Mail from ILUG-BOM list (Non-Digest Mode)
Sometime Today, Shailesh R L assembled some asciibets to say:
> linux. I have a 166 mmx PC with 16mb RAM and 8.4 GB HDD with 4 dos
> partitions of 2.1 gb each.
Okay, the first thing for you to do is to move as much stuff from one of
your DOS partitions to one of the other partitions. Ideally, try to clear
up your second partition. Your BIOS may have trouble setting later
partitions as bootable. You'd want to make at least 1.5 GB free here,
though the whole partition would be good.
If you did not clear the partition completely, then, defragment that disk
under windows and use something like FIPS or if you're not comfortable
with the command line, disk manager to split the semi cleared partition.
You should now have one contiguous unpartitioned area of your disk. You
will install linux on this partition. Run FDISK to figure out where this
partition is located in relation to the others.
> drive). the installation tells me to create a linux swap and native
> partitions first. also it tells me to recreate partitions. i dont want
Now, proceed with the installation as before. When it comes to
partitioning your drive, you should use disk druid. Pick the unallocated
space. Allocate about 64MB for your swap partition and the remaining for
your primary partition. Proceed with the installation, but first note
which partition is your windows bootable (most likely /dev/hda1)
> to lose my windows data. also i want both win95 and linux using LILO
You will soon come to a part where you are asked if you want to install
lilo and where. Install it on the master boot record and get it to point
to your windows partition as the other os. (It should already be pointing
to linux).
> boot. i am confused about this partition stuff. can anyone help me
Partitions are basically delimited areas on a disk. Large harddisks are
not good because your allocation units (clusters under dos, blocks under
unix) become proportionally big and consequently small files occupy a
large amount of space.
Splitting your big disk into small partitions allows you to create smaller
allocation units. It also allows you to manage separate partitions
separately, for different purposes.
You can have a different os on different partitions, different file
systems etc. You can also designate some partitions as read-only so that
no data on that can be modified.
A swap partition is basically a partition without a file system.
Eliminating the file system gets rid of the overhead involved in
maintaining it. The disk is now only thought of as sectors/tracks/heads.
This is good for swap because it facilitates quick transfers from disk to
memory using only DMA.
Hope this helps.
Philip
--
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down
by the seashore.
_______________________________________________
Linuxers mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
