Re: Newcomer to Linux
At 09:50 AM 3/21/1999 -0800, Bala Iyer wrote:
>I am a newcomer to Linux. Wants to learn. Down loaded all the files. Read
>everything many times and tried to install several times. Spend about 70 hours
>so far but failed to understand where it is going wrong. I will be thankful
>for any help. I have a Pentium 166 with 32MB memory with 2.1 HD. I have with
>fdisk partitioned an extented.logical drive with 894 mb. with resc1440.bin
>when I boot it goes on with many information on the screen and finally comes
>to boot: on enter it goes for installation and after checking for the keyboard
>wants for partitioning the hard drive. I tried various things lime trying with
>delete, new, etc. Tried with boot, primary to logical and everything. Finally
>it gets struck on Write to disk the table and I have to switch the machine to
>get out. I also tried to get all the files to the logical drive which is E for
>me and tried to do that way (floopyless installation) and failed to know how
>to boot from E. May be I did not understand all that is necessary to install.
>I want someone to help me out of this. Thanks again. Bye.
How many partitions do you currently have on your drive? What type are
they? I assume you have something like a 1.5 Gb partition with Windows9x on
it, and another partition (the 894MB one) that you've formatted as FAT (or
VFAT, etc -- a Windows/DOS format type). You want to delete the second
partition, and let the linux install create the new partition using the
free space. If you have files such as resc1440.bin on the hard drive,
you'll need them on the Windows partition, and the Linux install program
will give you the option to read those files as you need them.
There's two basic steps to installing Linux: 1) the base install, and 2)
everything else. The base install can be done via CDROM or via floppy or
via an existing DOS/Windows hard drive (there are other methods also, but
these three are the most common for most people). Then for the "everything
else" portion you'll need a modem/telephone line or a CDROM or an ethernet
connection, etc.
It sounds like you're installing from an existing DOS/Windows partition; is
this true? If so, you'll need several files (loadlin.exe, resc1440.bin,
drv1440.bin, linux, install.bat, root.bin, and base2_1.tgz) on the DOS
partition, and an empty partition to install to. Then from a DOS prompt
just type "install" in the directory where these files are. Be aware that
if you aren't careful during the partitioning phase you can wipe out your
existing DOS/Windows partition.
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