UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming MySQL and Server Configuration How about this?

Does someone know of a site, on the net, or personal experience in installing Linux Red Hat along side of Win98? I would love to use one of these partitions of my new hard drvie, a 10 gig partition, and install Linux on it for the sole purpose of testing the forum out with new code etc...

Anybody do this before? I am looking at free stuff, so if it is a program that allows you to run 2 operating system and costs loads, that isn't what I am interested in. Has anyone used the boot option of Win98 and loaded Linux instead, or both? I would have a need to switch back and forth between the 2, but I do not know where to start.

Tony Browneller
http://www.kickas.org

Yes, I do that. You can make a partition for windows and then load windows onto that partition. Then you install RedHat on a second partition. When installing Redhat it has a bootloader called LILO. It will detect your windows partition and label it as dos. You can have either one load by default. When you want to boot into a particular OS, you will see LILO come up on your screen, you can hit control and type linux or dos to load into a particular OS.

Oh boy do I really want to try this, but I'm terrified of it. What I'd like to install is Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP3 and Perl. But I've never done anything vaguely like that in my life. From what you've seen of my "logical but completely uneducated" way of figuring things out, do you think it would kick me in the pants and leave me sobbing for weeks? Is there documentation on how to do this stuff that's written in English? And any idea how big a partition I'd need for it, assuming it was for in-house testing purposes only?

As a sidenote, I did manage somehow to install Win98 on one partition and Win95 on another so that I could test pages in MSIE3. I couldn't retrace those steps if I tried (I think it involved facing Mecca and burning incense). As far as I can tell official or unofficial documentation on how to do this simply doesn't exist, and it wasn't meant to work at all.

Phoenix

It's not too bad actually. If you can put a second harddrive in your computer you could install linux on that so you wouldn't have to worry about partioning one hard drive.

Personally I'd recommend going with RedHat, and if you do decide to go with that a full install of the latest version will run about 1 to 1.2 gigs, which has *everything*. If your computer can boot of the CD then with the latest version you just put the CD in boot your computer and go through the install process which has improved greatly over the past few versions. Since linux is gaining more mainstream popularity there are some good books available as well to help with the process.

Once you get it installed, you will have alot of stuff already there like the Apache webserver, Perl and I believe PHP3. Installing mySQL is fairly easy as well with RedHat's package manager. You download the rpm from mysql's website and issue a command like [:blue]rpm -Ivh mysql.rpm and it installs everything.

There is definitely a learning curve, but I would say give it a shot.

Ok, this all sounds very encouraging, but what about my particular setup? I have 2 hard drives. the first is 12gb, no split up. And the 2nd is a 40gb, with 4 partitiions, each 10gb. D, E, F and G. D, F and G are in use, but E is blank, although it is formatted for FAT32. I have the latest Redhat, the 20 dollar version, not the professional version, and you say I can install it to that unused partition (after I remove the FAT)? I would hate to screw this HD up, concidering I just bought the darn thing, for 250 bucks! not bad, huh?

Tony Browneller
http://www.kickas.org

Yeeees. That's going to have to be *my* next terrifying death-leap as well.
I've been looking longingly in that direction for a year now and still haven't screwed up the courage.

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

Well if I get there first, I'll let you know how it went. I can't get over the notion that it's going to make me rip all my hair out and invent all new obscenities for you to add to your badwords file.

Phoenix

Haarh! I'm doing that right now trying to find out how I blew up my Post Icons. I'm going crossed-eyed comparing files but I've made so many icon-related changes it's very heavy weather.

Talking of badwords, I finally found a ready-made file with a collection to make Granny's teeth curl. []http://www.amdragon.com/images/icons/devil.gif[/]

[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

Yes, that would work fine. Just so you know, when doing a linux installation you will actually end up creating 2 partitions. One is for swap space and one is for the actual file system.

Unbelievable how cheap hard drives are nowadays.

Actually, you don't have to remove the FAT until you're running the Linux install. It asks you where you want to install to, you point to you E partition, create two partitions (as Rick said), and let it continue with the install... it's actually fairly painless.

If you want extra security, you can buy a program called System Commander Deluxe from V-Comm. It has an OS Wizard that helps you 'safely' install new OS's... it's not 'too' expensive, either... Using it, I've had Win95, Win98, WinNT4.0, and RH Linux all installed and functioning on my meager 4.3GB...! And they all worked! []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Matt

Yeow, Matty! Did you have room for any software, or just OSes? []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Phoenix

yep, this got me going aswell, think im gonna have a go at this. Well deep down in my mind I have allways knew that I would sooner or later install linux, the time has never felt right though []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
Now I just gotta purchase that new hardrive.. some 20+ gb thing.
keep up this discussion please so there is something to look at. progress and such.

If you use system commander, make sure when you install Linux, lilo should be located in the first sector on its own boot partition, that way your MBR always comes up with the system commander. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]

very VERY good point! But, of course, it's in the documentation... []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]

matt

Would it make my life a lot harder if I went for Debian instead of RedHat? (Harder installation issues? VHS vs Betamax future compatability issue?) A friend of mine got a nice packaged copy of Debian with the O'Reilley "Learning Debian GNU Linux" book enclosed at a tradeshow, and said he doesn't need it and put it in my hands. Should I get RedHat anyway, or is it really not going to be much of a difference?

Thanks
Phoenix

I dont have any answer to your question, but I know about the frustration having to choose between different distributions []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
I have never used linux, and now I have decided to give it a go, but the more I look into it, and the more I learn, the harder time I have to choose.. should I go for redhat? mandrake? SuSE? debian? etc etc etc..
maybe im making a to big deal out of this..it´s" jus"t different distributions..but it gives me a hard time..
I´m also gonna have (i think) apache, mysql and all that installed, to try stuff for w3t "local", also gonna have it as an "ordinary" desktop, playing around, learning and things like that. The thing I know (I think) is that im gonna buy a distribution, so I get it on cd, and get "everything" at one time, get some documention/manual in my hand and so on. but that´s it.
then when I finally made up my mind about distribution, I´ll have to choose between GNOME, KDE and the rest of them.. oh boy.. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] Yep, you're definitely coming at it from the same extra-careful standpoint as me. I was all ready to buy a packaged copy of RedHat since that was what Rick recommended... the cheapy version just to avoid the massive download that would take the rest of my life. But then Matthew handed me this lovely shrink-wrapped copy of Debian, and free things are always held in favor. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] But I'm afraid to settle on using it without the opinion of someone who knows what it's all about.

Phoenix

Debian is a good distribution. Some people say it has a little harder learning curve. A nice feature in debian is that it is easy to keep all of your packages updated. Say you wanted to install or upgrade apache, you can use a built-in command called apt-get, and do something like apt-get apache and it will go out on the net and install or upgrade Apache for you.

I've personally never used it on a large scale. We do have a few Debian servers at work, so I do work on a few of them, but I've been partial to RedHat for quite a while and that's what I use on my workstations.

Thanks again for the info. I guess I will go ahead and try to work with Debian, and if I find it's blowing my mind, I can zap it and go for RedHat instead. I won't have spent anything but time. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]

Phoenix