This machine was purchased as a portable workstation, to be used when I am away from my main computer. In many ways, this is not a demanding requirement. I need adequate capability in terms of graphics, disk space and processing power. I wanted it to be cheap, and I wanted some way to exchange information with my main computer.
I will be exchanging data through the serial port. I have purchased a DE9 null modem cable, and I have configured my main computer to accept logins through the serial port /dev/ttyS0.
Since I don't plan to keep data on this thing, there is no need for backups. All backups are done on my main computer.
Laptops get stolen. Mine may be somewhat safer, since it is old, but it is an adequate games platform, and it wasn't really all that cheap. If it does wander off, I don't want anyone to get at my personal information, like credit cards, Internet passwords and such.
No critical personal stuff will be left on the laptop. Probably, I won't use this to connect to the Internet at all. If I do, I will type in the password. Files will be stored on the laptop as needed. When I am done, I will transfer them back to the main computer, and delete them here.
This internet paranoia is somewhat less critical now that Red Hat installs a firewall. I have left mine at the highest security setting. I don't need RealAudio streaming.
As I was planning my purchase, I was figuring that if I had only one system partition, there would be no way to get at it without removing it from the computer and installing it in something else. You need passwords to get at Linux. In the end, I created a /usr/local partition, making upgrades easiers, and making my data less secure.
On earlier installs, I left the Windows 95 partition in place. My machine is set at Greenwich Mean Time. During the summer, Windows 95 sets this to Greenwich Mean Daylight Savings time, whatever that is. I do not use Windows 95, so it has to go.
Here is my partitioning scheme.
[root@localhost RoverLinux]# /sbin/fdisk /dev/hda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 993 cylinders Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 813 3277994 83 Linux /dev/hda3 814 846 133056 82 Linux swap /dev/hda4 847 993 592704 83 Linux Command (m for help): [howard@rover howard]$ df File system 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 2218416 1260516 845208 60% / /dev/hda4 583360 96 553632 1% /usr/local /dev/hda1 1016280 310368 705912 31% /Win95 [howard@rover howard]$
The BIOS is recent enough that I don't need the separate /boot partition. If I had an older computer, I would have needed to keep /boot entirely within the first 512MB of the hard drive.
My original Red Hat 7.0 installation program worked nicely the first time I installed Linux. I just followed the instructions. On a subsequent install, I had problems with Anaconda crashing, which are described later.
When I installed Red Hat 8.0 on top of Red Hat 7.3, I had problems booting from GRUB because I could not get into the BIOS. GRUB sees the floppy disk, but not the CD-ROM at boot time.
I have left BIOS instructions in the appendix of this document.
I did not have problems with the PC card on any of the Red Hat 7s, but I am having them with Red Hat 8. The solution for this problem is described in the appendix.
If you have an older machine that requires a boot partition within the first 512MB of the hard drive, you must not use Disk Druid. You must use fdisk, which lets you create primary partitions. I have used fdisk anyway in the past, because I like it. Disk Druid works fine.
When prompted, I enabled MD5 passwords and shadow passwords. I didn't bother with NIS, LDAP and Kerberos.
I selected the two button mouse with three button emulation.
I installed most of the software. I did not bother with all the language support, just English and French.
There were no problems booting this time. The BIOS hacks must have fixed the PCMCIA.
I did enough network configuration on Rover to make the command line prompt not look ugly, and to make Pine stop squawking about invalid domains.
I went into
/etc/sysconfig/network, and I set it up as follows...
NETWORKING=yes HOSTNAME=rover.eol.caThe boot scripts in /etc/rc.d read this file and use the information to set the hostname at booting.
I set up /etc/hosts as follows...
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 127.0.0.1 rover.eol.ca
The domain rover.eol.ca is a figment of my imagination. I connect to the Internet using my main computer and its 56K modem.
I was happy with XFree86 was set up by the installer.