UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello Creative,

If I understood your problem, I already had this problem too.

You said that you already have installed WindowsXP, right? Then, if you didn't made any partitioning, you must to. I used the FIPS, that came into the Red Hat CD, in DOSUTILS folder. To use it, you must to defrag your Windows before, because fips create a new partition at the end of your disk. After partitioning, start the installation of RH 7.3 and start the firsts configurations, like keyboard, language, etc. When arrives the moment of choose the partitions to install RH, you must create a new SWAP Partition and Root Partition. Delete the partition created with fips and create a SWAP partition with the size of 256 Mb (depends of the size of your RAM size, generaly we create a swap partition with the size of 2xRAM, but 128 or 256 its a good size). ONLY in the Root partition you choose the mount point. The mount point is "/" and choose the opttion to the system fill all the free space. I think that this is a simple explanation for what you must do.

I hope I have understood your problem. Any doubt, email me.

See ya!

PS.: Consult the RH website. They have good tutorial there.

Hello,

Thank you very much dear luiz_fer10 for your help. But as you see I'm newbie in Unix and this is the first try to install a unix operation system. I don't know how to make a root partition on it?!

Hello creative,

To do a partition in your system at the first time, you must be relax, because needs very attention. To help you, exist some softwares that make it the partitioning to you. One of the most famous is the Partition Magic. This tool makes a partition of GNU/Linux, Windows 9x, NT and others. The problem is that it's proprietary and automaticaly you need buy one (or not...).
But learn to use fips, because it's free, and very powerful. In the net have an infinite number of tutorials, search for one. You may lost various days trying to install Linux in your machine, but at the end you will be satisfied with the result.

Forget the proprietary software, man!!

Creative, take a look at

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...boot-fips.html

That's all

Hello luiz_fer10,

Thanksss so much but I think that I also have a problem with my red hat software, beacuse when i try to install it, it shows this message while installing:

The file /mnt/source/red hat/rpms/glibc-common-2.2.5-3.4.i368.rpm cannot be opened. This is due to a missing file, a bad package or bad media. Press <return> to try again.
---ok----

and when i click ok, it just repeats messaging. I think my software has some problem! Can you please help?

about partitioning, I'll finish my last exam tomorrow and I'll be free, then I can try to partitioning and installing and everything...

Hello Creative,

Forget about using fips to create your partitions, because its only work in FAT and DOS type partition and WindowsXP uses NTFS system.

Now, I think you really have a media problem. Then I suggest you to install Mandrake Linux, because it's very friendly to install, and comes with DiskDrake, a very usefull disk partitioner. Mandrake it's RH based but it's easier to install. The DiskDrake shows all the partitions of your system and allows yous to remove/resize all the partitions. You only need to partitionate your disk in the installation. Then, you insert the Mandrake disk in your drive and start the installation. When the time of partition comes, you see all the partitions and its type, in your case, NTFS (WindowsXP). Then you resize (reduce) the Windows partition and create a new partition in the new space allocated. Don't forget to create 2 partitions, one for the SWAP and another to "/". The SWAP must have some Megabytes, 256 at maximum. You create the SWAP first and the rest of the space free you fill with the "/" partition.

There is a very helpful DiskDrake HowTo

http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/install/ipartit.html

Any problems, here we are!!!
See ya!

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2. What FIPS does

FIPS reduces the size of a partition by changing some values in the partition table and boot sector. It does not change the formatting of the partition, especially not the cluster size and the size of the file allocation table (FAT). Therefore the reduced partition will have a FAT that is in part unused, but this is not a problem for DOS.

Thank you very much. I really enjoyed your teaching. I'll try again and if I had any difficulty I'll let you know

Thanks again.

See you.