Newb question

[Ibis Noir]

"I'm completely new to GIS and MapServer". I know you've seen this line
before but I'm truly stuck: I can't seem to find the answers to some
elementary questions, documentation "from scratch". I ordered a book on
amazon (beginning mapserver...) and I'm waiting.

I've done the demo's with success.

But I'm stuck here:

I have some data in the form of GeoTiff files. I don't have the shapefiles
of these files. Is it possible to generate maps from these files anyway
(without shapefiles)? I've tried to adapt the given examples in the doc but
it doesn't work. The log file doesn't even mention anything special. All I
get is a black screen. I've generated shapefiles with gdaltindex but the
logs tells me then that it can't find the files, which paths btw i can see
in the .dbf file when I look in it.

I know I'm on the wrong track conceptually. Could somebody like give me a
hint as to where to look?

Thanks