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Performing a Traditional Linux Installation
Linux can be installed in a number of ways. The method I was original taught involved the creation of two pre installation disks. This method will be elaborated on shortly. I then moved on to booting straight from the installation CD-ROM and running the setup program from that CD. The first method is the most detailed method for installing Slackware Linux, but it’s also one that gives you a lot of control over the process. With this method, you must configure your hard drive and create boot floppies. Neither step is particularly difficult. Here, we discuss how to create boot floppies for booting Linux, followed by a discussion of how to prepare your hard drive for the Linux installation. The actual installation process is:
Create boot and root floppies
•
Prepare your hard drive for installation •
Boot Linux from boot and rootdisks •
Install Linux from the CD-ROM •
As I have already said installing Linux straight from the CD-ROM is the way to go but just so you know, the following section describes how to create pre installation linux disks to boot the computer and prepare the harddrive for the installation.
If you have already prepared the hard drive using a 3rd party application such as Partition Magic and know how to boot from the CD-ROM, skip this section and move onto the Installing Linux from the Setup Program section
Installation Contents
Choosing Bootdisk and Rootdisk Images
Slackware Linux needs to know a lot about your PC’s hardware, and that knowledge begins the second you boot the system. That’s why you need to put some thought into selecting your bootdisk and rootdisk images.
Before going any further, we should explain what bootdisk and rootdisk images are. Linux needs to boot from floppy disks initially, and it needs to know what sort of hardware it’s working with. When you boot Slackware Linux for the first time, the information is contained on the bootdisk and the rootdisk. To create a bootdisk and a rootdisk, you need to select the proper image. After selecting the proper image, you use the DOS RAWRITE.EXE utility to copy the image byte-for-byte to the disk.
How do you select the proper image? The first step is to determine the disk size of your drive A:, from which you boot the system. If you’re using a 3.5-inch disk drive as A:, grab an image from the bootdsks.144 directory. (This is so labeled because the capacity of a 3.5-inch high-density disk is 1.44MB.)
One other rootdisk is in the rootdsks directory, the noninstallation rootdisk file called rescue.gz. This is, as you might expect from the name, a rescue disk for Linux. It is a reasonably complete mini-Linux system running from a 4MB RAM disk. It contains an editor (elvis), lilo, and other utilities useful for fixing your Linux machine if you ever get locked out for some reason. It’s built with libraries and utilities from Slackware Linux 3.5, and includes basic TCP/IP utilities such as ping, telnet, and ftp.
To create a rescue disk, put a formatted floppy disk in drive A and use the RAWRITE command included in the rootdsks directory to write out the image:
cd \rootdsks rawrite rescue.gz a:
Now that you’ve chosen your bootdisk and rootdisk images, it’s time to actually create the bootdisk and rootdisk.
In these examples, we use the BARE.I and COLOR.GZ images. If you’re using a different set of images, just substitute those filenames instead.
Now it’s time to make your bootdisk. First, move into the bootdisks.144 (or bootdisks.12 if you use a 1.2MB floppy drive) directory on your Slackware CD-ROM.
Assuming your CD-ROM drive has the drive letter E: assigned to it, you’d move into the directory like this:
C:\> E: E:\> CD BOOTDSKS.144 E:\BOOTDSKS.144>
Now you’ll actually create the bootdisk. Put the eventual bootdisk diskette in drive A: and type the following command:
E:\> RAWRITE BARE.I A:
This will use the RAWRITE.EXE command (there’s a copy of this in each of the BOOTDSKS.144 and ROOTDSKS.144 directories) to copy the BARE.I disk image to the A: floppy drive. As it writes, RAWRITE will give you a status report. After it’s finished writing the bootdisk, remove the disk from the drive and put it aside.
Then insert another formatted high-density floppy and use the same procedure to write the rootdisk. In this case, you’ll need to move into the ROOTDSKS.144 directory and write the COLOR.GZ image using RAWRITE:
E:\BOOTDSKS.144> CD \ROOTDSKS E:\ROOTDSKS> RAWRITE COLOR.GZ A:
There’s really not a lot to the RAWRITE command; the only things that could trip you up would be if you’re not using a high-density disk or if the disk is flawed.
Installation Contents
Preparing Your Hard Drive for Linux
Now that you’ve created your bootdisks, it’s time to prepare your hard drive for Linux. To install Linux, you must create a Linux partition on your hard drive. You should also consider creating a DOS partition on your hard drive in addition to the Linux partition — a step that’s not necessary, but one that we follow for many reasons.
You can configure Linux to give you a choice of operating systems when you boot your PC and you can access DOS-formatted partitions from within Linux.
FDISK.EXE is the program that creates DOS partitions. Every operating system has a program that does something similar (you’ll use the Linux FDISK command later in this process). You need to use the partitioning software that is specific to the operating system; for example, you can’t use FDISK to create Linux or OS/2 partitions. FDISK.EXE works very simply: you delete an existing partition or partitions and you create new partitions in their place.
I would suggest you use a 3rd party partitioning application like Partition Magic to save on all this hassle.
Installation Contents
Evaluating Linux and a Swap disk
With the older version of Slackware which would have been loaded on computers with only 8MB of RAM, you would have needed to set up a swap partition. This partition is treated by the system as extended RAM; if you run low on memory (and with 8MB of RAM, you’re guaranteed to run low on memory), Linux can treat this hard drive section as RAM, or virtual memory. Today you do not need to do this.
Installation Contents
Booting Linux with the Bootdisk
Linux is booted with the bootdisk you prepared earlier. Put it in your boot drive and restart your PC with a cold or warm boot (it doesn’t matter).
Initially, your PC will do the things that it normally does when it boots, such as check the memory and run through the BIOS. However, the word LILO will appear on your screen, followed by a full screen that begins with the line:
Welcome to the Slackware Linux bootdisk!
You’ll also see some verbiage about passing parameters along to the kernel; most users won’t need to pass along any additional parameters.
Most users will press Enter and proceed to load the Linux RAM disk.
There are some cases where LILO appears on the screen and the system hangs or rows of 0s and 1s cascade down the screen. In these cases, you are probably using the wrong bootdisk for your PC. The first thing to do is to create a few alternate bootdisks and try them
The bootdisk runs through your system hardware, noting which hard drives and peripherals are present and scouting out other salient details about your PC. It’s at this point that Linux discovers any problems with your PC, and if you have problems installing or using Linux, it’s a place you’ll want to check. (The same information is displayed and gathered each time that you boot.)
If there are no problems, you can put in your rootdisk and press Enter. A core of the Linux operating system is then copied to the RAM disk, which then gives you access to some Linux commands, including the important fdisk command. The installation process instructs you to login to the Linux system as root:
slackware login : root
No password is required. If you’re asked for a password, it means you don’t have enough memory to install.
Installation Contents
After logging in, if you had not used Partition Magic or the DOS fdisk, you’d want to directly run the cfdisk or fdisk command (ignoring what the screen instructions say about the setup command). Both commands assume that the first IDE drive is the default drive. If you plan to install Linux on another drive, you need to specify that on the command line. The Table below lists the hard drive device names.
It is a major task explaining how to use the Linux text based fdisk and as I have already created a document on how to use Partition Magic I am not going to expand on this Linux function.
Linux Hard Drive Device Names
Name Meaning
/dev/hda First IDE hard drive
/dev/hdb Second IDE hard drive
/dev/sda First SCSI hard drive
/dev/sdb Second SCSI hard drive
/dev/fd0 First floppy drive (A)
/dev/fd1 Second floppy drive (B)
/dev/eda First ESDI hard drive (used in older IBM PS/2 MCA machines)
Note the naming pattern displayed above. Linux also allows you to specify the partitions in the device names. For example, the first primary partition on the first IDE drive would be known as /dev/hda1, the second primary partition on the first IDE drive would be known as /dev/hda2, and so on. If you’re installing logical partitions, the first logical partition would appear as /dev/hda5, the second logical partition would appear as /dev/hda6, and so on.
Installation Contents
