cannot install Redhat Linux

[Mike McCarty]

Hongyu Sun wrote:
> On 8/2/05, Jim Cornette <fc-cornette at insight.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hongyu Sun wrote:
>>
>>

[enough for attributions]

>>10 gig is a bit small for a modern Linux installation. Ext3 is a common
>>choice for Fedora.
> 
> 
> I am thinking I will buy a new piece of hard drive. Will that work?
> Seems Fedora only recognize 4 partitions. My current hard drive
> already have 4. Will Fedora recognize the new hard drive?

Certainly a new drive will work if you set it up.

You seem not to understand partitions very well. I'll give you a
little tutorial, then perhaps you will have a better feel.

There are four (4) levels of format on a hard drive. (Actually,
even on floppies there are 3, but they get kinda munged together
by the tools.)

Level 1 (also called low level format): This lays out tracks, sectors,
etc. on the platters. With modern drives this should only be done
once by the manufacturer. This is the physical level format.

Level 2: This installs a Master Boot Record (MBR) and Partition Table
(PT) on the drive. Some consider the PT to be part of the MBR, some
consider it separate. Each of the partitions looks like a drive
(more or less) to the software. The idea is that different OS can
"own" each of the partitions. (There are additional, no longer relevant,
legacy addressing reasons for separate partitions.) Each partition has
a "start address", an "end address", a "type", and a "boot" attributes
associated with it. Inside the MBR is a little program which the
BIOS loads into memory and executes. This bootstrap looks for a
partition with "boot" (some say "active") set. There is supposed to
be only one set. Now, some boot managers are able to manage
"multi-boot" (like GRUB) so they may ignore the "boot" attribute.
YMMV. Anyway, most (all?) MBRs only allow 4 partitions, which may be
either Primary or Extended. Many MBRs only allow one primary.

Level 3: This creates volumes (some say "logical drives"). Each primary
partition can have at most one volume in it. An extended partition is 
allowed to have multiple volumes. In effect, an extended partition is
an extension of the partition table. So volumes created inside
an extended partition are in effect partitions themselves. Anyway,
each volume has a Boot Record (BR) on it. That's where I have
GRUB installed on my machine, not in the MBR. The BR has a little
bootstrap in it which is particular to the OS installed on
that volume, and which knows how to start that OS.

Level 4: This creates file systems which can be mounted and read
and often includes an hierarchical directory system.


> 
>>>Another question is how to set the double boot mode? It seems in the
>>>installation I set up this. But it just does not work at all.

Without more information, no more help is available. What does
"it just does not work at all" mean?

>>>Finally it said the installation is complete and I can reboot. But I
>>>am entered to Windows again.

Is this what you mean?

>>>I cannot find any documentation on the installation. Somebody told me,
>>>Redhat is good for beginners. But I still cannot follow.

Umm, you are not quite running Red Hat. You are running Fedora Core,
which is not the same thing.

[snip]

>>I hope that  I'm not misleading you here. Viewing this original posting,
>>I don't see mention of /dev/sda4 on your part. I read the thread before
>>posting and assumed the input was from you.
> 
> 
> What is the difference between /dev/sda4 and /dev/hda4? Sorry I had a
> typo. Should be hda

[snip]

hda : IDE hard disc 1
hdb : IDE hard disc 2
hdc : IDE hard disc 3
...

sda : SCSI hard disc 1
sdb : SCSI hard disc 2
...

Minor note: yes, I know it's not IDE, but rather ATA.
Another minor note: USB drives also show up as "sd?".

Anyway, ISTM that you don't need another drive. You
indicated (IIRC) that you had some free space on your
drive. If your PT entry 4 was unallocated, then
you could create an extended partition, then create
three (3) [at least, I'd put /home on another volume]
volumes in there for /boot, root (/), and for swap.

I've heard that there is now no speed penalty for putting
swap into a file. If that be so, then I'd do it, because
it would make resizing swap much easier.

YMMV

HTH

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!