package includes the sndconfig tool whichs is a text based sound configuration tool. You can use it to set the proper sound type for programs which use the devices /dev/dsp, /dev/audio, and /dev/mixer. Sound settings are saved via the use of aumix and sysV runlevel scripts.
Currently only supports sound blaster type cards.
Statserial displays a table of the signals on a standard 9-pin or 25-pin serial port, and indicates the status of the handshaking lines. It can be useful for debugging problems with serial ports or modems.
Swatch is used to monitor log files. When it sees a line matching a pattern you specify, it can highlight it and print it out, or run external programs to notify you through mail or some other means.
This is a tape backup and restore program that provides a friendly user interface to allow backing/restoring files to a tape drive. Alternatively, files can be backed up to hard disk files. Selecting files for backup and restore is very similar to the Midnight Commander interface and allows easy traversal of directories. Recursively selected directories are supported. Incremental backup and automatic most recent restore are defaults settings. SCSI, ftape, zftape, and removable drives are supported
The 'time' utility is used as a sort of 'stopwatch' to time the execution of a specified command. It can aid in the optimization of programs for maximum speed, as well as a number of other uses.
This is a simple tool for setting both the timezone and the way your system clock stores the time. It runs in text mode using a simple windowing system.
Timetool is a graphical interface for setting the current date and time for your system.
This is a graphical tool for manipulating run levels. It allows you to control what services get started and stopped for every run level.
This package provides a program that can be used to clean out directories. It recursively searches the directory (ignoring symlinks) and removes files that haven't been accessed in a user-specified amount of time.
`tunelp' aids in configuring the kernel parallel port driver.
The User and Group Configurator Tool provides a graphical user interface which allows you to add users to your system, remove them, edit their characteristics, and manage groups of users.
A program that makes it easy for users to bring user-controllable network devices up and down, and to check on the status of those devices.
util-linux contains a large variety of low-level system utilities necessary for a functional Linux system. This includes, among other things, configuration tools such as fdisk and system programs such as login.
This section lists packages that provide utilities related to terminal handling.
Dialog is a utility that allows you to build user interfaces in a TTY (text mode only). You can call dialog from within a shell script to ask the user questions or present with choices in a more user friendly manner. See /usr/doc/dialog-*/samples for some examples.
Screen is a program that allows you to have multiple logins on one terminal. It is useful in situations where you are telnetted into a machine or connected via a dumb terminal and want more than just one login.
This section lists packages that provide utilities related to the handling and manipulation of text.
'diffstat' provides a number of statistics on a patch generated by diff, including number of additions, number of removals, and total number of changes. It can be useful, for example, to find out what changes have been made to a program, just by feeding the update patch to diffstat.
The diff utilities can be used to compare files, and generate a record of the "differences" between files. This record can be used by the patch program to bring one file up to date with the other. All these utilities (except cmp) only work on text files.
The faces package is for use mainly with exmh. You can take a photo of something and turn it into a ``face'' which can be transmitted in all email and will show up in exmh and other mailers.
These are the utilities to handle X-Face mail headers. They are called by mail readers to display an face from a message.
This is GNU Awk. It should be upwardly compatible with the Bell Labs research version of awk. It is almost completely compliant with the 1993 POSIX 1003.2 standard for awk.
Gawk can be used to process text files and is considered a standard Linux tool.
newt-based front end for the linuxconf system.
This is the default interface to linuxconf on a Red Hat system if the X Window System is not available (that is, if the DISPLAY environment variable is not set).
This is the GNU implementation of the popular `grep' *nix utility. It allows for the fast locating of strings in text files.
This is the GNU interactive spelling checker. You can run it on text files and it will interactively spell check. This means it will tell you about words it doesn't know, and will suggest alternatives when it can.
less is a text file viewer much like 'more', only better.
This is the GNU Macro processing language. It is useful for writing text files that can be parsed logically. Many programs use it as part of their build process.
Mawk is a version of awk, which is a powerful text processing program. In some areas mawk can outperform gawk, which is the standard awk program on Linux.
nenscript is a print filter. It can take ASCII input and format it into PostScript output and at the same time can do nice transformations like putting 2 ASCII pages on one physical page (side by side).
Patch is a program to aid in patching programs. :-) You can use it to apply 'diff's. Basically, you can use diff to note the changes in a file, send the changes to someone who has the original file, and they can use 'patch' to combine your changes to their original.
Perl is an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal).
Provides access to the md5 algorithm from RSA.
Sed copies the named files (standard input default) to the standard output, edited according to a script of commands.
These are the GNU text file (actually, file contents) processing utilities. They include programs to split, join, compare, and modify files.
This package contains the english dictionary in /usr/dict. It is used by programs like ispell as a database of words to check for spelling and so forth.
a recursive `grep' utility that can highlight the matching expression, by the author of Jed.