Installation Guidelines

What will be covered?

Installation considerations

Sources & Hardware

Start an install

Mice

Installation type

Disk partitioning

Bootloader configuration

Firstboot

Installation considerations

To dual-boot or not to?

Getting to know the bootloader – GRUB

Partitioning

/boot – Boot partition (small, 100MB)

/home – Home partition (variable size)

/ - Where things get stored (greater than 3GB)

/scratch – What's this for? ;)

Sources & Hardware

CDROM

NFS

FTP

Kickstart

(floppy) – done away with in modern distributions

Working CDROM drive

RAM = 128MB (or greater)

Video card – X supported

Keyboard/mouse

Start an install

This is Anaconda, the

Red Hat installer. It

is targeted towards

the end-user and is

meant to be very

user-friendly.

Useful help

that serves as

a guide

Mice...

3-button PS/2, generic

settings generally work

well; newer releases just

detect everything as a

Wheel Mouse

The Unix world actually

has use for 3 mice

buttons, and this is

evident in X

Installation type

Rather similar

installation types,

save for developer

tools

Disk partitioning

Graphical view

of the disk being

partitioned

Partitioning details

are here

Bootloader configuration

Option exists to install

GRUB or no bootloader

Would add another label

if you were having

another OS on the system

Firstboot

Means installation was successful!

Set Date & Time

Add a user

Work the sound

Use the desktop!

Thank You!

Colin Charles, Nah Soo Hoe, William Wong

byte@aeon.com.my, nsh@pop.jaring.my,

wengyeew@yahoo.com.sg

http://training.bytebot.net/linux/

Dual-booting means sharing the same hard disk with an operating system like Microsoft Windows and Linux – this means that there will be co-existence of the two operating systems.

GRUB is the bootloader of choice – it is the first software program that the computer runs, and once it loads it transfers control to the kernel (like Linux, Windows and so on). Even if you don't want a dual-boot system, you still require a bootloader to load Linux.

Installation generally happens via a CD-ROM – Disc 1 is a bootable CD-ROM, so configuring BIOS to boot from the CD is ideal. If however this isn't possible, Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/) fits on a floppy and gets the job done fairly easily.

Thoughts on partitioning are important, especially if you have a dual-boot machine - /boot contains all the boot information, a kernel and the GRUB configuration, so its generally a good idea to keep it as the first partition, or within the first 8.4GB of the disk (on older BIOS'es).

/ is where everything is kept – we go into file system hierarchy a little later in the course; keeping /home on a separate partition is just good practice so that if you hose your / partition or upgrade, your information still stays intact.

Installation doesn't only need to happen via the CDROM (a standard installation method) – it can be done via NFS (Network File System), FTP (File Transfer Protocol), and even via having the ISO images on the same hard disk. using the correct method based on installation requirements are important.

Kickstart is a system which Red Hat developed to get installations in large environments done simply – more details are at the HOWTO at: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/KickStart-HOWTO.html

Floppy installs are generally done away with since modern kernels don't fit on a floppy disk – you can boot from the floppy disk if the BIOS doesn't support CDROM booting, but installations generally don't happen that way any longer.

The install can be performed via a keyboard or a mouse.

The above install screen is if you install Fedora using the default graphical installation.

On machines the have 64MB of RAM, only the text-based installer will work, fired up by running 'linux text'.

Following the instructions on the screen make it very, very easy for just about anyone to perform an installation.

The next screens

Next, you will be configuring the language to be used throughout the installation. English is the default choice, but the installation can be performed in Malay, for example as well as many other languages.

Configuring the keyboard is next – we all generally use QWERTY U.S. English styled keyboards – the default is generally correct.

Next comes choosing a display – picking this correctly will mean you get the maximum resolution possible. Choosing from the Generic LCD/CRT displays will be sufficient enough, unless your monitor is within the hardware database.

A Personal Desktop installation is great if you're new to the wonderful world of Linux, and is great for home use. It is a fully graphical environment, so users never really need to see the CLI. Choosing this installation, you only require the first 2 CDs of Fedora Core 1.

A Workstation installation is exactly like the Personal Desktop installation, except it comes with the software development tools. This is a recommended installation as sometimes, when you get sources/tarballs to install, you will need some of the development libraries like gcc, automake, and so on.

A Server installation generally doesn't give you the X Window system, and is mainly for users wanting to use their Linux box to run services.

A Custom install allows you full control, is great for advanced users, and an installation of under 510MB is possible.

Upgrade is another option available if you have existing Linux installations (of the same distribution, just a previous version, for example).

You are asked if you'd like to automatically partition the disk, or use Red Hat's Disk Druid, a GUI-based configuration tool (look, no more fdisk like look-alikes!).

If the Automatic partitioning (or Disk Druid) detects existing Linux partitions, it poses you with three options: remove all Linux partitions on the system (good if you're changing distributions, except maybe /home!), remove all partitions on this system (this removes Windows too, use with extreme caution), keep all partitions and use existing free space (this is good if you have a well planned system).

The option to review (and modify if needed) should be used if you're going to go the removing partitions method, especially if you have data on the disks.

At the Disk Setup (screenshot above), you can create New partitions, delete partitions, edit them, and give them properties.

Changing the bootloader made sense when Red Hat Linux also shipped LILO, but since this doesn't exist anymore, it only makes way if you want to use 3rd party bootloaders (like one's from Partition Magic, for instance).

Labels are important, and they point to different bootable partitions on your hard disk; this means many distributions of Linux can sit on one hard disk, or more commonly, Linux and Microsoft Windows can live alongside each other.

The next screens

Configuring the network if a NIC is installed – DHCP-based is what most require.

Let the firewall be enabled, and don't allow connections through it.

Additional Language support – significant, so that you can add Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, and so on.

Timezone select (Malaysia/Kuala_Lumpur)

Root passwords are important – remember this well. This is the account of the administrator, for all administrative tasks.

Default software packages are sufficient, but adding KDE is useful.

Agreeing to the license agreement is mandatory – its the GPL for Fedora Core.

The current date & time should be picked out from the BIOS if it was set correctly there, so changing this might not actually be necessary. NTP is supported, and requires an Internet connection.

Adding a user is important – this means you don't do everything as root!

Testing the detected soundcard (thank kudzu), will play a stereo tune through your speakers.

After this, you'll be sent to the GDM login screen.

Colin Charles

2004-04-05T18:39:34