Linux Setup

First you will need to get yourself a copy of linux - I bought an official copy of RedHat Linux for $A55 on cdrom. You can buy the same cdrom's from cheapbytes and other retailers for around $2. I liked the installation book - it was worth the money, but you may prefer to buy a more general linux book - it's up to you.

I wouldn't recommend downloading the files for installation - believe me I've tried it. It takes aaaages just to download the base files. CDROM is the way to go. N.B. Because of the licensing of linux it is actually legal for you to burn a CDROM of RedHat and give it to your friends.

Now the setup. I will be assuming you are installing RedHat 5.1 - if this is not the case not all of this will apply. I also assume 'd' is your dos cdrom letter. Change it if this is not the case.

Get into DOS mode (not a windows dos box).
If you want to use one disk for both windoze and linux you will have to use fips to make a new partition. There should be information in the d:\dosutils directory
Put the 1st RH5.1 cdrom in the drive and type d:\dosutils\autoboot
Follow the instructions on the screen. More details are available in the manual.
Boot up using a floppy disk or LILO
Log in as root
If you want to use loadlin copy vmlinuz (or a file with vmlinuz+version information) to your msdos disk. You may have to use the mount command first.
If during bootup the message "cannot find file /lib/modules/preferred/modules.dep" comes up then jump to my guide to getting modules started.
If you can't mount your cdrom you may have to add a line to the file /etc/conf.modules Add: alias iso9660 isofs

That should get you going. There are another few things I found:

Note that you can read help on many subjects with the man command. For example man mount or man fstab
The fstab file holds mounting information for drives, although command line parameters to mount override this.
To use long filenames with win95 disks mount them using vfat. vfat is also compatible with msdos disks.
To find out how much room you have left or have used on a partition use the command df
Many configuration files reside in /etc There are boot up scripts are in /etc/rc.d
To stop sendmail from taking ages to start up at bootup, edit the /etc/hosts file. Make sure that there is an entry for your machine's ip number, name and name.domain You can make up your own domain name.

[Geocities] [Home] [Email]