[Leaplist] Install Fedora Core 8

Sat May 3 12:25:24 EDT 2008

I have a 32 bit machine that I would like to set up with multiple 
Operating Systems.  I currently have ONLY the new Ubuntu 8.04 on it. 
Two hard drives, small amount of RAM 1/2 G, but will add 1 G more one
of these days.

I would like to add Windows XP and Debian to the machine.  I have
been using Ubuntu far to long and have forgotten all the commands.
Bad, bad!
I would really like to put in the latest 32 bit Mother Board and CPU.
I do not like the way my AMD 64bit machine can not get graphics much
of the time. Does anyone have a 32 bit MB and CPU for sale, and if not 
what should I get?  I am sure some of the garu's will strongly suggest
64 bit and if so please explain how to get Java with it :)

Homer Whittaker

Jim Hartley wrote:
> Another alternative (not necessarily better, but may suit some people) 
> is to create TWO root partitions and a /home partition. This will let 
> you try two distros, or upgrade without destroying your stable system 
> while you tinker the other one. For convenience each system mounts the 
> other root partition on "/other" or similar.
> 
> By the way, I have one of the root partitions as extended, and grub has 
> no problem getting to it.
> 
> I don't use LVM, but it's not a bad idea.
> 
> Jim Hartley
> 
> John Simpson wrote:
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>> On 2008-05-01, at 1224, William H. Ferguson wrote:
>>>
>>> So, I conclude that since I have installed the "Default Partitioning" 
>>> all of the Hard Drive's
>>> space has been taken up by that choice.
>>>
>>> My question is:  How can I clean everything off the Hard Drive, now 
>>> apparently jam-packed full of the Default Installation?
>>
>> boot into a "live cd" of some sort.
>>
>> open a terminal window, and become root.
>>
>> run "fdisk /dev/hda" (or /dev/sda, or whatever device corresponds to 
>> your hard drive.)
>>
>> delete all of the partitions. use "p" to print the current partition 
>> table (to see what's there already) and "d" to delete a partition. 
>> delete them in reverse numeric order (i.e. from highest number to 
>> lowest number.)
>>
>> quit, saving your changes (i.e. the "q" command.)
>>
>> then boot the install CD for whatever you want to install. the 
>> installer should see a blank hard drive and allow you to set things up 
>> however you like.
>>
>> the next question, "what's the best way to partition the disk?" is 
>> somewhat of a religious issue with some people, much like the 
>> "vi/emacs" holy war from days of old. at the risk of starting another 
>> battle, this is how i personally do it:
>>
>> on a system using IDE drives, where the BIOS may not be able to 
>> directly address partitions which extend beyond the first 1023 
>> cylinders of the disk, partition #1 is 75 to 150MB, formatted using 
>> ext3 (or whatever filesystem you like), mounted on the final system as 
>> "/boot". this is because the kernel, and the initrd (initial ram disk) 
>> image which contains the device drivers, need to be able to be loaded 
>> by the boot loader (i.e. grub, lilo, or something similar) which at 
>> that point only has the BIOS services available to access the disk.
>>
>> the (first or next) partition, at or near the beginning of the disk, 
>> is the swap space. i put this at the beginning because filesystems 
>> normally fill from the beginning toward the end, so the disk head will 
>> be closer to the beginning of the main partition most of the time- and 
>> if the system needs to swap, having the swap partition near the 
>> beginning of the disk means the system doesn't have to wait so long 
>> for the disk head to move into and out of the swap partition.
>>
>> after the swap, i usually have one large partition, mounted as "/", 
>> using the remainder of the drive. i do this because i've run into too 
>> many problems where one partition will fill up but the rest of the 
>> system is fine.
>>
>> with that said, it may make sense to do something else on some 
>> machines. maybe you're going to be doing something which generates 
>> large log files, and want to have "/var" or "/var/log" as a separate 
>> partition which, if it fills up, won't kill the rest of the system. it 
>> just depends on what you plan to do with the machine.
>>
>> however, i've found that the "one large /" strategy works fairly well 
>> for about 90% of the machines i've built over the years, and is in 
>> fact how my own server is built (actually, the MACHINE is running xen 
>> and LVM, and the xen child session which is my server has the "one 
>> large /" partition.)
>>
>> another strategy, especially for somebody who's experimenting and who 
>> has a lot of disk space available to play with, is to use LVM (linux 
>> volume manager.) this is a lot more flexible than traditional 
>> partitioning schemes- the idea is that you create a VG (volume group), 
>> which is a pool of disk space made up of one or more PVs (physical 
>> volumes, or physical partitions as you're used to seeing them.) once 
>> you have a VG defined, you can allocate LVs (logical volumes) from 
>> that pool of space as needed.
>>
>> the advantages of this are:
>>
>> - - you can have more than 4 (or 8, or 16) partitions- you can have up 
>> to 256 LVs within a VG. and you can create, modify, and remove them 
>> without having to reboot (unless, of course, you need to modify the LV 
>> containing your "/" partition, in which case you need to boot into 
>> "something else" like a live CD environment before making the change.)
>>
>> - - you can resize LVs on the fly. some filesystems can't support 
>> being resized after being created, but ext3 supports it without any 
>> problems.
>>
>> - - if the VG is running out of space, you can add another physical 
>> disk to the machine, create an "LVM PV" partition on it, and add the 
>> PV to the group... and you immediately have more space available 
>> within the group to create new (or extend existing) LVs.
>>
>> this is what the "default disk layout" used by the installers for 
>> fedora, centos, and a few others- if you see something involving 
>> "VolGrp00", you're using LVM already.
>>
>> using LVM also requires that you create a separate "/boot" partition 
>> on the first hard drive, but that's only because grub doesn't 
>> understand LVM. basically, create the /boot partition, and if you're 
>> not planning to use virtualization, create a swap partition as well... 
>> but then create an "LVM physical container" partition using the rest 
>> of the disk, create an LVM volume group which uses that space, and 
>> then create an "LVM logical volume" big enough for the system you want 
>> to install- usually 5-10GB is enough for a full system with a graphic 
>> desktop. tell the installer to use that "logical volume" as the "/" 
>> partition, and go to town.
>>
>> again, the xen host uses LVM to manage disk space, and the xen 
>> children are configured with LVs as the "physical device" underlying 
>> what they see as /dev/xvda1 and /dev/xvda2. so if one of my child 
>> sessions needed more space, i'm able to shut down their child session, 
>> resise their LVM container, resize the ext3 filesystem within the 
>> container, and start it back up again (assuming i have the space 
>> available- at the moment the machine only has about 5.5GB not allocated.)
>>
>> - --------------------------------------------------------
>> | John M. Simpson  --  KG4ZOW  --  Programmer At Large |
>> | http://www.jms1.net/                 <jms1 at jms1.net> |
>> - --------------------------------------------------------
>> |   Hope for America  --  http://www.ronpaul2008.com/  |
>> - --------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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> 