Installing Linux for the first time (& dual boot)

success story-- for all those n00bs out there

ok first post and although this thread is a year +5months old i have to add something to it after readnig all 16 pages!

just want to say taht my linux installation of a few weeks was completely seemless........ no glitches at all. im running slackware 9.0.0 with gnome as my desktop -- obviously not the prefered choices here! o well, now ive been too lazy to use it much but now that ive got waaaay too much free time on my hands i might try to use it some more, especially with a comunity as nice as this (as far as i can tell--i've only read one thread!)

hope i enjoy it here, but by the looks of things i prob will :grinthumb


moon
 
Most linux distributions have got easier to install in the last 18 months, especially Red Hat and Mandrake.

Slackware isn't generally perceived to be the easiest distro for newbiez, but its a fine linux distro and I have it installed as one of the 5 operating systems I have installed here.

However, each to his own. Opinions differ even amount hardened Linux users as to best disro, windows manager, etc. Its best to go with what feels right for you, and stick with it if its going well.

I am glad your first venture into the Linux world has gone so well, and I am also glad to have you on the forums.
 
From redhat.com regarding downloading the iso images for installation
You will need to download the ISO images for Intel-compatible machines:

shrike-i386-disc1.iso
shrike-i386-disc2.iso
shrike-i386-disc3.iso

ISO images containing the source RPMs are also located in this directory, however, they are not required to install Red Hat Linux.
Click to expand...

Are these RPMs the source for the OS itself, or for applications? What I am asking is if I need/want these.
 
Originally posted by gsgleason
Are these RPMs the source for the OS itself, or for applications? What I am asking is if I need/want these.
Click to expand...
Both - actually it depends on how you define the operating system. You'll need / want those if you want to compile (parts of) the distribution yourself ;)
 
You NEED these three disks:

shrike-i386-disc1.iso
shrike-i386-disc2.iso
shrike-i386-disc3.iso

The other disks are to add the source code, so that you could look at how the OS and all apps included were programmed, perhaps contribute something yourself.
 
These I have already downloaded via binary ftp transfer and verified against the included md5sum.

shrike-i386-disc1.iso
shrike-i386-disc2.iso
shrike-i386-disc3.iso

These, however, I guess I don't need quite yet, as I am a novice and won't have anything to contribute quite yet, correct? There are no additional features on these discs, right?

shrike-SRPMS-disc1.iso
shrike-SRPMS-disc2.iso
shrike-SRPMS-disc3.iso

Thank you, by the way, for all the valuable information. This website is a great one.
 
It seems that I installed LILO to the MBR instead of to the lilo partition. I've read this thread and found how to correct that. Here's my question.

I am able to view my NTFS partition of WinXP as read-only, so I used the DD command and sent the bootsect.lin to a floppy, and then rebooted into winXP and copied that file into the root of C:

Is that acceptable?

Also, what is the advantage of using the windows OS selector as defined in boot.ini to select your OS as opposed to installing lilo into the MBR, as I have inadvertently done? As soon as my PC boots, I am getting the LILO screen and am able to choose DOS or Linux.

Everything seems okay with the exception of xwindows periodically locking up. Nothing will respond and I have to just turn my box off.

Also, in fsab, why are the drives set for noauto? It is bad to automatically mount all your drives upon boot up?

To recap, here are my questions:
1. what is the advantage of using windows to select the OS to be used, as opposed to installing lilo into the MBR?

2. Since my ntfs partition of XP is read only, I used that dd command and sent the output file bootsect.lin to a floppy formatted as fat, and then rebooted into windows and copied it to my root of C. IS that okay?

3. any idea why my box is locking up?

4. why not have fstab mount all drives upon boot?

Thank you much.
Gregory.
 
Originally posted by gsgleason
It seems that I installed LILO to the MBR instead of to the lilo partition. I've read this thread and found how to correct that. Here's my question.

I am able to view my NTFS partition of WinXP as read-only, so I used the DD command and sent the bootsect.lin to a floppy, and then rebooted into winXP and copied that file into the root of C:

Is that acceptable?
Click to expand...

Yes. Of course it is.

Originally posted by gsgleason
Also, what is the advantage of using the windows OS selector as defined in boot.ini to select your OS as opposed to installing lilo into the MBR, as I have inadvertently done? As soon as my PC boots, I am getting the LILO screen and am able to choose DOS or Linux.
Click to expand...

That's fine if you are happy with it, however you will now have to live with LILO as your boot manager.

Originally posted by gsgleason
Everything seems okay with the exception of xwindows periodically locking up. Nothing will respond and I have to just turn my box off.
Click to expand...

Try upgrading your graphics drivers.

Originally posted by gsgleason
Also, in fsab, why are the drives set for noauto? It is bad to automatically mount all your drives upon boot up?
Click to expand...

That's just the default. You could save the original fstab file and then change these options if you want, experiment with them.
 
Thank you for your help, Phantasm. Your guide has been excellent.. one more question (for now)

I followed the instructions here http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.html for installing what I gues is the "ntfs kernel module." I followed them exactly, but I'm not sure if it was necessary. Could this have messed up my system, causing the lockups?

I did this because I was having trouble mounting my ntfs partition, but I don't know if it was really necessary. Also, should I install the latest kernel from redhat, 2.4.20-20.9 ? After my first linux install, I ",ucked around" as you call it, quite a bit, and I'm worried I might have messed something up.

Unless you suggest otherwise, I am planning on reinstalling redhat 9 after work, and installing the latest kernel.
 
you may have introduced some problems. you might want to think about recompiling your kernel. Only use ntfs read support, not write, as it does not generally work properly and can cause data loss.

You can get the kernel from red hat but also there is no reason not to download it directly from www.kernel.org
 
Again, thanks for your help. I will recompile my kernal when I get home, using the rpm.

IS there a conventional place to save the rpms and other installation files I download? I created a directory /root/downloads but I'd like to be as conventional as possible.
 
You can really just save wherever.

The screenshot is from XIMIAN GNOME. www.ximian.com

XIMIAN DESKTOP 2 is out, its very good but its a 400MB download so you will have to have patience and broadband.
 
RedHat keeps its own RPMS under /usr/src/redhat/* there are directories SOURCES, RPMS, SRPMS there. I put my own non-RH rpms and tarballs just in /usr/src. This is for the installation files I actually keep. Those things i'm trying out just live in /root
 
I keep everything that I download on a seperate partition, which I mount under /store

Nodsu is following UNIX convention, though, with /usr/src , that's probably what you should do if you are being to the letter.

But its your computer and yours to be used in the way you want.
 
Originally posted by Phantasm66 Try upgrading your graphics drivers.
Click to expand...

After doing a bit of reading online and finding some horror stories about trying to get the ATI Radeon 9000 pro to work properly in X, it looks like I am in for some fun times.
 
dual boot on new machine

I am a somewhat experience linux user transitioning to a new machine. On my old machine I had RH7.3 on hda and Win98 on hdb. The RH installer configured lilo no problem on that system .. life was good.

I wanted to build a new machine.. got it built .. hardware checks out.. want to move my Win98 HD to the new machine and set it up the same way.

New machine installed RH9.0 on hda, have Win98 drive on hdb.
Have installed RH9 twice, once choosing lilo the other grub. Installs complete fine. OS menu comes up. If I choose Linux, works fine. If I choose Windows, I get an errror message about
'operating system can't be found, insert boot disk'.

If I go to BIOS and choose the hdb as boot device, it comes
right up in Win98.

Any ideas why lilo/grub are not correctly finding the OS on hdb?

Tim
 
Win98 does not really like living on anything other than hda (primary master.) Sometimes it will work, but more often than not, it will go pair shaped.

In any case, why are you restoring the old windows 98 install on your new machine? After a mess of plug and pray related reboots you might have something resembling normality, but at a performance cost I would wager. New machine, new install. Even move to WinXP, or if you still want Win98 just have it as a legacy, light install on c: along with Linux and WinXP on other partitions. I've heard of flogging a dead horse but keeping Win9x around as your main M$ OS these days kind of starts to look a little insane, when we have Windows 2000 at SP4 and Windows XP nearing SP2 !!!

If you are still hell bent on trying to resurrect your old system then please post copies of /etc/lilo.conf , /etc/grub.conf and of course a full breakdown of your hard drive partitioning scheme, but I am left wondering why bother when you should be happily reinstalling everything right now.
 
resize in disk druid?

hi. I'm trying to install linux on my toshiba laptop. right now i have 1 37.something gig win xp partition. do you know of any good software to resize my partition (preferably free). Can disk druid do this. thanks in advance.
 
You can resize NTFS partitions with Partition Magic and Partition Commander (they are not free). SuSE Linu installer comes with a partition resizer, but it does not rearrange data and hence works well only on fully defragmented partitions.
 
Reply

Hi

I am running Windows XP on a single NTFS partition which covers the entire hard drive. Is it still possible to dual-boot XP with Redhat 9 with my computer's current condition?

Thanks
 
Not in your current "condition". You will have to resize the NTFS partition to make some room for Linux. You should give at least 5GB to Linux, 10 would be ideal.

Partition Magic and Partition Commander are programs that allow you to resize NTFS partitions.
 
Reply

Yeah thanks, but Partition Magic won't let me resize, or even create a new partition.

I'll give Partition Commander a shot.

By the way, I am presented with the following error during the partition configuration in Redhat's installation

"Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions"

Does the solution you gave me still apply, or is this a different problem? If so, please HELP!

Thanks again :)
 
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