appendix-a.html

linux-unix130.linux.and.unix.ebooks130 linux and unix ebookslinuxLearning Linux - Collection of 12 E

<TD VALIGN="TOP">FTP
<TD>This method enables you to install from an FTP server.
<TR>
<TD COLSPAN="2"><HR>
</TABLE>
<P>If you choose to install from a CD, the program asks you to insert the CD into the player. It then tries to autoprobe for an IDE CD on the system. If it doesn&#146;t find an IDE CD, it presents a screen asking you to choose which of the following types of CD-ROM you have:
</P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><TR>
<TD WIDTH="25%" VALIGN="TOP">SCSI
<TD WIDTH="75%">If your CD is on an SCSI adapter, it tries to find the SCSI adapter, and if it is unable to, it asks you what kind of SCSI device it should try to load. You will be asked whether you want to autoprobe for the device or whether you want to give options to the device. In most cases, you shouldn&#146;t need to specify any options.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Other CD-ROM
<TD>If your CD isn&#146;t an IDE or an SCSI CD, it probably falls under this category. You are presented with a long list of drivers. Choose which driver matches your CD-ROM and if you need to, any special options.
</TABLE>
<P>After the CD has been detected, the program attempts to mount the Red Hat CD and go on to the next stage of the install.
</P>
<H3><A NAME="Heading9"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">The Second Installation Stage</FONT></H3>
<P>You are now ready to begin the second stage of the installation process. In this stage, you create the necessary partitions and select which parts of the Linux distribution you want to install.
</P>
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading10"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Selecting to Install Fresh or Upgrade</FONT></H4>
<P>The next menu window, shown in Figure A.6, asks whether you are installing or upgrading an existing system. We&#146;ll assume that you&#146;re installing Linux for the first time.
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<P><A NAME="Fig6"></A><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-06.jpg',364,156 )"><IMG SRC="images/apa-06t.jpg"></A>
<BR><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-06.jpg',364,156)"><FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>Figure A.6</B></FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp;Choosing to install fresh or upgrade an existing system.</P>

<TABLE BORDER="2" BORDERCOLOR="#0000" ALIGN="CENTER">
<TR><TD><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>Want to overwrite a previous Linux installation?</B></FONT>
<BR>If you already have Linux on your system, an install using existing partitions will overwrite all your data. Back up important files first!</TABLE>

<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading11"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">SCSI Support</FONT></H4>
<P>After choosing an installation option, the program tries to autoprobe for any SCSI adapters. If it cannot locate any, it asks whether you have any SCSI adapters in your machine. If you do, select Yes, and a dialog box asks which adapter you have. Choose the adapter you have in your machine, and another screen asking whether you want to autoprobe or give options is displayed. Most SCSI drivers do not need options. If you don&#146;t have an SCSI adapter, choose No and press Enter.
</P>
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading12"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Partitioning the Hard Drive</FONT></H4>
<P>Before you partition your drive, you should understand how Linux references different partitions. In the DOS/Windows world, different partitions are given different drive letters. For example, if you have a drive with two partitions, they would probably show up as drives C: and D:. Linux does away with drive letters, and partitions show up as what can best be described as different directories. So if you have two partitions under Linux, they might show up as <TT>/</TT> and <TT>/data</TT> in the user interface.</P>
<P>The next screen that appears begins the Disk Setup portion of the install, shown in Figure A.7. You can choose between two partitioning tools that are shipped with Red Hat Linux. The first choice is the Disk Druid program, and the second is the <TT>fdisk</TT> command.</P>
<P><A NAME="Fig7"></A><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-07.jpg',539,273 )"><IMG SRC="images/apa-07t.jpg"></A>
<BR><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-07.jpg',539,273)"><FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>Figure A.7</B></FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp;Selecting the disk-partitioning program you want to use.</P>
<P>Disk Druid is a GUI-based disk management program. It can create and delete partitions, while also defining the mount points for those partitions. <TT>fdisk</TT> is a more esoteric partitioning tool. Although it is more flexible than Disk Druid in certain situations (dealing with disk drives having odd geometries, for example), it also is less user-friendly.</P>
<P>Red Hat Linux needs at least two partitions: the root mount point / and the Linux swap space. The recommended Linux swap space is usually equal to twice the amount of RAM you have, but if you have 32MB or more of RAM, you can set the swap space equal to the amount of RAM and still feel safe.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>The Disk Druid Interface</I></B></FONT></P>
<P>The Disk Druid screen contains a lot of information about your hard drives. At the top of the screen is a section listing the Current Disk Partitions found on your hard drive. The middle of the screen is devoted to the Drive Summaries&#151;the disk drives the installation program found. The bottom section lists the buttons and hot keys the program uses. All the sections are described more fully in the following text.
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<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>Current Disk Partitions</I></B></FONT></P>
<P>This section details the partitions that already exist on your machine. Each listed partition has several fields that are (left to right):
</P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><TR>
<TD WIDTH="20%" VALIGN="TOP"><TT>Mount Point</TT>
<TD WIDTH="80%">The name of the directory that you will mount the directory under in Linux. Not putting anything in this field means that the partition will not be mounted.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP"><TT>Device</TT>
<TD>This field gives the device name of the partition.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP"><TT>Requested</TT>
<TD>This field shows the minimum size requested when the partition was defined.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP"><TT>Actual</TT>
<TD>This shows how much space is currently given to that partition.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP"><TT>Type</TT>
<TD>This field shows the type of partition. Commonly seen types are DOS, NTFS, Linux native, or Linux swap. You might also see that the partition has not been allocated yet. This is usually due to the fact that there isn&#146;t enough disk space for the minimum amount originally requested.
</TABLE>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>Drive Summaries</I></B></FONT></P>
<P>The lines in this section represent the hard drives present in the machine. Each line has these fields:
</P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><TR>
<TD WIDTH="20%" VALIGN="TOP">Drive
<TD WIDTH="80%">The hard drive&#146;s device name. IDE hard drives use the device names <TT>hdX</TT>, where <I>X</I> is a letter indicating which drive it is. SCSI hard drives are labeled by how they appear on the chain. The first drive found is <TT>sda</TT>, the second <TT>sdb</TT>, and so </I>on.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Geom [C/H/S]
<TD>The hard drive&#146;s geometry as detected by Disk Druid. The geometry is separated by the number of cylinders, heads, and sectors that were found. Compare these numbers to those reported by Windows 95&#146;s System Properties (in the Control Panel), or your computer&#146;s BIOS (accessed by holding down a specific Function during startup). If they do not match up, you might need to use <TT>fdisk</TT>.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Total
<TD>This area reports the total amount of disk space the disk drive has. Compare this number to what you have already written in your inventory.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Used
<TD>An area that indicates in megabytes how much of the hard drive is currently allocated.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Free
<TD>This section shows how much of the hard drive is currently not allocated.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">#####
<TD>The final area is a bar graph giving a rough visual guide to how much disk space is still available on the drive.
</TABLE>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>Disk Druid Commands</B></FONT></P>
<P>The bottom section contains the buttons that control Disk Druid. They can be used to Add, Delete, Change, Reset to the Beginning, or Finish the install. The following text discusses the keys and gives the hot key that is equivalent to selecting the button.
</P>
<P>The <TT>F1-Add</TT> option is used to add partitions. A pop-up menu appears when selected. The fields in this pop-up are explained in Table A.3.</P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><CAPTION ALIGN=LEFT><B>TABLE A.3</B> The <I>F1-Add</I> pop-up menu
<TR>
<TH COLSPAN="2"><HR>
<TR>
<TH WIDTH="30%" ALIGN="LEFT">Menu Item
<TH WIDTH="70%" ALIGN="LEFT">Explanation
<TR>
<TD COLSPAN="2"><HR>
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Mount Point
<TD>Used to enter the partition&#146;s mount point. Remember that the entire space of the mounted hard drives is seen as subdirectories of the <TT>/</TT> partition. Therefore, you need to specify one Linux partition to be the root partition <TT>/</TT>.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Size (Megs)
<TD>Used to enter the minimal requested size of the partition. Unless changed, the minimum size is 1MB.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Growable?
<TD>A check box to indicate that the size entered is a minimum or an exact size. If Growable is selected, the partition size tries to fit all available disk space on the drive.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Type
<TD>Used to choose the partition type to be used for the partition. This field is a highlighted scrollable section.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Allowable Drives
<TD>Another check box area that tells Disk Druid on which drives to try to create this partition.
<TR>
<TD>Ok
<TD>Selecting this button tries to create the partition.
<TR>
<TD VALIGN="TOP">Cancel
<TD>Selecting this button aborts the addition of a partition.
<TR>
<TD COLSPAN="2"><HR>
</TABLE>
<P>The <TT>F2-Add NFS</TT> option is used to add NFS partitions. NFS partitions are network partitions.</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><FONT SIZE="-1"><HR><B>SEE ALSO</B><BR>&#149; For more information about NFS, see the section &#147;Enabling Network File System Service,&#148; on page 461.<HR></FONT>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>The <TT>F3-Edit</TT> option is used to change an already existing partition. The dialog box that appears enables you to edit various fields depending on whether the partition has been written to the disk already.</P>
<P>The <TT>F4-Delete</TT> option is used to remove the highlighted partition from the drive. A dialog box appears, asking to confirm this deletion.</P>

<TABLE BORDER="2" BORDERCOLOR="#0000" ALIGN="CENTER">
<TR><TD><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>Think before you delete a partition!</B></FONT>
<BR>Remember that after you have removed a partition and chosen the <TT>OK</TT> option, the information in the partition is gone. Make sure that you don&#146;t delete your DOS or Windows 95 partition, or other needed partitions.</TABLE>

<P>
</P>

<TABLE BORDER="2" BORDERCOLOR="#0000" ALIGN="CENTER">
<TR><TD><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>Disk Druid error</B></FONT>
<BR>If your attempt to create the partition fails, an error window pops up, explaining what the error is. More than likely the error is that Disk Druid could not allocate the disk space for the drive currently, and you will need to edit the partition to be smaller or make other alterations to accommodate the partition.</TABLE>

<P>The <TT>F5-Reset</TT> option is used to bring Disk Druid to the state it was before you made any changes. All changes that have been made are removed. Any data on the mount points also has to be reentered.</P>
<P>The <TT>OK</TT> option is used to write changes to the disk drive. A confirmation pop-up appears, and if confirmed, the hard drives partition tables is written with the new data. The mount points that have been chosen are passed on to the installation program to define the file system layout.</P>
<P>The <TT>Cancel</TT> option bails you out of Disk Druid. Any changes made will be lost, and a pop-up dialog box is displayed asking which step in the install should be done next.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>Working with Disk Druid</B></FONT></P>
<P>Make sure that you know which partitions you want to delete, and which you want to keep. Select the deletable partitions and press F4 to delete them.
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>Creating a Linux and swap partition</I></B></FONT></P>
<DL>
<DD><B>1.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;Press F1, and you are presented with the Adding Menu. To create your root Linux partition (<TT>/</TT>) in the mount point area, type:
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<DD><B>2.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;Press the Tab key to navigate to the size field. For the purposes of this example, enter <B>250</B> megs (change this to fit with your earlier estimates), Select <TT>Linux Native</TT> as the partition, double-check all your entries, and then select <TT>OK</TT>.
<DD><B>3.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;Press F1 to create the swap partition. Make sure to select <TT>Linux Swap</TT> as the partition type and then choose <TT>OK</TT>.
<DD><B>4.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;When you&#146;re finished selecting the new partitions for your drive, select <TT>OK</TT> or press F12 and confirm that you want to make the changes. The install then goes to the next stage.
</DL>
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading13"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Activating Swap Space</FONT></H4>
<P>After the partitions have been created, the install program searches for swap partitions. If it doesn&#146;t find any, it will warn you, and you can go back to the previous step of partitioning the drives and set up a section to be swapped. If one or more swap spaces were detected, a screen, shown in Figure A.8, asks which partitions you want to use for swap. Select the check boxes of the partitions you want to use, and also select whether you want to check for bad blocks when it does the swap formatting. When you are ready to continue, choose <TT>OK</TT>.</P>
<P><A NAME="Fig8"></A><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-08.jpg',539,273 )"><IMG SRC="images/apa-08t.jpg"></A>
<BR><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-08.jpg',539,273)"><FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>Figure A.8</B></FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp;It&#146;s a good idea to have Linux check for bad blocks during formatting.</P>
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading14"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Formatting Partitions</FONT></H4>
<P>After the swap space has been selected, the next screen brings up a dialog box of the Linux Native partitions you need to format. You need to format any new partitions you created in the install process, and you should reformat any old partitions from previous Linux installs that do not contain data you want to keep.
</P>
<P>Toggle the check box for each partition you want to format, and toggle whether you want to check for bad blocks during the format.</P>
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT"><A NAME="Heading15"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Selecting Which Components to Install</FONT></H4>
<P>The next stage of the install is to select which packages you want on your Linux Box. A screen, shown in Figure A.9, asks which components you want to install on your machine. These components are sets of packages that work together or are similar in nature. The X Window System is all the packages that give most of the X functionality (server, basic libraries, window manager, and some clients). Adding the X Games package installs various amusements.
</P>
<P><A NAME="Fig9"></A><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-09.jpg',364,273 )"><IMG SRC="images/apa-09t.jpg"></A>
<BR><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-09.jpg',364,273)"><FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>Figure A.9</B></FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp;This dialog box gives you a list of packages you can install.</P>
<P>To install a minimal base 50MB system, unselect everything that has been autoselected. To fine-tune the items in the component listings, select individual packages by toggling the package listing. If chosen, another screen, shown in Figure A.10, enables you to pick and choose which subpackages you want to install.
</P>
<P><A NAME="Fig10"></A><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-10.jpg',576,328 )"><IMG SRC="images/apa-10t.jpg"></A>
<BR><A HREF="javascript:displayWindow('images/apa-10.jpg',576,328)"><FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>Figure A.10</B></FONT></A>&nbsp;&nbsp;Selecting individual packages for installation. Not recommended for beginners.</P>
<P>A scrolling menu of all the package groups available is displayed, and you can select or deselect any package inside a grouping. In selecting or deselecting individual packages, the install program might ask you to choose them again, or you will need to install other packages. This is due to the fact that other packages might depend on the unselected package to work properly.
</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>