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BOOT CAMP 447 (24/10/06)
Installing Linux part 2
If you are
following this short series I am sure you are itching to get on with ‘dual
booting’ Linux on your Windows XP computer (or the DT MK II) but before we go
any further it will be helpful to run through some basic Linux conventions,
which may be unfamiliar to many Windows users.
As you know
Windows uses a simple hardware-based filing system and each physical disc drive
is assigned a letter, so your main drive is most probably the C: drive. These
days there is no Drive A: that letter belonged to the obsolete 5.25-inch floppy
drive format and drive B: is for 3.5-inch floppy discs, which are rapidly going
the same way.
Now this is
where it can get a bit confusing. On large disc drives it is sometimes useful
to split or ‘partition’ the drive into smaller chunks or ‘logical’ drives, so
drive D: (and E:, F: and so on) can all be partitions on the C: drive in which
case the CD or DVD drive will be assigned the next available letter. So if the
C: drive has a D: partition the CD or DVD drive will be drive E: and it gets
even worse if you have two or more partitioned hard drives. If you have been
around PCs for a while you get used to it but for newcomers it can be quite
perplexing.
Linux adopts
a quite different approach and it also takes some getting used to but it is
more flexible and informative. Under Linux it helps to think of disc drives not
so much as fixed entities but as places or ‘devices’ where partitions are
stored, and Linux is very big on partitions. Linux uses a file-based naming
scheme, all partitions reside in a directory called ‘dev’ (for devices) and
this is normally represented as /dev/.
Within the
/dev/ directory the disc drives or devices containing the partitions are
assigned a three letter code. The first
IDE hard drive is ‘hda’, a second drive would be ‘hdb’ and so on. SATA, SCSI
and USB drives and storage devices use the letters ‘sd’ and multiple drives
would appear thus: sda, sdb, sdc etc. Lastly the partitions on each drive are
represented by a number, so hda5 is the fifth partition on the first IDE hard
drive.
Don’t worry,
most of the time you won’t need to worry too much about any of this as the
version of Linux we’ll be using has a friendly Windows-style interface but it
is useful to know how your drives are organised when we come installing Linux
as you have to create a new partition for Linux. You need to know what Linux
calls your Windows XP partitions (or partitions) because you don’t want to
delete them!
So, if your
C: drive is an IDE type with a single partition in Linux it will appear as
hda1, if it is partitioned (i.e. C: and D:) it will show up as hda1 and hda2.
The DT Mk II computer uses a SATA type drive so the main drive with a single
partition is designated ‘sda1’, extra partitions show up as sda2, sda3
etc.
Now that’s
out of the way we can proceed to the final preparations and I am assuming that
you have a DT Mk II or a reasonably recent Windows XP computer with at least
20Gb of free hard disc space (preferably more) and all of your important files
have been backed up. Don’t forget to run the Disc Cleanup, Defrag and Error
Checking utilities (see part 1) immediately prior to installation and you
should have a copy of Linux Mandriva, ideally the single disc version on DVD.
At several
points during the installation you will be asked to tick boxes or input
information. Most of it is fairly obvious -- language, keyboard, time, location
etc. -- you also need to know the make, model or type of your video adaptor.
Mandriva will try to determine the correct driver, and it usually gets it
right, but it’s as well to be prepared. This is particularly important in the
case of the DT Mk II, (see also this week’s Top Tip), which has an integrated
video adaptor based on an Intel 950 chipset. Mandriva doesn’t have the exact
driver in its library but one of the default drivers (Intel 945) does work but
you may have to tell it which one, so note it down.
If you don’t
know your video adaptor details you can find them in Windows XP by pressing
Winkey + Break to display System Properties. Select the Hardware tab and click
the Device Manager button. On the list
that appears double-click the item ‘Display Adaptors’ and make a note of the
entry.
Next Week -- Installing Linux,
part 3
JARGON FILTER
CHIPSET
Control
microchips on a PC motherboard or plug-in adaptor card
COMMAND
CONSOLE
Interface for
entering text based commands or instructions
IDE, SATA,
SCSI
Integrated
Drive Electronics, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, Small Computer System
Interface -- types of hard disc drives used in PCs
TOP TIP
One last tip
for DT MK II owners, if you are using an older version of Mandriva or another
Linux distribution and you are not sure if it supports the Intel 950 chipset,
the simplest thing to do is install a PCI video card. It doesn’t matter if it’s
an old or fairly basic one; in fact it’s more likely that Linux will have the
correct driver. This should ensure that the installation doesn’t fail due a
video driver problem (very common). Once Linux is up and running you can safely
tinker with the settings or switch to another adaptor. If something goes wrong
and you end up in a loop with a blank screen or a ‘Command Console’ simply
refit your PCI video card and Linux will boot to a proper desktop.
---end---
© R. Maybury 2006, 1810
Part 1 3 4
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