How to install Linux on your system

In the past, whenever PCQ has given out a Linux CD, one of the most important pieces in the magazine has been the article on how to install Linux. Users have found the piece to be invaluable and having followed it to the T, have come out to tell the success tale. But there have been problems, particularly with graphics cards. In this issue, we’ve tried to humanize the article and the installation process, and together with the new Linux graphical installation of Red Hat 6.1, hope that more of our readers get it right this time.

First of all, a few assumptions to set the starting point. I’m assuming that your computer already has an operating system, most probably Win 95/98. As long as you have enough free disk space, this won’t be an issue at all. At PCQ Labs, we installed Linux from the CD you’re currently holding, on to dozens of machines and in various permutations and combinations. At this stage, I’m also assuming that you’ve at least 2 GB of free disk space. Also, that your computer allows you to boot from the CD-ROM drive. If it doesn’t, don’t worry. We’ll also tell you how to install without a bootable CD-ROM.

Are we ready to go? It’s a fairly painless and safe process, but in order to be absolutely sure, let’s use golden rule #1. Back up your critical data before doing anything. A very important assumption at this stage: I’m assuming that you’re not only reading this article, but are actually trying the steps out at the same time.

If the hard disk has been in use for a while, I’d suggest that you quickly run a disk defrag on it and then use FIPS (see box on the next page) to create a new partition where Linux can be installed.

As a first step, you’re advised to read the manual. Yes, all the three Red Hat Linux 6.1 manuals are included on the CD. Just pop the CD into the drive, and use your favorite browser to open the file "index.htm" in the directory /doc/rhinst. This actually describes the entire process, and will be your primary guide. You can also check out the Red Hat Linux 6.1 Getting Started Guide (/doc/rhgsg/index.htm) and the Red Hat Linux 6.1 Reference Guide (/doc/rhref/index.htm).

After you’ve read through the manual (or at least the initial sections), the next step is to boot from the CD. Most modern systems allow this, though you might have to enable the function in the system BIOS.

If your system doesn’t allow you to boot from the CD, you can do the following. From the DOS Prompt, change to the directory \dosutils on the CD and run the batch file autoboot.bat. So, if your CD-ROM drive is D:, run cd d:\dosutils, autoboot.

If even this doesn’t work, then from the \dosutils directory, run the batch file makedsks.bat (the file’s there this time). This should make a bootable floppy disk with which you can boot up. From there on, the rest of the procedure is the same.

On booting up, you should get a screen full of information and a "boot:" prompt. At this stage, I’m assuming a standard installation. Hit "Enter" to continue. The screen will start spewing out text at a rapid rate, all of which can be ignored and soon enough, you should see a nice splash screen with a big cuddly penguin and
"PC-Quest Linux Initiative Red Hat Linux 6.1" written on it. From now on, a few clicks with your mouse, a little bit of typing to answer some critical questions and the install will be over soon.

It’s possible that you’re unable to boot into the graphical installation part. Never fear —just reboot off the CD, enter "text" at the boot: prompt, and you’ll be presented with the text-mode installation program. While it may not look so nice, it offers exactly the same functionality as the graphical install.

If X-Window (the GUI) and sound don’t get set up during the install, you can set them up separately by running "setup" from the Command Prompt, after logging in as root.

The next step is to select the language to use for the install, the install type, the keyboard layout, and the mouse. The screen that appears has the defaults selected, which can be changed by scrolling down the list and choosing the ones appropriate for your hardware. Also, the left-most side of the screen displays a big box with continuous context-sensitive help. If in doubt, do read this. Though the formatting leaves a lot to be desired, it’s full of good tips.

Now the fun begins—the install type. Red Hat Linux has always had different selections of packages depending on the type of install you perform. So, if you’re installing a workstation, then by default, it won’t install any server-related software. For now, we’re going to go ahead with a custom installation.

Good old Disk Druid has matured into a nice GUI-based program with much better control and options than during its character interface days. We now need to set the partitions for installing Linux. Create the first partition and from the button box, set the type of partition as swap. The size of this partition is a debatable issue. A safe bet would be to choose 64 MB, though if you have enough disk space, you may want to opt for 127 MB. Since it’s a swap partition, you don’t need to provide it with a mount point.

For the next partition, set the type as Linux Native and the mount point as "/" from the pull down list. Imagine, you even have a pull down option for mount points! So what’s a mount point anyway? Well, if you have questions, just take a quick peek at the Help at this stage. It describes in detail what a mount point is, and what’s the best scheme for creating your partitions. At this stage, I’m assuming that we’ve selected a single partition, for which we assign the mount point as "/".

You can now choose to format your newly created partitions, but there’s no need to check for bad blocks. You’ll also save some time by opting not to do so.

What if things go wrong later when you’re using your computer regularly, and you need to fix it? Well, you’d need a boot disk for that. So that’s the next step. Though you can opt not to, some day you’ll be glad that you created the boot disk, even if it adds a few extra minutes to the install process.

The next screen shows the default setting to be "Install LILO in the master boot record" and the default boot image as "Linux". Since we assumed you’re installing Linux along with Win 95/98, the default location of LILO in the master boot record is fine. If you wish to change the default boot image, you can do so at this stage. In any case, this doesn’t delete or damage your Windows in any way.

The critical parts are now over. Next comes networking information. If the machine is going to be a server or is going to be connected to a LAN, you need to fill this information out carefully. At this point, you can decide between using DHCP and assigning an IP address from your existing DHCP server, or assigning a static IP address. Depending on the size of your network, you would choose the appropriate class of IP addresses. We assume a Class C address in the private address range—192.168.1.1. All the other entries for networking get filled by default. You can use the same IP address for the DNS setup also.

Red Hat still assumes that Indian standard time is set at Asia/Calcutta. But this time, you can either point and click Asia/Calcutta on a colorful world map (in the graphical installation mode), or select it from a scrollable list, or select UTC+0530 from an additional tab. This will set the time-zone information for India.

Remember that root is effectively God on your system, with powers to create and destroy at will. Select a root password that is a combination of letters, numbers and special symbols, and don’t forget it. After setting the root password, you can straightaway create other users from the same screen. This is a good idea, because if something goes wrong with your system, you’ll be able to telnet into it as a normal user and fix things. You can’t telnet into the system as root, as a security precaution.

The next screen allows you to select whether you wish to have MD5 passwords and Shadow password enabled. By default, these are checked and it’s best to leave them like that.

Now we get to the part where you can select the individual packages you want to install. Since we had assumed that there would be about 2 GB of disk space free, we can very safely choose the last option, which is "everything". I don’t know why Red Hat insists on putting the "everything" option at the end. They should move it right to the top instead.

After you’ve selected the packages, a quick test for the X-server is started off. This is quite neat, because in most cases it’ll detect the graphics adapter in your machine and monitor, and will suggest a default resolution. It’ll also allow you to change the resolution, and to choose whether you want to start up directly in X-Window with a GUI, or to retain the character-based interface.

One surprise for all readers who complained the last time round. The SiS6215 card is supported this time and works like a charm. In fact, even the SiS6326 AGP card was supported without a problem. Red Hat has certainly improved on its list of supported hardware. However, since they didn’t know about the infamous SiS6215c card, we had to do a bit of tweaking to make it appear in the list!

From this point on, actual installation of packages begins and it’s a good time to grab a cup of coffee, as unlike Caldera Open Linux, Red Hat doesn’t provide you with entertainment while installing! For those of you who haven’t seen a Caldera install, Caldera actually has a Tetris game that you can play while package installation is going on in the background.

At the end of the package installation, the system will be rebooted once. And you’re ready to get going.

As before, PCQ has provided an update script, which installs a few extras and goodies and does some configuration that otherwise is normally quite a painful task. To run the pcqupdt script, after booting up, login as root, mount the CD, change to the relevant directory and run the script:

$ mount/mnt/cdrom
$ cd /mnt/cdrom/pcq
$ ./pcqupdt

The pcqupdt script starts up and you’ll get dialogue boxes for installing various goodies. The first of these is the DNS. If you need to run the server that you just set up as a DNS server for your LAN, then you would normally accept this option; but if you don’t need to be running your own DNS, then you can select "No". In this case, I’d suggest that you select "No". Unfortunately, after sending the CD to production, a bug was discovered in the DNS configuration, because of which the DNS setup doesn’t work. (An update will be available at http://www.pcquest. com/linux/).

The next option is to set up your machine as an Internet gateway. If this is what you require it to do, then select "Yes", otherwise select "No". The rest of the options are all fine and it would be a good idea to try them out.

If you require Java in any way, then select "Yes" in the next dialogue to install the Java Development Kit. JDK is also required for several other applications, so it’s probably a good idea to install it.

If you’re a developer, the next option will please you. It’s a great integrated development environment from the makers of KDE called Kdevelop. So be sure to install this if you’re going to use your system primarily for software development.

Finally, for those who just can’t seem to get out of good old DOS commands, the last step lets you use DOS-like commands on your Linux system—like cls for clear, dir for ls –al, etc.

Well that’s it, you’re now ready to have fun with your system. Be sure to let us know how your installation went, whether you were successful or not, and if you had any problems. If you do start using Linux, then please do let us know, so that we can add you to our list of successful installations.

Gopal Y Upadhyaya;

is a Director at Grabber Softwares.