Installing Linux
Topics
Installing An OS
The steps involved in installing an OS are:
- Put a bootable image of the OS in a bootable location.
- Detect and configure hardware and hardware drivers.
- Put OS support and utility software in a known configuration.
- Put desired software on the machine and configure the startup
conditions to run the appropriate daemons (demons). These are
background processes that provide services, such as telnet or
ftp.
- Provide an initial configuration for a system administrator.
In order to make this all happen, you need to be able to boot your system
up under a system that can read the media that contains the installation
copy of your operating system. This is typically easy these days, because
most system BIOS's will boot from the CD-ROM, a floppy or a hard drive.
In fact, this is so common that most suppliers of OS's send you their
installations on a CD; you put the CD in, you start the system, it
boots by reading some stuff from the CD, and then it goes through the
installation process. Voila!
The bad news is that some systems won't boot from a CD. When this happens,
you need to create a bootable floppy for you OS. You boot up with the
floppy and it has a program that reads the CD and gets everything else
going. Since Red Hat doesn't ship a bootable floppy with their
installation sets, you need to create one. This process is described in
create_install_set.
Go to your soon-to-be-Linux system and put the CD in the CD-ROM drive and
the floppy in the floppy drive and start the system. You will eventually
see a boot: prompt. Hit the Enter key and the system
will boot from the floppy and then start the installation procedure.
The Red Hat Linux Install Procedure
- Know your hardware
- Size of disk drives and current partition configuration. Use
Windows/DOS FDISK or a third party package (Partition Magic)
to find out. If you have a non-functioning system, you can
always look at the drive, but don't worry about it for this
class.
- How much memory.
- Type of disk and CD-ROM interface (SCSI, IDE). If SCSI, what
brand and model.
- Type of network card, brand and model.
- Type of modem, brand and model.
- Type of mouse on really old machines, otherwise, it is probably
a PS/2 type.
- Type of monitor, brand and model (not critical unless its an
oldy).
- Type of sound card, brand and model.
- Network parameters
- IP Address
- Subnet mask
- IP Address of gateway router
- IP Address of DNS servers
For the systems in EPS 259,
- 4.3 GB hard drives - IDE
- 32 MB memory
- DEC 405 network cards (some may be 205's)
- S3 Trio 64 video cards
- Soundblaster 64 sound card (but no speakers, so who cares)
- IP addresses 153.90.199.102-153.90.199.124
- Subnet mask is 255.255.248.0
- Gateway is 153.90.192.254 or 154.90.199.254 (they are the same)
- DNS servers are 153.90.192.10, 153.90.2.15 and 153.90.2.1
- Plan the installation
- Single, dual, triple boot.
- Partition sizes -
- / - 250 MB
- swap - 2 x memory at least
- /usr - larger than 1.5 GB
- /var - 500 MB or more
- /home - whatever is left over
You won't need much home directory space, so make this small - say
100 MB or less. In fact, you can just put home under /usr if you
want to do that. So don't set up a home, and when you create a
usr, put the home directory in /usr/home. Its always a good idea
to separate /var since it can grow dramatically under certain
circumstances, but root (/) and usr could also be combined.
- Boot with the CD-ROM as the boot device or use the floppy. Note
the CD-ROMs on the systems in EPS 259 will not allow booting, so
you will have to use the floppy.
- You will see boot:
You have three choices - Enter to do a normal install,
expert to do an expert install or text to do
a text install. If your video card is giving you trouble, text
mode is very handy. You can do nothing for 60 seconds and
you get a normal boot.
- Using the function keys will get information on various
features.
- The system loads vmlinuz, which is the kernel and you
see lots of device detection messages.
- The install GUI comes up, you are thrilled.
Answers to Questions
Rather than going through the install procedure in laborious detail,
read about it in the Install Manual. Here are some details that you may
find useful. In general, the default choices are correct for most things.
Language, Keyboard and Mouse
Select the language you prefer and the default keyboard type.
Select a generic 2-button PS/2. Note for a two
button mouse, choose Emulate 3 Buttons at bottom.
Type of Installation
The type of installation is unique to Red Hat. You can pick
workstation, but it will not install some stuff that you want.
You also don't want server, since it installs a lot of stuff you
don't want. So choose custom.
Caution!! If you choose a Server install, it assumes you
want the machine to be Linux only, which can be a real disappointment
if you have a Windows installation you want to keep because it will
be gone when you're done.
Disk Partitioning Disks
It will let you choose Continue to automatically
partition or Custom. Choose Custom.
If you choose custom, it will show you two choices for the
partitioning, fdisk or Disk Druid. Choose Disk Druid.
If there are existing partitions, you may need to start by deleting
all existing partitions. You can't use the mouse, so
use the TAB key and arrow keys to move around.
- The recommendation is for 250 MB of root partition (/),
but you can get by with 150 MB, so go for the smaller size.
- 64 MB is plenty of swap space. Don't forget to set the file
system type to Linux Swap.
- If you make a /home partition, make it very small - maybe
50 MB.
- Make a var partition with at least 200 MB of space.
- Make the /usr partition as big as possible - everything that is
left. You are going to need it.
How To Boot
- If you are single booting, you want LILO or GRUB in the MBR
(Master Boot Record). If you are dual booting, you might want it
on the boot partition or on the MBR, it depends.
- You have a choice of LILO or GRUB. Since GRUB is more powerful,
choose it.
Network Configuration
- At the top, set the Configure using DHCP OFF.
- Set the Activate on Boot ON.
- IP Address = as shown for the lab - 153.90.199.xxx.
- Netmask = 255.255.248.0
- Gateway = 153.90.192.254 (probably set for you)
- Primary DNS = 153.90.192.10 (watch out!, it guesses wrong)
- Secondary DNS = 152.90.2.15
- Tertiary DNS = 152.90.2.1
- Hostname = cs259NN.cs.montana.edu, where NN is 1-22
Firewall Configuration
Choose the Medium security level and for now, allow only incoming SSH.
The default is Medium, and that is a good choice. Low leaves your
system open to a number of hacks, and High sets protections so tight
that you can't do much of anything.
Language Support
You decide, but extra languages take up space.
Time Zone Configuration
Where and when do you want to be today?? (America/Boise)
Authentication Configuration
Enable shadow passwords and MD5. Do not choose NIS, LDAP or Kerberos.
Account Configuration
- Enter a root password. Make it a good one.
- Create whatever accounts you want. You can skip this and
create accounts later. If you do create accounts put the
home directory in /usr/home or /home, depending on whether
you created a /home partition or not.
Software to Install
You will have to choose the software to install. The big problem is
the shortage of space, so you want to pick the ones you will need.
As you pick packages,
the total amount committed shows at the top and you have to stay under
the amount of space available on /usr and /. You can't determine
exactly how it is distributed, so its a guessing game. Try to
get the following packages.
- Printer support
- X windows
- Gnome or KDE, but Gnome is a lot smaller
- Mail
- DOS/Windows Connectivity
- Networking
- News
- NFS
- Samba
- Development
- Kernel development
- Utilities
If they won't all fit (you find this out several screens later and you
have to backup, get rid of News, then NFS, then Samba and then
DOS/Windows Connectivity. If it won't fit,
you should take a look at the disk configuration and see what can be done.
As a last resort, get rid of Kernel Development and then Development.
If worse comes to worse, we can add some of these things back later.
Prepare to wait for this to complete. It might be measured in hours.
Creating a Boot Disk
You will be asked if you want a boot disk. You do, so make sure you have
a floppy disk handy. This is handy for booting if you mess something up
in your configuration, but it can't boot a system with a bad hard drive
or if you've changed your kernel configuration.
Video Card
Enter your video card type. For the systems in EPS 259, they are S3 Trio 64
devices with 4 MB of memory.
Monitor
The simplest thing is to choose Unprobed monitor as your monitor type.
You can also choose generic and set the refresh rates.
Installing X
- Allow Red Hat to attempt to probe your system to see if it
can configure X for you. It should be able to, which means
that it can correctly identify your video card (S3 Trio 64).
- Set Use Graphical Login to OFF. This is important
so it bears repeating. SET THE USE GRAPHICAL LOGIN TO OFF.
You're Done!!
Startup and Shutdown
- Your machine will reboot and you will see the login prompt. You can
log in as root or to one of the other accounts.
- To reboot, enter shutdown -r now.
- To halt, enter shutdown -h now.
- It is not a bad idea to halt your system and turn off the monitor
when you leave it for an extended period of time.