[plug] Help

[Onno Benschop]

On Sun, 2004-01-04 at 20:56, Ulrich Suchalla wrote:
> I am trying to install Linux Red Hat 0.9 on my machine.

> My harddrive is 40 gig. Partitioned to 1 x 20 and 2x 10 gig.On the 20
> gig. Partition I have windows me installed.
> The other two partition are empty.
> Every time I try to install Linux, and I come to the bit about
> partition, I select manual and partition 'E'.
> When I click next, up comes a error message 
>  
>                      You have not defined a root partition (/), which
> is required for installation of Red Hat Linux to continue.
>  
>                      These errors must be corrected prior to
> continuing with your install of Red Hat Linux.
>  
> Since I am not an expert, can some one please give me some advice how
> to fix this problem.

Before you read on, you need to know that I'm not running Red Hat, thus
I'm not familiar with your particular installer. The information I can
provide is thus only of a reference, rather than specific nature...

First the bad news: Before you do anything, I'd *strongly* recommend
that you backup your machine, the data on it will be lost if you get
this wrong...

Under Linux, (any Linux, including Red Hat), you need to define what
files go where - in fact, you do the same under Windows.

Without knowing how much memory your machine has, you will need to
allocate some of your disk space as swap space, a guideline for the
amount of swap is twice the amount of RAM, more if you have less than
32Mb of RAM.

The un-allocated parts of your drive need to be allocated as swap, root
and any other parts you wish to allocate.

If you have 20Gb to play with, I'd make the following partitions with
the 2 x 10Gb that you have:

	1 of 2 x RAM (type swap)
	1 of 16Mb (boot)
	1 of 5Gb (root)
	1 of the rest (home)

In your installer you need to indicate which partitions do what.
Initially you're likely to be asked what the swap partition is, then the
root, some installers don't ask for the rest, but allow you to indicate
what goes where.

All this is in preparation for the actual installation itself.

Your installer should come with instructions and recommendations, also,
the Automatic partition may allow you to indicate partitions that should
not be touched.

Beware: The final step in my installer is the allocation of the
boot-block, if you don't read before you leap, you may not be able to
boot your machine - the data will be there, but it will be hard to get
to.

Finally, it's been a while since I ran any other installer than that
which came with my distribution (Debian), what I wrote above is what I'd
do, but there are other Red Hat fans on this list who may recommend a
different approach.



Onno Benschop 

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