Linux and Me

[SonicDragon]

That's true. Oh well.After i finish downloading the second disk to FreeBSD, i will start installing everything.When i'm partitioning... So say i want to make 4 partitions 10 GB each (for the 40 GB harddrive), or course, leaving room for the swap:I should install each OS in a different partition, with root and home and all that in the OS's partition. But, by default, mandrake puts the home and root in different partitions. So:1. how to i combine the root and home in mandrake2. and when i was trying to create a new partition for red hat, it was asking me to mount it, and type in what i wanted to mount it as. Am i supposed to put '/' there? or is it supposed to be the name of the os, like mandrake or redhat or like hdb1, hdb2 etc?. If it is supposed to be root, then will it let me have all the partitiones named root?I hope this is making some sence

[teacher]

Your partitions all have labels. No matter what you call them, they become hda1, hda4, hda5 or hdb1, hdb4, hdb5 and so on. Your lilo or boot manager will then identify which program is in which partition. Of course, when partitioning it is easy to identify your Windows because it is a different color and identified as a Win partition.

Edited July 31, 2003 by teacher

[Bruno]

SonicYou should not combine / and /home in Mandrake !!I thought you had made additional free partitions with the mandrake GUI tool . . . let´s assume hdb7 is a free partition . . if then you install RedhHat or Slack you install it in that hdb7 partition, you only want to mount that partition in RedHat and not the mandrake ( hdb1 or hdb6 ) . . . it will detect the swap partition of mandrake on hdb6 . . and you can let RedHat make use of that /swap on hdb6 . . . . . just note down all the hdb´s you have and keep good track !Most likely you will have hdb1, hdb5, hdb6, hdb7, hdb8, hdb9, hdb10 . . . Bruno

Edited July 31, 2003 by Bruno

[SonicDragon]

Ok... i'm so confused. I'm starting my partitioning all over again.So, i don't combine / and /home in mandrake, but i do in all the others? or are all the os's supposed to have thier own / and /home?And why does it skip hdb2, hdb3, hdb4?And it makes scence that i should only mount the red hat partition in redhat, but i still don't know what to call it. It askes me what i want to mount it as and then gives me a space to write something. Do i say / or hdb-what-ever-number-it-is, or just the name of the os?

[Bruno]

SonicYes start partitioning over again . . . make 5G partitions . . . . 2 of those you will use for each distro for / and /home ( to keep it simple )If RedHat asks about mounting it always asks about hdbX ( where X is the number ) from now on you only think in hdbX ( numbers )I will try to explain about the ¨And why does it skip hdb2, hdb3, hdb4?¨ in my next post . . . Just first start making partitions with the Mandrake GUI tool. Bruno

[SonicDragon]

Ok, i will try ;)You don't have to explian the hda2 3 4 thing if it's a pain. i just wanted to know if it was an error on my part of if most systems did this.

[Bruno]

SonicYour other question, this is from the last newsletter:

In Linux, the term HDA is the first physical hard drive, HDB refers to the second hard drive, HDC is third, and so on. HDA1 is the first primary partition. HDA5 is the first logical partition on the first hard drive. By default Linux makes four primary partitions on each hard drive. It leaves the first primary partition as is and will make one of the remaining primary partitions the extended partition, as needed. As with DOS, the extended partition is said to contain the logical partitions.

There was more to read about partitions look Here Bruno

[Bruno]

Ok, i will try ;)You don't have to explian the hda2 3 4 thing if it's a pain. i just wanted to know if it was an error on my part of if most systems did this.

No it was no error Sonic, nor a pain to explain . . only complicated . . . But Scot really got it on paper !!So : hdb1, hdb5, hdb6, hdb7, hdb8, hdb9, hdb10 , 11, 12 , 13, 14, 15 is the normal setup ! Bruno

[SonicDragon]

Ok, thanks. I wan't to take your advice on using boot disks to boot untill i get this worked out, but i don't know the command to do that. It's probably in your tips, i'll go look -------------------------actually, that's in the installer right? so i don't need a special commmand right?

[Bruno]

actually, that's in the installer right? so i don't need a special commmand right?

Bingo !! Just read all the screens during install and you will see . . . . simple as cake !But first do get your partitions 100% . . . doing this now is easy . . doing that in 6 months as you have several distro´s installed is nearly impossible without making a mess ! Bruno

[teacher]

Bruno is wrong there. It is easy to fix in six months. You just go to do a clean install, and when you click on the hdb to repartition it, you simply click the button that says to clear all partitions. Then you start over and reinstall each distro.

[SonicDragon]

YAY! I'm in Mandrake. I reinstalled with all 5GB partitions, and it seems to be working. Sorry it took so long! I installed mandrake 9.0 first by accident! And it froze up in the last part of the install (the updates) and i couldn't boot into mandrake o well, i'm in now. I'm going to attempt a slackware install Wish me luck!

[Bruno]

Good Luck Sonic !!Have you got your little paper right there with all the hdb numbers . . so you won´t make a mistake ?? Bruno

[havnblast]

Welcome to the linux world SonicYAY!! - passes out the party hats and drinks Another success story in the All Things Linux world

[SonicDragon]

Have you got your little paper right there with all the hdb numbers . . so you won´t make a mistake ??

Yup!Thanks guys!

[teacher]

Good job. You are ambitious tonight!

[SonicDragon]

I'm feeling good!(I just forgot that two flopies were needed for slack... i only had one )

[teacher]

I don't use any floppies for Slack. I simply put my CD in and when it comes up to the first screen I type the directions it gives there. Works beautifully. Of course, it could be because I don't trust floppies.......

[SonicDragon]

Hummm... mine don't boot from the disk. Maybe it's a bad burn. I will check the md5sums.

[SonicDragon]

well, the checks came out fine, so i'll try and enable cdbooting first from the bios.(if i can get in )

[teacher]

It looks like it is going to do an install and then instead it gives you the option of booting from the disk to the install you did previously. You do have to read the screen to catch what is going on.

[Bruno]

SonicSome CD-ROM players won´t boot the Slack that is true, you will have to make the floppies . . or try VectorSOHO first . . . .Or knoppix HD installB) Bruno

[teacher]

Why would they not boot? I can't figure out the logic of that.

[Bruno]

Why would they not boot?  I can't figure out the logic of that.

Slackware my dear, a stobborn distro . . .does not like all CD-ROM players . . . . he could buy another one . . or make boot and root floppies . . ;)He knows what to do Julia, don´t worry :D Bruno

[teacher]

But it is the same CD he installed from. I am slow tonight. Now I get it. He couldn't install it. Wake me up! I must be sleeping at the computer.

[Bruno]

He installed Mandrake and RedHat . . they do not have those particular preferences Slack has for CD-ROM drives ! Bruno

[teacher]

Now I understand. I did not know Slack was that particular about CD drives. Guess they need to work on that!

[SonicDragon]

He knows what to do Julia, don´t worry

I may know what to do, it just doesn't work i downloaded bare.i (the standard boot disk) and color.gz (standard root disk).I use the command < dd if=/home/erik/Documents/diskname of=/dev/fd0 > for both of them. Bare.i works fine, and boots fine, but when i do that to the root disk i get this error message:dd: writing to `/dev/fd0': No space left on device2881+0 records in2880+0 records outHumm... why is there no space on the disk. The floppy has been used before. Do i need to format the floppy? If so, what's the comand to do that? i tried <fdisk /dev/fd0 > in superuser mode, and i get this:Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabelBuilding a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previouscontent won't be recoverable.Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)Command (m for help): (then i enter < m >) and get:Command action a toggle a bootable flag b edit bsd disklabel c toggle the dos compatibility flag d delete a partition l list known partition types m print this menu n add a new partition o create a new empty DOS partition table p print the partition table q quit without saving changes s create a new empty Sun disklabel t change a partition's system id u change display/entry units v verify the partition table w write table to disk and exit x extra functionality (experts only)Which one of those am i suppoed to be doing?I've tried with another disk and i get the same problem

[teacher]

Create an MS-DOS file system bootable floppy. You can use mformat A: and see if that works. It does not check for bad blocks or do low-level formats.

[Peachy]

Sonic,A quick primer on Linux partitions:Minimally you need at least two; a swap partition and the / partition (pronounced "root"). These are "mounted" to a physical partition on your hard disk. On a linux only setup it could be like that the swap partition is mounted on hda1 and the / on hda2. So in Red Hat when you are creating partitions and it asks for a mount point the mount point is either swap or /. Under / all other directories in the filesystem are created. These would be:binbootdevetchomeinitrdliblost+foundmiscmntoptprocrootsbintmpusrvarDifferent distros may add others; for example, SuSE adds Windows (for all your FAT32 and NTFS partitions).Now, in Linux you have the option of mounting any directory under / into its own partition. Why would you do this you may ask? Well, the idea is to give you the ability to isolate certain directories from each other for purposes of backup or space constraints. For example, say you had two 2 GB hard disks and wanted to install a complete distro. Well, if you only installed on one disk you'd quickly run out of room. Since you have 4 GB in total, you can split the directories across both drives. For instance you could mount swap in hda1, /boot in hda2, / in hda3, /home in hdb1, /usr in hdb2 and /usr/local in hdb3. Notice that you can also mount subdirectories of top level directories into its own partition.The beauty of this is that this mounting scheme is totally transparent to the user. You still access each directory in the filesystem as if it was installed in one large partition. You don't have to keep track of any partitions because the /etc/fstab file does that for you. Now, say you started running out of space in /home. You can easily add a third hard drive to your system, format it and partition it, then unmount /home from hdb1 and remount it into hdc1. For illustrative purposes I have left out the actual details of doing this procedure, but you should get the gist of the flexibility of Linux's filesystem.