Installing Linux on Your PC at BNL
These instructions cover the necessary steps needed to install RedHat on your PC over the network. If you are not sure you want to install RedHat, then click here for a web page for a more generic discussion on installing linux on PC's from my prospective. Note, this web page details on how to install RedHat on your PC. If you want to install Debian, go to the Local Linux Users Group and they will help you install it.
There are two ways to install RedHat on your PC.
RedHat Linux FTP Installation
You will have to perform the following steps to get Linux installed on your PC.
The above was a brief outline of what you are in for. What follows is a detailed discussion of the above installation outline.
Step 0) Before you get started, you should know that the RedHat users manual which describes this process in full detail is online from RedHat at
I also have a hard copy in my office if you wish to borrow it. In any case, my 9 step outline follows.
Step 1) Making your boot floppies
a) Find two blank 3.5" floppies onto which you will load the boot code.
b) Pull over the latest boot images from the physics redhat anonymous ftp site. Click on this to get the boot.img file, and click on this to get the supp.img file. The full ftp reference to these files are:
ftp://phyppro1.phy.bnl.gov/pub/linux/redhat-4.2/i386/images/boot.img
ftp://phyppro1.phy.bnl.gov/pub/linux/redhat-4.2/i386/images/supp.img
To make the boot floppies, use either the rawrite.exe dos executable or use the unix dd command if you have another linux box with a floppy drive at your disposal. Click here to get to the rawrite.exe anonymous ftp site. If you are using an existing linux box, then the following dd command should build your boot disks
dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=8192
dd if=supp.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=8192
To use the rawrite.exe from dos, execute it and follow the instructions. It takes no command line options. It will first ask for the name of the boot image to be loaded onto the floppy, it will then ask for the name of the floppy disk drive. (i.e. you enter a: for the name of the floppy disk drive.)
Step 2) Make sure you have sufficient disk space to install RedHat linux. Here are some parameters you need to know. The full RedHat distribution should take no more than 500Mbytes if you install the full package. You can trim it down to about 200Mbytes if you are careful on which packages you install. My advice is to make sure you have enough disk space to install the whole RedHat distribution. Here are some more tips
a) You should have at least 1 Gigbyte free disk space to install Linux
b) If you wish to do a dual boot of dos, windows 95 or NT and Linux then it's best that they both reside on the same disk and that this be the primary boot disk on your system. I have tried to perform some installations where dos or windows is on the first disk and linux on the second disk and got into trouble at boot time.
c) If you have dos or windows installed on your disk and you want to repartition the disk, then I recommend you buy partition magic. This product will allow you to repartition your disk without having to back it up.
Step 3) Make sure you have the full documentation on your video card and monitor.
a) You need to know the make and model of the video card since linux does not do a good job of probing what video hardware you have. You also need to know how much memory your video card has.
b) You need to know the performance specs of your monitor. What vertical and horizontal rates for each resolution mode your monitors runs at. There will be a table in your monitor manual listing these specs for 640x480, 768x1024, 1024x1200 etc.
c) Do not start the installation procedure until you have these manual and/or information in had. Otherwise you will be infinitely frustrated when configuring your graphics card/monitor.
Step 4) Find out what kind of network card you have. Name and model! Also get the following network information from CCD or on that back of that envelope you wrote it on.
a) IP address and number
b) Domain name
c) Subnet Mask
d) Gateway
e) Primary and secondary nameserver
If you don't know these, call CCD and they will help you figure out these numbers for you.
Step 5) Know your mouse. Is it microsoft serial? Is it a bus mouse? Call CCD or the guy you bought our PC from, they will tell you what kind of mouse you have.
Step 6) Your now ready to install Linux. Insert the boot.img floppy and reboot your PC. Follow the instructions for doing an FTP installation. The information you will need to know from my end is:
a) The anonymous ftp server is:
phyppro1.phy.bnl.gov
b) The base directory where RedHat is located is:
/pub/linux/redhat-4.2/i386
After the installation asks for the above information, you will need to setup your linux partitions using the fdisk utility. This is the hardest part of the installation. You will be presented with a page asking you to set aside one partition for your linux installation. There will be a list of hard drives it found you system. Highlight the one you are going to install linux on, hopefully you only have one disk and hit enter. You will be thrown into the fdisk utility. This is what you do now. It tells you how to get help at the command prompt. Do that to get a list off all the one letter commands it takes. You you should do is print out the current partition defined on your disk by typing p. You can then delete partitions using the d command, and make new ones using the n command. If your disk has been partitioned under windows or dos, you will need to change the partition type from a dos partition to a linux partition using the t command. You will need to also set the swap partition using the same t command. When done use the w command to write and exit. It is at this point that the partition table on your disk is updated.
The purpose of this step is to create the root and swap partitions on your disk. You need at least these two partition. Your swap partition should be about 100Mbytes in size, and the root partition should take up the rest of the disk. Remember to set the partition types using the t command.
Next the installation procedure will give you a chance to reassign the partitions around. If you created 3 partitions for you linux system, one for swap, another for root (/) and the third for home (/home), then you can tell it which partition you want to be root (/) or home (/home). If you only created two partitions, one swap and the other for the linux distribution, then you can just hit the ok button and continue.
The swap partition will be formatted and initialized.
You will then be asked if you want your partitions formated. Tell it you do want them formatted and bad block checked.
You will next be asked to choose which packages you want install. There is a box at the bottom of the list, (you have to scroll down to get to it) which allows you to install all package. That's the box I like to check.
It then goes off, formats your linux partitions and installs the software you selected. This should take about 30 minutes to an hour. If you make it pass this point your almost home.
Finish off the installation by answering the rest of the questions it has. At this point it will configure your mouse, video card and monitor, ask for the root password etc. When done, it will congratulate you and tell you to remove the floppy and reboot.
Step 7) Booting linux for the first time.
So now you reboot. The first thing you should see is the LILO prompt. If you hit return, chances are you will boot into dos or windows. If you type linux at this point you should boot into linux. One linux is booted, you'll be at the login prompt. Log in as root and type the following commands to install the latest patches.
mkdir /physgi
mkdir /physgi/fs2
mount physgi01f.phy.bnl.gov:/physgi/fs2 /physgi/fs2
rpm -Uvh /physgi/fs2/redhat/4.2/update/i386/*.rpm
Ignore any warning message you may see at this point. Now reboot your system again. The best way to do this is by typing <ctrl>-<alt>-<del>, just like you would reboot a dos system. Now you are ready to start X. Log in as root and type 'startx'. If this works, you will get a windows 95 looking environment which means you successfully configured your video card and monitor during the redhat installation. What will most likely happen is that you will get a blank screen. You will then need to run the 'XF86Setup' command which will step you through the video card and monitor setup. The command to start the X11 window system 'startx' should work after that.
The final thing to do is to setup an account for your self and maybe configure a printer. This is all done through a nice TclTk utility called the control panel. It is started up automatically when you log in as root. If for some reason you killed it, you can start it up using the command 'control-panel'.
Step 8) Optionally rebuild the kernel.
You do not have to rebuild the kernel, but if you really want to eak out every inch of performance from you linux system, then a kernel rebuild should be done. The reason is that it is compiled to run on a 386. If you have a Pentium Pro, rebuilding the kernel will compile it for the Pentium Pro architecture. So do the following:
a) cd to /usr/src/linux
b) type 'make xconfig'. This is a TclTk utility which will configure the linux kernel. One the configuration window which will pop up after a bit, click on the 'General setup' button. This will pop up a second window. On the bottom left of this second widow is the option of the type of CPU you have. Select the type of cpu you have. Click on the 'main menu' button to return you to the main menu, then click on the 'Save and Exit' button. From the same /usr/src/linux directory type the following:
make dep; make clean; make zImage
If this finishes without an errors, (which it should), then pop a blank floppy into your floppy drive and type
make zdisk
This will put the new kernel on your floppy disk. When done, leave the floppy in its drive and reboot off the floppy. If you are successfully, then log back in as root, cd back to /usr/src/linux and type
make zlilo
This will install the new kernel on the hard disk overwriting your last kernel. Remove the floppy from its disk and reboot the system one more time to make sure the new kernel boots the system ok.
Step 9) BNL linux software package.
I've created some software package you may be interested in. To get more information on them click here.
What about support from the BNL physics department? This is what I suggest you do. Go off and attempt the linux installation. If it works, great. If you run into any trouble during the installation, then you can call me at x5682 and I'll help you get back on track. Or send me e-mail at stephen.adler@bnl.gov and I'll try to help you with some answers to your questions.
If you have a PC at home and want to install Linux, then I suggest you buy the RedHat CD and proceed with the installation at home. If something fails, then bring your PC to BNL, and I'll see what I can do to get it up and running. If you do not want to buy the RedHat CD, then bring your PC, keyboard, monitor, mouse and all, to BNL and I can loan you a network card so that you can install RedHat over the net.