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-
- Slackware Linux Help
- ____________________
-
- First, a little help on help. Whenever you encounter a text viewer
- like this during the installation, you can move around with these
- commands:
-
- PGDN/SPACE - Move down one page
- PGUP/'b' - Move up one page
- ENTER/DOWN/'j' - Move down one line
- UP/'k' - Move up one line
- LEFT/'h' - Scroll left
- RIGHT/'l' - Scroll right
- '0' - Move to beginning of line
- HOME/'g' - Move to beginning of file
- END/'G' - Move to end of file
- '/' - Forward search
- '?' - Backward search
- 'n' - Repeat last search (forward)
-
-
- PARTITIONING YOUR DRIVE
-
- OK, now that we've got that part over with, lets take a look at how
- you progress through a typical Linux installation with the Slackware
- distribution. First, you'll have to make sure your hard drive has
- been partitioned to accept Linux. The setup program does not do this
- part for you.
-
- The amount of drive space you'll want to give Linux depends on what
- software you plan to install, and how much space you have to spare. I
- use a single / partition of 110MB on the system do my development on.
- I've seen people make a Linux/GCC/X11 system in under 40 MB, so if
- you're careful about what you install you don't necessarily need a
- ton of drive space.
-
- If you're using OS/2, you'll want to create your Linux partitions with
- OS/2 fdisk (and maybe even format them). This seems to make OS/2 feel
- better about allowing these partitions to boot from the Boot Manager.
- Make sure you use Linux fdisk to tag them as type 83 (Linux native) or
- type 82 (Linux swap) or the Slackware setup program will not recongize
- them. Use the 't' command for that, and 'w' to write out the changes.
-
- If you're not using the OS/2 Boot Manager, you can make all your Linux
- partitions directly from Linux fdisk with the 'n' command and then the
- 'w' command to write out the changes when you're done.
-
- SWAP SPACE
-
- If you have 4MB of RAM or less, you probably already know about swap
- space, or you probably wouldn't have made it this far. Normally you
- won't need to format or activate your swap space by hand, but if
- you're installing on a machine with low memory you will need to
- format and activate a swap partition of 4 or more megabytes to be
- able to install. Once you've made the partition with fdisk, you need
- to use 'mkswap' on it, and then activate it with 'swapon'. Checking
- the partition table with 'fdisk -l', we see these lines:
-
- Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
- /dev/hdb2 922 922 966 11160 82 Linux swap
-
- So, the command to format would be:
-
- mkswap /dev/hdb2 11160
-
- And to activate it:
-
- swapon /dev/hdb2
-
- RUNNING THE SETUP PROGRAM
-
- Setup has quite a few options, which can be slightly confusing the
- first time you look at the menu. It's not really that hard, though.
- You just need to start at the top of the screen and work towards
- the bottom through the menu options. When I install, I usually do
- these options in order:
-
- SWAP (set up my swapspace)
- SOURCE (select the source location for the Slackware Linux
- packages)
- TARGET (set up my Linux partitions and /etc/fstab)
- DISK SETS (pick the disk sets I want to install from)
- INSTALL (install the software)
- CONFIGURE (configure the newly installed system)
-
- Note that after I select the SWAP option, setup will allow me to
- run through all of the other options without ever returning to the
- main menu.
-
- I hope that these options will be mostly self-explanatory. Just read
- the screen carefully as you install and you should do just fine.
-
- OTHER SETUP OPTIONS
-
- These are the "optional options" on setup:
-
- KEYMAP: This option lets you remap your keyboard to one of the many
- international maps provided with Linux. If you are using a US
- keyboard, you can skip this option.
-
- QUICK: This lets you select between two types of installation, QUICK
- and VERBOSE. VERBOSE is recommended for beginners, since QUICK gives
- a much shorter description of each package and expects you know what
- you need. QUICK mode cannot be used with custom tagfiles, only the
- normal ones. If you've automated your install process with custom
- tagfiles, you should leave setup in VERBOSE mode.
-
- MAKE TAGS: This lets you preselect the packages by creating custom
- tagfiles on the first disk of a series. There's a little help
- file offered with this option, so if you're interested in it just
- try it out. It's quite easy to customize your entire set of disks
- with this option - especially handy if you plan to configure several
- machines in a similar manner.
-
- EXIT: This leaves Slackware Linux setup.
-
-
- Have fun installing and running Linux!
-
- ---
- Patrick Volkerding
- volkerdi@ftp.cdrom.com
- volkerdi@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu
-