[Mapserver-users] Newbie question

[Mukta Telang]

Hi,
I want to install mapserver on a Sun Solaris machine. 
The system already has postgres,php and apache webserver installed.
The data to be served is in ascii format.Do I have to convert it into
raster format for the mapserver to use? If I had to use postgis/postgres
then how to go about it? If there are any articles/tutorials on net for
beginners who want to use postgis/postgres with mapserver then please
point me to them.
Is there any tutorial which describes the different formats of data and
how to use the same with the mapserver?
Please help.
Thanks in advance,
regards,
Mukta