[Leaplist] Install Fedora Core 8

Sat May 3 16:21:24 EDT 2008

Homer Whittaker wrote:
> 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!

Wrong approach.  Phil advised me that I could load a 32 bit system right 
on top of the 64 bit with no problems.  Thanks Phil, now I do not need 
to spend the money or time on a new system!
Homer Whittaker

> 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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>>
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