1.) How do I change my root password?

2.) How do I change my SSH port number?

3.) How do I change my Local IP address?

4.) What's a good program or command to renew my MAC address?

5.) How do I install Flash Player?


Thank You

These are all pretty basic questions. However, they illustrate a point about how one sometimes has to do too much googling to find out simple things.

1.)
As root, type passwd

You will prompted to enter a new password, and prompted a second time to confirm it.

2.)Look for the commented (that is, a line with a # in front of it) line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config that reads something like Port 22. Uncomment it (most commented lines in sshd mean that they are defaults, that are being used, even though they are commented. Change the port number and restart sshd.

service sshd restart

(If you do this remotely, that will cut you off from the machine.)

3.)

There is a file called /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

You can edit it there. Then restart the network service with service network restart

(If you are using a GUI login and Network manager, then I'm sure there's some other way.)

4.) Hrrm, don't know, but a quick google should solve that one.

5.) You can just download the rpm from Adobe's site. Or, download their repo, also from the site, put it in /etc/yum.repos.d and then do yum install flash-plugin. That one has an entry in the wiki I believe.

Ah, here it is. Short read.

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/MultimediaOnCentOS

Note that in general, such basic questions probably won't get answered on this forum. CentOS is kind of a sysadmin's O/S, and most sysadmins are really busy people. You caught me in the right mood, because I'm so fed up with the poor quality of Linux documentation after spending an hour finding out how to add one stupid line to something, and then, had to something for our Windows admin, which I had no idea how to do, but figured out in 30 seconds with the help of Windows help.

At any rate, now that I've given the "How" for most of these, you really should, especially if you're going to be using LInux quite a bit, get used to looking up some of this stuff. For example, for question 1, try man passwd, for question 2, try man sshd_config. That particular one was, I think, originally written by BSD-ers, who tend to take more pride in writing good docs. Question 3---hrrm, I remember looking for hte man page for that and eventually finding that I had to go into /usr/share/doc/inittscripts or something totally absurd like that. It's probably in the docs somewhere, and when someone posts how easy this stuff is to find, and posts the link, I want them to try to think like a beginner. I suspect the answer is to go the doc section, and go through the docs and it's in there somewhere as well. It's not like BSD where I would feel justified typing try man ifconfig. (Their man page has examples.)

I really appreciate your help,

I have been migrating from Windows to FreeBSD to Ubuntu and finally to CentOS.

I stayed with CentOS because it's an Enterprise solution, it's fast, and my hosted domain server uses it.

It was more difficult to google questions for CentOS than ubuntu I might have been typing the questions wrong.

Now that I have some more incite on CentOS I am starting to feel more confident with using CentOS as my server.


Thanks Again

Well, we all start off as newcomers. I'm not sure if I can express this properly, so if any of it sounds arrogant, please forgive it and put it down to the difficulty of expression through writing.

The thing is, as is said in the read me first part of this forum, we do expect people to do some research on their own. Now, many will argue this one with me, but personally, I think that one thing MS has done right is documentation for the basics. That is, you click help, type in a few keywords, and get an answer. Linux doesn't have that. If you have dealt with man pages, going to Linux man pages after FreeBSD man pages is a nightmare.

The thing is though, as I said, you caught me in the right mood. In many cases, like many forum members, I might have simply answered with try man passwd. Most of those questions are actually the same as in Ubuntu (though not networking--interestingly enough, I had to google the other day to see how to manually set an Ubuntu address--the GUI didn't work.)

Now for just about all those questions (save networking, and probably the MAC address), the answers would be the same for the BSDs and Ubuntu. Often, especially with beginner questions, you might be better off with linuxquestions.org. It's far busier for one thing, and more welcoming to newcomers.

Not that we don't welcome newcomers, but often, people simply don't have the time, or will see very basic questions and just tell the poster to google it.

The learning curve is a bit steep, and the documentation can be difficult to find at times, but as you get more experienced, you'll find it is often quicker to find the answer yourself. Man pages become less obscure, once you have an example, and then look at the man page.

Hrrm, I just looked at man passwd. Oh....kay. For a beginner, I could see that being a bit obscure.

The BSD version is a bit better--but again, I could see it being difficult for the newcomer.

I could also see the sshd_config man page being a bit hard when you're new to all this, but now that you know the answer, please *do* take a gander at the man page and see if it begins to make senes.

Often, you can simply google for something with the word linux, such as

change password linux

Ahhh, first hit.
http://lowfatlinux.com/linux-change-password-passwd.html

gives a pretty good explanation.

Anyway, sorry for the lecture, and again, please don't take it in the wrong way. Sometimes, googling and including CentOS can be confusing--for example, google whatever, centos and you'll be taken to page by google because, at the top or bottom, it says hosted on CentOS. It's such a common server platform that many web pages will have the words CentOS on them, and google doesn't necessarily connecd the fact that you want to know how do I do X on CentOS.

I would also recommend, (last bit of lecture, I promise) to, when you post, show what you've done to solve the problem on your own. That's the best way to avoid answers like

man passwd. :=)

Thanks,

For the the informative information.

I will definitely check out linuxquestions.org, when I do a google search I will not search for the CentOS criteria which I have been doing for months with no luck, instead I will search for linux.

Honestly I was confused by the CentOS name and the commands compared to FreeBSD or Ubuntu no relevant answer's would pop up when I googled for CentOS.


Thanks Again

Note that if you change the port for ssh to something other than 22 (highly recommended, btw), don't forget to also change it in /etc/sysconfig/iptables.