h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ext3 is fine on my 25GB partition... at least, I've not noticed any problems with it.

apparently it is to do with the fact that ext3 is often done as ext3 on ext2, rather than as a dedicated ext3 partition. ext2 does not degrade well when you expand the partition size.

I am not sure, but I think it gets progressively slower and less efficient.

Aaah, well this one was formatted ext3 to start with.

doesn't that mean that the standard ext2 recovery tools normally found on rescue disks won't work on it?

if so, have you taken the precaution of making yourself a rescue disk with ext3 tools on it?

As far as I'm aware, the ext2 recovery tools should work - and as far as I'm aware, there aren't any ext3-specific recovery tools anyway.

I tried the installation again just now, and it keeps pulling up almost immediately when it starts to format my partitions

Here's what I dumped onto the floppy:

Traceback (innermost last):
File "/var/tmp/anaconda-7.0.1//usr/lib/anaconda/iw/progress_gui.py", line 20, in run
rc = self.todo.doInstall ()
File "/var/tmp/anaconda-7.0.1//usr/lib/anaconda/todo.py", line 1472, in doInstall
self.fstab.mountFilesystems (self.instPath)
File "/var/tmp/anaconda-7.0.1//usr/lib/anaconda/fstab.py", line 713, in mountFilesystems
raise SystemError, (errno, msg)
SystemError: (22, 'Invalid argument')

Local variables in innermost frame:
size: 1028128
fsystem: ext2
self:
msg: Invalid argument
doFormat: 0
errno: 22
device: hdb7
instPath: /mnt/sysimage
mntpoint: /

ToDo object:
(itodo
ToDo
p1
(dp2
S'method'
p3
(iimage
CdromInstallMethod
p4
(dp5
S'progressWindow'
p6



Does that make sense to any of you? I think hdb7 is my root partition. I used Disk Druid to make this scheme:

/boot - 20Mb
/ - 1Gb
/home - 10Gb
/usr - 2Gb
/tmp - (I forget )
/var - 500Mb
- 128Mb

I programmed one user account as well as root.

I'll have another bash at it, but I don't think there's anything I can change unless I make the partitions different. The disk has some old Windows files on it, and I de-partitioned it before I began. Maybe I'll do an 'erase' format and try again.

Ok. I, er... didn't press the "Would you like to format your partitions?" button before I hit 'Install now'

It's loaded, it's installed, and I've played with it once, typed in a few commands, but I've yet to get it into GUI mode. The default has set to runlevel 3 (multi-user mode with networking), and I need to get it to 5 (multi-user mode with networking and X display manager).

WOOHOO

Hmm... can't remember much about runlevels, Gentoo (my distro) has its own runlevel system implemented on top of the standard one, so I never have to deal with it. I think it's /etc/inittab that needs editing to change the default runlevel.

I've yet to work out how to change configuration files. I know you have to do it with text editor, and I think Red Hat comes with at least two - vi and Pico. I just have to start playing around with stuff and finding some online tutorials. The 'Dummies' book isn't too helpful on this part of LInux

Hmm... vi isn't so great for just loading and playing with. I strongly recommend running 'vimtutor' and going through the whole thing as it says. You may prefer Emacs as being vaguely closer to Windows-like editing ideas, but I recently became a vi/vim convert, so I'd give it a try. It seems very odd, but it's very efficient.

Just a word of encouragement from another newbie.

I recently installed Redhat 7.3 using a disk image which they generously allow you to download from them. I had already installed a second hard drive and within the Redhat installation I partitioned this drive, installed Linux and set it up to dual-boot with the other OS.
This was all straightforward, and I have been surprised at how much software and hardware just worked. I can use the partitions that are formatted for the other OS within Linux, so I have no difficulty sharing files between OSes. I can even upload pictures from my (cheap and rather obscure) digital camera.
I had a problem with printing for a while, but it seems to have been my own fault - I installed some upgrades to the drivers when I should have stuck with the ones that came with RH7.3 .

So have fun .

One thing you might look out for is the modem. If you have an internal modem you should check whether it is a 'Winmodem'. If it is, you may have trouble using it with Linux - these modems rely on W*nd*ws to do some of the work that other modems do for themselves. I got round this by getting hold of an external modem.

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The general command to get the gui interface started is 'startx' when you're logged in.
If you want to automatically do this at startup the you need to change /etc/inittab so that the line with 'default runlevel' (or similar) is set to 5 instead of 3. You'll need to do this as root otherwise you probably won't have permissions to write the inittab file to disk.
The main unix text editors (vi and emacs) are non intuative but if you can get X started then there are quite a few point and click text editors there. Do take the time to learn the basics of vi or emacs as knowing how to change a configuration file when it all goes pear shaped and you just get a prompt can come in very usefull.

And note that in that situation, if you've had to boot from a rescue disk, you're more likely to find vi available than emacs, as vi is far, far smaller. Emacs doesn't fit on rescue disks, although there are a number of cut-down workalikes which do - jove, for instance. Other editors worth taking a look at are nano and pico - nano is especially important for people wanting to install Gentoo, as it's the default editor during the install process, and thus if you can't use it setting up your fstab and the like isn't very easy.

Well, I've got it up and running in runlevel 5, so I've got me a GUI . I had to re-install though becuase something happened to my Root password, and each time I tried to log in as Root it kept saying 'Incorrect password'. I know I was using the right one .

When I went through the second install I found a button that said something like 'Open with a display manager', which I prolly hadn't clicked on the first time. It also allowed to me find out the vertical and horizontal refresh rates of my monitor which I haven't been able to find anywhere either inside this pc or on the web.

I need to start finding my way around the file structure now so that I can upgrade - I think Red Hat's up to something like 8.0 now isn't it?

Oh, and about the modem - this is one thing which could give me some problems . I have a cable modem, and my ethernet card isn't listed anywhere in the ethernet HOWTO here http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Ethernet-HOWTO.html but I think I can work out which NIC chip it has so that I can look for the linux driver. My ISP is RoadRunner, who aren't known fot their Linux-friendliness

So, my next question is, if I can find the driver, where do I put it and how do I configure it? I still haven't got the hang of using the command line, or editing files. Perhaps it was because I didn't have a GUI, but when opened vi, emacs, and pico the first time, they were utterly incomprehensible compared to Notepad . I couldn't work out how to open a file, or do anything

There are some help files in the GNOME main menu which I think I'm going to spend most of the day reading

Hmm, network drivers are generally loaded as kernel modules - if you're lucky, Red Hat will include all the drivers from the kernel tree at the time of packaging, compiled as modules for your convenience. I'm not entirely certain though - I ran Red Hat for quite a while at one point, but I never really got on with it all that much and only didn't switch because I didn't have a better alternative. Anyway, the whole issue of hardware drivers is a bit different to in Windows... well, substantially so in many ways.

A driver is generally speaking a bit of kernel code. Usually a driver may be compiled as a module or as part of the main kernel itself - modules are great for binary distributions and for may other things as well, as you may plug them in and out of the kernel while the system is running, which makes device installation given the right modules and configuration information for them (which obviously depends on the modules) an absolute cinch. Just load up the modules and away you go.

Something you might want to check once you know what chip is on your card is if it's supported by one of the more generic network drivers - like PCI NE2000 clone, which is what mine runs under. I'd give you the list from the kernel, but I imagine you're running a kernel significantly older than mine so it probably wouldn't help very much.

Which reminds me...

* goes to check for a new version of the Gentoo patched kernel *

Don't forget that passwords are case-sensitive.

As for text editors, once you have a GUI there are loads available - I use KDE so I have Kate, Kedit, Kwrite...

I find (and I know I'm still a newbie to this) that most of the things I need to install come in RPM packages, which means that you install them through e.g. kpackage, and it works out where to put them, as well as checking dependencies etc. And you can do a test install first.

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Really? I'm so used to using Windows wizards to install anything, that doing it manually from a command line is like handing me the ingredients for a cake without the recipe and telling me to make it. I loaded KDE with the installation, so perhaps I'll try that one. I downloaded a couple of potential drivers for it yesterday - they both carry the same number as (what I presume is) the NIC chip on my card. One says that it's for Red Hat 6.2 and the other for RH 7.2. I have RH 7.0... would the first be more likely to work?

I mixed upper and lower cases in my root password, and I know I was entering it correctly because I've used it before. No idea what happened there

I've seen it mentioned in the HOWTO that drivers are loaded as a kernel module MaW... still finding my way around the terminology.

I've got a whole nother cd-rom of stuff to install too - I went to look for LinuxConf yesterday and couldn't see it in the menu where it should be, so I checked cd-rom no. 2, and there it is Now I just need to learn where to slide it in... and how

Good luck! Somehow I always end up breaking RPM package databases, but many people use them succesfully so it must be me

Ok, what am I doing wrong?

I've opened up /etc/lilo.conf in emacs, and changed default=linux to default=dos so that the pc boots into Windows if I switch it on and go take a shower, make a cup of , feed the , whatever. It's been saved, and I've rebooted, but it's still using linux as the default

I've opened it up again in emacs, and it says 'default=dos', bold as brass. What's going on?

I don't generally install things from the command line.

kpackage is a (very pretty) GUI.

You can see a hierarchical list of all the packages installed by RPM, which is *very* handy as loads of things were installed straight off the CD when I first set up my RedHat distribution, and I wouldn't know I had them if I didn't have a good browse with kpackage.

For each package, it tells you what it's for, and what other packages and libraries it depends on. It also tells you where you can find all its files - very handy if there is a configuration file somewhere that you want to examine, for example.

When you get a new package that you want to install, you can run a test installation, and it will tell you if you are missing libraries that it needs. When you are ready you can do a real install and it files the new package away in the list with the rest.

I find all this useful, as it enables me to take an organized approach to what is on my system. On a couple of occasions I have downloaded interesting looking programs and then found (with the test install) that I did not have the right libraries to install them.

As for the drivers and which one would work best with RH7.0, all I can say, being still pretty new to this, is
(a) it is probably safest to stick with packages compiled for the exact distro you have, no earlier and no later; I caused myself a lot of trouble by upgrading some of my printer drivers to a later version than the one that came with RH7.3
(b) there are lots of people around who know what they are talking about and are willing to help. When I was banging my head against the wall trying to get my printer to work (see (a)) I posted my problem on the forum in linuxprinting.org and someone from RedHat replied and patiently worked through the problem with me. Try Google-searching for references to the drivers and RH7.0.


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