INLS283 Demo Installation Exercise
Prof. Greg Newby
January 14, 1999

RedHat is a distributor of Linux. Version 5.2 was released in late 1998 and includes the latest revisions to the Linux kernel and updated software. Of course, there have been new releases of many packages since then, which I will work on for the rest of the semester.

Although RedHat is only one of the available versions of Linux, it benefits from:

• A fairly regular update cycle (about every 6 months)
• Easy installation (not too hard, anyway)
• RPM, the RedHat Package Manager (also used with other Linux flavors), which makes installation of new software either from CDROM or the Internet very easy.

RedHat Linux 5.2 is suitable for someone who has never installed any sort of Unix before, but only if they are able to handle re-partitioning their drive (if needed) or installing a new drive. Or, of course, to install when there will be no other operating system.

I bought RedHat 5.2 at Linux Central (www.linuxcentral.com), for about $5.00 per set. This is cheaper than buying the full RedHat package which comes with some commercial software and a manual. The installation was on my home PC, a P90 with 64M of RAM. I have one 2.5GB EIDE drive for Win98, and a 2.1GB drive for Linux. I had previously configured my system to access the 2^nd drive (through the BIOS).

Because I had done this before, I took a brief tour of the "Installation and Getting Started Guide" at http://metalab.unc.edu/Linux/ldp.html. The steps were:

1. Create boot and supplemental diskettes. I used "rawrite" on my PC for this – the boot images and rawrite.exe are on the RedHat CD.
2. Boot to the boot diskette and select Local CDROM as the installation method
3. For the most part, select defaults. I used Disk Druid to partition my drive with 200M of swap space.
4. I installed most of the software except for the servers I knew I wouldn’t need (name server, news server, and a few other things).
5. Made sure that LILO (the boot loader) gave me the option of booting toWin98 or Linux.
6. Post-install, I rebooted, and logged in as root
7. Added my ‘gbnewby’ username
8. Proceeded to make sure my network settings would work (I had them from a previous installation) and got on the Internet
9. For something new, I followed the instructions in the "Zip Install Mini-HowTo" (linked from the LDP, and also on the CD). This got my Iomega Zip drive working with Linux for the first time!

One major problem was trying to use my old RedHat 5.1 boot and supplemental diskettes. Even though they seem the same, they are not! My installation would fail part of the way through. After trying this a few times, I got smart and used rawrite to make new 5.2 diskettes.

Another problem I had related to this installation was when I swapped out the Win98 drive for another drive. Because I was fearful of accidentally formatting the Linux disk, I unplugged its’ EIDE connector. To my surprise, when LILO tried to boot (because I had to temporarily switch from the new Win98 to the old Win98 drive), it couldn’t! It turns out that LILO gets sick if all the drives it’s looking for aren’t connected.

The system works fine, and I use it daily. (A script file showing some basic functionality such as "ls /" or "df –k" should be attached).