🚀 go-pugleaf

George wrote:

> I bought the Red Hat CD for install, I am not enough of a techy yet to rely
> on a free download and figure out the install with the info "I" know off on
> the internet. :)
> The CD, floppy disc boot, and manual seem straight forward except that they
> mention that Linux needs to be installed on a "clean partition". Do they
> mean a drive that has been reformated? I have one hardrive with one Win 95
> partition. I want to keep Win 95 in C and put Linux in D. It is a 1.18  +
> 1.19 Gig drive but it still has the windows 95 operating system on  C and D
> (no software on "D" though),

A hard disk drive can havemultiple partitions on it.  Windows will see any
partitions which are formatted with FAT or FAT32 and display them as a
Drive (like C or D).

Both Dos and Linux have programs to create partitions on a hard disk.
It is best to create and delete Dos/Windows partitions under Dos/Windows
and create and delete Linux partitions under Linux.

The Dos program to create and delete partitions is called fdisk.

There are a number of linux programs to create linux partitions fdisk,cfdisk
but probably the easiest one to use under RedHat is Disk Druid.  On a custom
install RedHat will take you into Disk Druid, I don't know about the
workstation
install.

Once you've created a partition, it's is not useable until it is formatted
with a
file system, just as a floppy must be formatted before it can be used.
The default file system on Linux is ext2 (like FAT is for DOS).

When RedHat is asking for a clean partition it's really asking for
unpartitioned
space.

So

0. Go into windows
1. Backup any files on your drive D that you want to keep.
2. Go into the DOS fdisk, delete the partition associated with Drive D.
    WARNING: All data will be lost that is on drive D at this point.
    (But you've backed up what you want right?)
3. Now boot with the RedHat floppy and you're away.  RedHat has a lot of
unpartitioned
    space to use for your new Linux system.



> I assume the Linux install will not overwrite
> Win 95 files, becasue I booted the floppy and went through the installation
> till it said that my drive did not have enough room.

It won't. In fact at the end you'll be left with a nice dual-boot system.
When the Lilo boot prompt appears just type
dos
    or
linux
(or TAB to get the list of options).
to boot the OS you want.

>
> Other than knowing the computer config info and internet config info what
> preparation does the hardrive on "D" need before install. My computer is a
> Pentium 100 with 32 MG of ram.
> In other words  what is a "clean partition" and what must I do to have the
> "Linux boot up" with the floppy, take me right through the total install?

Nothing just get rid of drive D first and you'll be fine.
Then just put the floopy in the drive and boot with it.

Cheers
Mark Jeacocke
markj@mincom.com