This document provides an overview of installing Linux, including planning partitions and file systems, hardware requirements, choosing between Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and performing a fresh vs upgraded installation. It discusses setting up partitions, including primary/extended partitions and logical volume management. Recommendations are given for recommended partition sizes. The document also briefly discusses RAID levels and using ISO images to install from CD/DVD.

1. Chapter 2 Installation
Overview

2. Planning the Installation
Questions:
– Size of partitions
– Where to put partitions
– Which software packages to install
– Install GUI or not

3. Hardware Requirements
RAM: 128 MB RAM for a 32 bit x86
system in text mode or 192-256 MB for
GUI
CPU: 200 MHz Pentium or equiv
600 MB to 9 GB

4. Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise
Linux?
Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat
and supported by the open-source
community. Releases every 6 months,
called Fedora Core, tests cutting-edge
code – not for production environments.
Red Hat is more stable and safer to use in
production environments.

5. Fresh Copy or Upgrading?
Upgrade attempts to preserve both system
and user data files – brings utilities that
are present in the old version up-to-date
but does not install new utilities. Existing
configuration files are preserves and new
oned added with a .rpmnew extension.
Fresh installation is more stable than
upgrade (clean install)

6. GUI or Text?
Anaconda utility controls both types of
installation.

7. Setting up the Hard Disk
Partition (slice) – a section of a hard disk
that has a device name such as /dev/hda1
so that it can be addressed independently.
Disk Druid can be used to create partitions
at installation time
LVM – Logical volumes (LV) can be set up
to function like partitions, allowing LVM
(Logical Volume Manager) to change the
size of volumes.

8. Setting up the Hard Disk
File Systems – Before programs can be
written to a partition, a file system must be
present. mkfs writes a file system on a
partition.
– Red Hat – ext3
– Windows – Fat and NTFS
– Apple – HFS
fsck checks the integrity of the file system

9. File System Independence
The state of one filesystem does not affect
other filesystems

10. Primary and Extended Partitions
Partitioning allows you to divide an IDE disk into
up to 63 separate partitions or subdisks; a SCSI
disk may be partitioned into 15.
Partition Rules:
– A disk can hold up to 4 primary partitions
– One of these primary partitions can be divided into
multiple logical partitions called an extended partition.
Therefore, if you want more than 4 partitions on a
drive, you must set up an extended partition.
– A typical disk is divided into 3 primary partitions and 1
extended partition. Establish the sizes of the 3
primaries and the extended will take up the rest of the
disk.

11. Partitioning a Disk
During installation, Anaconda calls Disk
Druid to set up disk partitions. (Druid =
wizard)
For more info:
http:/www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition

12. Planning Partitions
Many people choose at least 3 partitions:
– /boot 50-300MB – holds boot up info and
other info that the system needs to boot. Red
Hat recommends at least 100 MB
– (swap) 512MB-2+GB
– / (root) – contains the remainder of the boot
space
Disadvantage – if DOS attack occurs,
entire root partition can fill up

13. Additional Partition
Recommendations
Consider setting up an LVM BEFORE you
create partitions (LVs). LVM allows you to
change partition sizes after the system is
installed.
Swap partition should be at least twice the
size of RAM. Used for temporary storage
when RAM is exceeded. (Min 512MB)

14. Recommended Partition/Size
/boot – 100 MB or greater depending on size and
number of kernels to be stored
Swap – twice the size of RAM; min of 512MB
/var – holds system logs which can grow in size
tremendously. Very good idea to create a separate
partition. 500MB to 2GB
/home or /usr/home– good to keep user home directories
in their own partition
/ (root) min of 1 GB
/usr – useful if plan to export /usr to another system.
Size depends on package installation. Min of 1.7-5.5 GB
/tmp – min of 500 MB

15. /boot placement
On older systems, /boot partition must
reside completely below cylinder 1023 of
the disk.
When more than 1 hard disk, /boot must
reside:
– Multiple IDE or EIDE – primary controller
– Multiple SCSI – ID0 or ID1
– Multiple IDE and SCSI – primary IDE or SCSI
ID 0

16. Additional Partition Considerations
/usr/local and /opt – if many packages are
installed

17. RAID
Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent
Disks – uses 2 or more hard drives or partitions
in combination to improve fault tolerance and/or
performance. Applications and utilities see
these as a single logical device. Certain types
can be used to spread data redundantly across
the disks to protect data from hard drive failure.
RAID uses extensive CPU time. Fedora 5
introduced support for motherboard-based RAID
chips through the dmraid driver set.

18. RAID Levels
Disk Druid allows choices of:
– RAID Level 0 (Striping) – improves performance but
no redundancy
– RAID Level 1 (Mirroring) – simple redundancy,
improves data reliability, and read-intensive apps.
Storage capacity is equal to one of the disks
– RAID Level 5 (Disk Striping with parity) – Provides
redundancy and improves performance. Storage
capacity equal to sum of all partition minus one of the
partitions.
– RAID Level 6 (Disk Striping with double parity) –
Improves upon level 5 by protecting data when 2
disks fail at once.

19. LVM: Logical Volume Manager
LVM allows you to change the size of
logical volumes (LV), can use system-
config-lvm to make LVs smaller or larger
without affecting data. You must choose
to use LVM at the time you install the
system or add a disk, can’t apply to a disk
full of data. Supports IDE or SCSI drives
as well as multiple devices using RAID.

20. LVM
LVM groups disk components (partitions,
hard disks, or storage device arrays)
called physical volumes (PVs), into a
storage pool or virtual disk, called a
volume group (VG) You allocate a portion
of a VG to create a logical volume.

21. Figure 2-1 LVM: Logical Volume
Manager

22. How the Installation Works
Lab 1

23. The Medium: Where Is the Source
Data?
Formats:
– CDs, DVD, network hard disk
– CD or DVD image (ISO images)
Sources:
– CDs or DVD
Red Hat Enterprise Linux – Sold by Red Hat and
downloadable as ISO images
Fedora – DVD comes with book – no customer support, but
free
– Hard Disk
– Network

24. ISO Image Files
Utilities such as BitTorrent can be used to
download the ISO images. An ISO image
is an exat image of what needs to be on
the CD or DVD. Burning the CD or DVD
involves using a special selection for
burning an ISO image such as “Record
CD from CD Image” or “Burn CD Image”.

25. Rescue CD
The rescue CD, the first installation CD, or
the installation DVD can be booted from to
bring up the system in rescue mode.

26. Gather Information Before
Installation
Hard disk – manufacturer, model number, size
Memory
SCSI interface card
NIC
Video card and amount of VRAM
Sound card
Mouse (PS/2, USB, etc)
Monitor
IP addresses
– System hostname
– System address
– Network mask
– Gateway address
– DNS addresses
– Domain name (optional)