RE: tlug: Started installing RedHat...

[Totoro <riley@example.com>]

On 20-Nov-97 Demian Martos scribbled:
>Hello,
>
>I started yesterday installing Red Hat, booting directly from the
>CD-ROM. partitioning with fips went just wonderful. But RedHat
>installation...mama.
>
>I have two primary partitions of DOS, and four linux partitions (/,
>/home,
>/usr and swap) created on a extended partition as primary partitions (is
>this correct?). It took me a long time (three or four four bootings)
>till the installation programm understood I wanted to mount all the
>partitions.
>
>Still, I cannot mount the latter DOS partition. Suggestions?

RH doesn't do this well. You'll have to go edit your /etc/fstab to
put in the DOS partitions the way you want to mount them. Probably
you'll need to create the directories, too.

>RedHat installation remembers too much Slackware installation. I think I
>gonna miss debian's dpckg, dselect, and the its menu. I have the ffeling
>I was able to startRedHat by chance, where as with debian, you have the
>feeling that it works because it has to do!

They just do it in reverse. Debian gets the settings done during the
install, making it a long process. RH and Slackware let you get going
quickly and then set it up as you need later. 

>I have done the installation but not the customization...since I have no
>printed documentation, could someone suggest me the steps I should
>follow to...
>
>1) connect to Internet as soon as possible. (provider matters
>momentarily solved).

I don't have to bother with ppp to get onto the net, fortunately. But
X-ISP seems like it might be a ticket to help you set up. It's on all
the RH mirrors in the contrib directory. I'm assuming you can do that,
but if not let me know and I can email you a copy.

>2) start running X-window (the tough part is that the technical matters
>of the computer are in japanese :-)))

What do you have? You should be able to run XF86Setup, which uses the
VGA16 server. It should run on anything. You might be able to get an
idea of your video hardware from Windoze. Try several different card
settings just to see what they give you. 

>3) make an intelligent use of the software that comes in the RedHat
>distribution that John kindly give to me...

You've already got a start, getting it on the machine! The next most
intelligent thing would be to erase the DOS sections. ;->

The Control-Panel is pretty helpful to verify your network settings,
user configs and printer. Glint is supposed to make everything easy
to install/uninstall, but I find it rather poor. Better to use the
terminal and do rpm *** by hand, I think. Your distribution probably
has the RH Guide in HTML. It helps to explain the filesystem and a
few other areas to get you started.

A lot of info is on the net, once you get it all hooked up. I found
that Matt Welsh's book "Running Linux" was (still is!) a great help.

In /usr/doc you have a lot of info about many applications and other
things. Some is html, ps or dvi, but most is plain text. 

>You all can be frightened, this is just the first e-mail from a newbie

Eeek!

Hey, I might have been working at this for over a year, but I still
have tons to learn. Don't worry, be happy!

David

Hachinohe Institute of Technology
88-1, Myo, Ohbiraki
Hachinohe-shi Aomori-ken

http://w3.clat.hi-tech.ac.jp
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