eAction

(Just a note of explanation. The reason I’ve skipped so many weeks in this continuing series is because of my Dad’s illness, death and the funeral. All events which are very time-absorbing. I now need to find myself a new home and wrap things up here, but I am trying to get back to my usual work schedule too).

In our last lesson at the beginning of February we had just put the Linux installation boot disk into the computer and it was beginning to whirl and hum industriously. No doubt you’ve had your eyes straight on the screen, watching all the new things flash by. But suddenly it stops and it wants to know which way you are going to proceed. After a few installations you won’t hesitate, but the first time around it helps if someone explains the options.

1. Do you want to erase everything on the hard drive and install on a clean disk?
2. Do you want to leave what you have (i.e. your Other operating system) and squeeze this system in on the blank sections?
3. Do you want to manually partition your hard drive so you only touch certain areas?

There may be more, but those are the main ones. They may be worded more intuitively too, depending on the particular linux system you are installing.

Unless you know you want only this Linux system on this particular computer, or you know you have lots of gigabytes of space beyond what your other system is using, I suggest you bite the bullet and try the partitioning step. At the very least it will introduce you to things linux in a hurry. I made some mistakes, but I’m permanently wiser for it.

For the moment, let’s pretend you have a 10 GB hard drive. Check how much RAM you have. (That the amount of memory that indicates how much your computer can hold in it’s present-tense memory at any given moment). If that’s 256 MB, you want to create about 500 MB of a SWAP partition. This allows your Linux system to grab extra memory in an emergency. Saves on or prevents crashes!

So you indicate that on the partitioning tool. Assign 500 MB of space for SWAP.

For the boot area, shown with just a / you can assign 1.2 GB. That’s were all your start-up programs get to live.

Let’s give the /usr area 3.5 GB. That’s where you’ll install the programs you want to run, but which don’t have to all come to life on boot up.

That leaves 5 GB for the /home area which is where all the new files, graphics, documents, or whatever you create will be stored.

You’ll notice that the system calls the sections you’ve assigned by names like /dev/hda2 and so forth. Windows calls the drive sections names like C:/ or D:/ and so forth. Linux has this other naming convention. We catch on after a bit.

Before we can proceed we must initialize each of the partitions now. There will be warnings that to proceed means you are wiping anything off that currently resides on those sections. If it happens that you decided to leave Windows in place, you will have seen it’s partitions clearly marked, and of course, you do not initialize them now. That would be wiping your Windows OFF the hard drive! But Linux does need to initialize the partitions it will be living in, so it can call them it’s own.

You followed the directions? You didn’t leave any of the partitions out?

Good. Then we can move on. Now things will go faster.

You’ll be asked a few more questions, like what to call your machine/computer. If it is going to be an online server for a registered domain, you would of course, use that, but if it’s just your home computer, call it what you like.

In some cases you are allowed to choose the modules you want included in the installation. Some of the smaller systems just go ahead and give you all that’s on the CD or DVD.

The installation starts, and whirls away. I like to click on “details” to get a clue as to what it is installing. The larger a system, such as SUSE, that you install, the longer it takes. Maybe several hours. If you are installing a small one, it may be 20 minutes or less.

At some points along the way it will pause to ask you for more information or choices.

It will likely ask you what boot system you want. There’s Grub (for geeks who understand the more complicated lingo), and LILO which is easier for beginners. However I’ve discovered that when the kernel needs to be upgraded, it’s much better to have Grub in place as it saves you some steps. Grub can be set up to make for a very nice boot sequence too. So not to worry.

You get a chance to make a rescue floppy disk, which is a wise idea, although I confess I’ve skipped it a number of times.

Towards the end, it wants to know more things like the type of monitor you have, screen resolution, what your ISP address is - so it can set up your email address for you - and whether you want to go online to get the latest updates to this system. I try to get these matters all taken care of as they come up, so that when it announces it is finished, the system is up and ready to go!

Well, when it has re-boot, and you are finally in the system, you want to poke around a bit, and find the personal settings, and fine-tune them to suit your fancy. You are NOW a Linux user!

Of course, some of these details may not have been covered during the installation, so we’ll deal with them next time and discuss how to get everything checked out and operating smoothly.