[techtalk] 1st Linux install

[Anne Forker]

Hi,

I am new to this list too and an introduction will follow soon.

On Mon, 8 May 2000, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:

> On Sun, May 07, 2000 at 10:11:23AM -0700, Clair Mooza wrote:
> > Hi, I am very  new to this message board and also to Linux.  What a great
> > find this site and these message boards are!!  I have used Linux (Slackware
> > and HP) a little bit at school, but not yet at home.  I want to install
> > Linux on my computer at home (Red Hat 5.2), but don't really know the best
> > way to do it.  I have four partitions on my hard drive.  Three of them are
> > 2.0 GB and the other is just a really small 8-10MB or something equally as
> > useless.  I have Windows 98 OS on the first partition, applications for 98
> > on the second partition, and NT server 4.0 on third partition (which I am
> > eager to get rid of!).  What would be the best way to get this install
> > going?  I was thinking Partition Magic and then formatting the third
> > partition to a Linux file system might be a good way, any other ideas?  If
> > Partition Magic would be good, what next?  No advice would be insulting!
> > Okay, well maybe to turn on/off computer...  : )  Thank you very much in
> > advance.
> 
> Having never used Partition Magic (in fact, I'm barely able to spell it), I
> won't comment on that option,

Oh, hm, I actually think it might be a good help in this case. You have PM
4.0 or higher, Clair, do you? Then you should use it. If your Windows
partition are not entirely full yet, you may decrease their size and put a
small /boot partition (5-10 megabytes) into the space. This doesn't work
with the Windows fdisk program because it only knows 2 primary partitions 
(or: a primary and an extended one). But all other OSes can handle up to 4
primary partitions (of which one should be an extended one). Your harddisk
setup is currently as follows:

1. primary	/dev/hdX1	2 GB		Windows System
2. extended	/dev/hdX2	about 4 GB
3. logical	/dev/hdX5	2 GB 		Windows Apps
4. logical	/dev/hda6	2 GB		Win NT Server
5. logical	/dev/hda7	10 MB		...

I recommend to put your 10 MB partition just behind the Windows System
partition and to make it a primary partition. Windows won't bother about
it because it doesn't handle more than one primary partition. It can't
read the Linux filesystem anyway.

Then, you should divide your NT Server partition into to subpartitions:
one swap and one root partition. The swap partition shall be twice as big
as your RAM is - if it is a small system with up to 64 Megs of RAM.

When this is done, you can take your way and install Linux on the new root
partition. :-) 

I don't recommend to use the Red Hat tools for partitioning the hard disk,
in version 5.2 they are quite uncomfortable to use. But maybe this has
changed now, I didn't have a chance to test the newer versions so far.

Regards,
Anne