About Installation In General
There have been many installers in Linux history, but the details are generally the same no matter what distribution you choose. One of the most common installers is the anaconda tool created by Red Hat, and used in other distributions including the Debian-based Progeny distro. SUSE includes package installation management in the all-encompassing YaST utility.
This area of these materials includes both practical discussion and specialized information that you might encounter on certification tests, specifically the Linux+.
There are (primarily) two boot loaders: lilo and grub.
They can be installed either:
- In the Master Boot Record (MBR), or
- In the first sector of the active partition; the MBR then holds a pointer to that partition.
LILO
If your system uses LILO, command lilo and you’ll quickly arrive at a
boot:
prompt. Press the TAB key to see the operating systems available.b
Configuration for LILO is performed by the /etc/lilo.conf file. Run:
cat /etc/lilo.conf
to see available options. Visit Peter’s Linux Pages: lilo for deeper discussion.
If you alter /etc/lilo.conf, you MUST reinstall LILO. This is easy:
lilo
does the trick.
Note that you can uninstall LILO using the command:
lilo -U
GRUB: The Grand Unified Boot Loader
GRUB is the newer common Linux boot loader; it resembles proprietary Unix boot loaders in design and function.
Stage1 of GRUB is (usually) placed in the MBR. It’s just a pointer to Stage1.5.
Stage1.5 and Stage2 are in the directory /boot/grub/. GRUB refers to the partition containing the GRUB boot loader as the GRUB root partition.
Stage1.5 loads filesystem support, then passes control to Stage2.
Stage2 then begins loading daemons and displays a graphical boot loader screen.
GRUB is configured in the file /boot/grub/grub.conf. Unlike LILO, you do NOT have to reload/reinstall GRUB after making configurations changes.
Also note that there is (usually) a symlink, /etc/grub.conf, to /boot/grub/grub.conf.
Hard drive partitions are referred to using the syntax (hddrive#,partition#), for instance, the first partition of the first drive: (hd0,0).
Visit OpenFree.org’s GRUB “Plain English Tutorial” for details and examples.
Typically, wizard-based tools perform partitioning during installation, for instance the Disk Druid utility used in Red Hat and Fedora installations.
You’ll generally use fdisk for other partitioning needs. Fire it up with the name of the disk to be partitioned:
fdisk /dev/hdc
This places you in an interactive environment, where one-letter commands let you
- list (l),
- delete (d),
- add new partitions (n),
- set filesystem type (t),
- write/save (w),
- ask for help (m) and
- quit (q).
Of course we all know that a disk can have four primary partitions. One can be used as an extended partition, allowing further partitioning into logical partitions.
The /usr directory has to have the room to hold an ever-expanding collection of utilities and programs.
The /var directory can grow wildly as logs, spoolers and email explode.
Free space on the / filesystem must always stay above 10%.
The swap partition (these days) should be at least twice the size of the physical RAM, and can be much larger if you’re running applications that can use it.
Beyond Partitions: Logical Volumes
If you outgrow a partition, tough luck. Get another disk and move your data to a new partition, right?
Not necessarily, if you abstract physical disks from logical volumes. Take a look at the article “Storage Management with an LVM GUI” at
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7796.
Once the boot loader has performed its function, system initialization is passed to the initialize (init) daemon. This daemon loads all the others, and handles runlevel transitions.
init is also a command, with which you can change runlevels, for instance, from 3 to 5:
init 5
The FirstBoot Wizard (Red Hat/Fedora)
Carefully note the User Account screen (in Red Hat distros). You’ll need the Use Network Login button to configure NIS, LDAP (like Active Directory or NDS), Winbind, SMB, and/or Kerberos authentication.
You’re likely to encounter questions dealing with SCSI types, connectors, pin counts, and speeds.
| Some Common SCSI Standards | |||||
| SCSI Type/ Standard | Speed (MB/s) | Bus Width in Bits | Connector Type | Number of Devices | |
| SCSI-1 “narrow/slow” |
5
|
8
|
50-pin Centronics or 50-pin D (LPT type) |
7
|
 |
| SCSI-2 “fast” |
10
|
8
|
50-pin Centronics or 50-pin D (LPT type) |
7
|
 |
| SCSI-2 “wide” |
20
|
16
|
68-pin D |
15
|
  |
| SCSI-3 “Ultra” |
40
|
16
|
68-pin D |
15
|
|
| SCSI-3 “Ultra2 Wide” |
80
|
16
|
68-pin D |
15
|
|
| SCSI-3 “Ultra3 Wide” |
160
|
16
|
68-pin D |
15
|
|
Know at least a few default I/O addresses
| Default I/O Addresses | |
| I/O Address | Device |
| 3F8-3FF |
COM1
|
| 2F8-2FF |
COM2
|
| 3E8-3EF |
COM3
|
| 2E8-2EF |
COM4
|
| 378-37F |
LPT1
|
And remember the default IRQ assignments
| Default IRQ Assignments | |
| IRQ | Purpose |
| 0 |
System timer
|
| 1 |
Keyboard
|
| 2 |
Linked to IRQ 9
|
| 3 |
COM2, COM4
|
| 4 |
COM1, COM3
|
| 5 | Available: usually for sound card |
| 6 | Floppy controller |
| 7 | LPT1 |
| 8 | Real-time clock |
| 9 | Linked to IRQ 2 |
| 10 | Available |
| 11 | Available |
| 12 | Available |
| 13 | Math coprocessor |
| 14 | Primary IDE controller |
| 15 | Secondary IDE controller |
APM and ACPI are mutually exclusive. Most computers made in 2002 or later use ACPI.
Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf;
Add line:
apm=off acpi=onEdit /boot/lilo.conf;
Add line:
apm=off acpi=on
| Level | Details |
|
0
|
Mirroring or Duplexing: Two identical disks |
|
1
|
Striping: Two disks that look like one, but read/write twice as fast |
|
2
|
Made obsolete by SMART and similar |
|
3
|
Obsolete; disk striping with separate parity; min. 3 drives; 1 drive holds parity information |
|
4
|
Obsolete; Improved on RAID 3 by using block storage |
|
5
|
Disk striping with striped parity; min. 3 drives; parity striped across drives |
|
6
|
Same as RAID 5 but with 2 sets of parity bits; allows 2 drives’ failures at once |
|
Combined
|
e.g. RAID 15, a stripe set with parity, and the whole thing mirrored |
Creating Bootable Media (Red Hat/Fedora)
Can’t you just boot from the first CD? Yes, you can, if you’re going to install from that CD. But if you’ve already copied the installation ISO images to the hard drive, you need a way to get to a basic working environment.
Insert and access the first Fedora CD.
Navigate to the images directory.
Find the boot.iso file, and use your favorite CD burning software to create a CD directly from the ISO.
There’s also an image named bootdisk.img. Use the “disk to disk” command, dd, like this:
dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/bootdisk.iso of:/dev/sda1
This assumes your CD is mounted on /mnt/cdrom, and your USB drive appears as /dev/sda1 (both are likely).