On another note, when I downloaded it there were 5 discs to download. However, I only needed three of them to actually install it. Not sure if it was because I didn't install every available option or what but something to note. Also be sure to read about the already discovered security holes that has already been addressed, one that I recall is in Bind, but don't recall the others, there are already patches out for these.

I tried to download Red hat for free, but they either try to charge me 170 or something like that or there's a 30-day restriction on the file.

I haven't downloaded anything yet, because I want to be sure I'm getting the right thing.

Can you help point me in the right direction please?

Could somebody please help me with this? I did download the files that were in folder doc and i386 that were in iso folder. What about the license? Do we have any licenses at all? Please also let me know if I need to download something else apart from the above-mentioned files.

Hello,
I am planning on doing a UNIX certification and since I don't have PC that's got UNIX installed, I was adviced by my friend to install Linux on a home PC and atleast have a basic understanding on usage of commands and configuration.

Now that somebody in the forum said that Red Hat 9 is obselete and that they asked me to download Fedora, which I did. To prepare for UNIX certification, would either Linux Red Hat 9.0 or Fedora help me (though not to the fullest)?

What's missing in Fedora that I would have learned from Red Hat 9.0?

Btw, I am planning on preparing for HP-UX CSA. How different is HP-UX from Linux RedHat and Fedora?

i've never used a floppy disk. cd's can be boot disks too.
so this depends on if you want to install 3 OS's or 4. i'd suggest 3 max with a 20GB hard drive. you may even want to look around on like, ebay for a larger laptop hard drive. i almost have 20GB in music, lol. ANYWAYS, the first thing you need to install is windows. when you go do to that, it'll want you to create a partition for windows but the default is to use the entire hard drive. tell it to use 8GB (or 8x1024 MB, 1024MB = 1GB). once that's installed boot in to windows. PC-BSD is weird and formats all of the remaining hard drive space with the BSD filesystem even if you choose to only use a smaller portion of the hard drive. so what we're going to do, is create another partition for RedHat so that PC-BSD won't use all of the space, but we're going to create it in windows and modify it later.
so in windows, go start > right click on "My Computer", and choose manage. in the window that appears, in the section titled "Storage" click "Disk Management". the right side of this window will now be in 2 sections displaying your hard drive, the top section being textual information and the bottom being more of a graph. in the bottom section, it should say something like (C:) 8GB NTFS | Unpartitioned Space. Right click on the unpartitioned space and choose create partition, make this partition 7GB and if it wants to format the partition, there should be a checkbox or a menu item that has the option to do a quick format. choose that as this will be your fedora partition and we dont really care what M$ has to say about it anyways :] once you've done this there should be 5GB of unpartitioned space left. reboot your computer with the PC-BSD disk in your cd rom drive and boot from that. the installation doesn't take long, maybe 10 minutes? when your in PC-BSD tell it to use 4GB of the free space. it will want to create a swap partition which we'll use the remaining 1GB of free space for. towards the end of the installation (after all of the software has been installed) it'll have the option to install the bootloader, which isn't necessary as next we're going to install Redhat and that will have a bootloader so really itd be pointless to do this but if you're not planning on installing Redhat right away - go for it. it's not going to hurt anything if you do choose to install it. so now that PC-BSD is installed, we want to install Redhat. I've never personally installed redhat, i started with Fedora Core 3 so this installation i'm unfamiliar with, but for the partitioning you're going to want to create a custom partitioning scheme and delete the 2nd windows partition (it should physically be the second one shown) and create a new partition with mount point: / . use the already created swap partition (i'm not sure if you're going to have to tell it to do this or not) but once you've done this continue with the installation and you're good to go. the bootloader should detect your currently installed operating systems.
if you have any problems, post away :]

Wow, That's way lot of information. Thanks Anarchy. I have to run it tonight to see i if I succeed in this operation.
I am planning to test Linux in 2 laptops by installing Linux Server on one and the Workstation version on the other. On the laptop where I install Server version, Can I install Windows too or is it not going to allow me to install other OS?

yes, you can install another OS.

the most important thing, is that if you're going to install windows:
! Install Windows before Linux !
the reasoning for this is all in the bootloader. the bootloader is what allows you to switch between operating systems. windows has a "bootloader" which is just as much of a joke as 64-bit computing in windows (thats currently a very big joke, lol). and that can only boot between different versions of windows. so if you tried modifying it to allow you to boot linux, ... , well thats just no possible. lol but when you install windows, it installs this to the MBR (Master Boot Record) and then getting BACK in to linux is something someone with more seasoned abilities needs to do. when you install linux, it also installs a bootloader to the MBR but this bootloader has the ability to detect your other operating systems and will allow you to boot between them (as an example, i currently have Windows XP, Fedora Core 5 test 2, and SimplyMEPIS installed and am downloading SuSE 10.1 Beta 2 🙂 )

mm...i believe i covered what was asked? let me know if not, sometimes i go on tangents and accidently leave things out.. lol

Thanks, AnarChy.

So, no matter whether it is Linux Workstation or Server, the first install would be Windows. Let me try tonight to see what happens.

I will keep you poste on this, Archy

Actually, I think you need to get stuck at a command line trying to figure out what to do next a few times.

I'd recommend CentOS - it's basically RedHat Enterprise Linux for free. When you get to a corporate network you'll almost definitely see RHEL. I'd also suggest you install the minimal installation (you only need the first CD for this) and build up your GUI from the CLI - this will invariably teach you something of how *nix works. If you really want to go nuts, download the source for everything you need, build RPMs from them and use those rather than "yum install package" - this is the "right" way to install packages on an Enterprise level RPM-based distribution. Even if you don't use CentOS, you can do this with Fedora as well - Fedora is the testbed for the next version so this is a viable option as well.

You don't need something user friendly at this point. You're not going to learn anything about the internal system if all you have to do is open firefox and thunderbird - which you could do in Windows anyway. If you really want to learn, you need to experience the command line. This is where all the power lies in Linux, not with the pretty graphics.

If you're going to get a BSD, just get FreeBSD - for much of the same reasons. It may not be as "easy", but it will teach you more about the underlying system. Some other Distributions that are good for this include Slackware, Gentoo and Debian.

If you do happen to install Windows after linux - destroying your Linux bootloader, all you need to do is boot up the Linux install CD and select the "Repair" option. This will take you to a screen where you can reinstall the bootloader. There's a much more involved method of doing this as well which can be performed from any Linux bootable disc (CD or floppy), but I'll leave that alone for the moment.

Yes, AnarChy. I too thought about the same. I would first play with installing something which is easy and then proceed beyond that.
I have downloaded CentOS and have burned them on CDs already keeping them ready.

One quick question: I am going to install this on my Laptop and my mouse that am using is a USB mouse. My laptop doesn't have a ps2 slot. So, would Linux detect my usb mouse?

Well, the suggestion was that you install the minimal installation and build up from that - which you can do with any of these distributions, including RH 9. If you don't want to do this, you can install a full featured environment.

Aside from being very stable, the docs exist on the CentOS distribution itself (as with most distributions) and in more than just man pages. The first time you start your web browser in CentOS you'll be looking at the manual. If you get stuck on something before that you can feed off the user bases for CentOS, RHEL and Fedora (they're all pretty much the same) for anything distro-specific or the plethora of other distros for anything Linux-common.

I can understand your hesitation in following my suggestions though. Another method that would teach you quite a bit would be to just pick a distribution (any will do) then build a "Linux From Scratch" distribution next to it. Complete details on doing this can be found here: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org
Doing this will allow you to build a complete distribution (from which you're bound to learn something as well) while giving you the safety net of a running Linux system at the same time.

I don't think the question here is turning you away from "the Linux Experience" because of hard times at the outset. I think what's in question here is arming you with the experience you'll need to be successful in the enterprise network while in the short term giving you something to which you can better associate common functions in your Unix training. This means plunging right into the meat of the matter. It won't be fun at times, but that's not the purpose.

I will look into this. What you are saying also sounds good to me. But, I am looking forward in finishing Linux/UNIX System Administration in 2 months. Do I have time to do these?

So, for installing LFS, do I need to have a Linux pre-installed? If yes, is it enough to have a minimal install like you just said?

You'll have as much time as you give it. People and hardware are different, you might have it set up by the end of a day, or it might take you 6 months. This also depends on how deep you're going into it.

You do have to have a minimal Linux system installed at the least - any distribution will work, as long as it's a working distribution on that machine.

Ok, Let me try installing Linux with minimal with partitions as per AnarChy's advice and try to go on your path.

Let's see if Anarchy has any suggestions.

It's just that I am so much afraid as I have no clue how Linux would look like. I am just reading Linux Red Hat 7(Complete Reference) and I have just finished readin the introduction part which itself is around 100 pages and it includes most of installation and configuration part. If I were using just one partition for linux, I can keep formatting back and forth. But, I need Windows for primary usage to browse files, access internet, until I get used to Linux environment.

And I don't want to keep formatting again and again and keep installing, as I have no time to do this formatting, after which I won't be having time to sit, study and play with Linux

Since you're just installing 1 Linux over the other you won't need to reformat with every installation. Use a live cd (like Mepis), open a terminal, mount the Linux partition somewhere (assuming your linux partition is /dev/hda2):

# mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt

then just do:

rm -Rf /mnt/*

This will effectively wipe that linux distribution and prepare the drive to accept a new distribution.

If you're really afraid of doing the whole "minimal installation", just install a "workstation" and build your LFS distribution next to it. This will give you a known good base to work off of with all the features.

Let me see if I understood properly.

A Workstation install would install Linux with typical (or full) features.
A LFS would install nothing, but we have to manually install everything.

Do I have an option of comparing what's in Workstation install Vs LFS install so that I would at least be knowing if I am going on the right track?

How do I build LFS distribution next to Workstation install?

Is it like I can switch between Workstation and LFS back and forth?

All of these questions are answered on the LFS site here:

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

in short: Yes, yes, yes, see the docs, yes

I just installed Windows OS with 8 GB as it's partition space. Then I tried formatting the remaining by splitting 11 GB into 7 (formatting complete) and 4(without formatting). I put in PC-BSD, and it froze at the last step, right after u put in the root password and user information. It happened twice. Any suggessions?

did it give you any error messages or say anything before freezing?
what's the last thing you see before / when it freezes.

it may be a bad iso.. did you check the md5 hash of the iso after you downloaded it with the one they have available?

please wait..setting up default users.
This is the last prompt where it froze. It happened twice and now i am trying it for the third time, if it happens the same, then i am unsure what to do, as I have linux down the line waiting for installation.

As an alternate, i thought of installing freebsd, so am in the process of downloading.

how to check md5 hash of the iso to see if the iso is good or not?

are you using windows? if so, there are quite a few programs that will create / check an md5 sum from iso's. the one that i usually use is md5summer. you could do a google search for others if you wanted, but then once you have the program and the iso downloaded, you just open up the program, select the iso to be summed and let it go. it'll take a minute or two to create the sum but when its finished it'll ask to save the sum to file. do that and it should display the sum. compare the sum you get with the sum available from the directory where you downloaded the image. the sums should match. (although i've had the sum not match when i summed the iso and summed the image after i burned the disk, they did match and they did work so shrug)

Ok, I will try summing up to see if it matches well. I can't take the disc out as it's in the middle of installing files. If I get the same error, I will do the summing and also will let you what it says. What was the reason why you asked me to install in this order?

Windows,PC BSD and Linux

instead of

Windows,Linux and PC-BSD.

Would it create problems?

i deleted the iso file from the pc after burning it to a cd. so, would that be a problem to compare? i opened md5summer, created a .md5 file from the cd. how do i compare now?

Description: CD #1 - Main installation CD
FileName: PCBSD-1.0rc2-x86-CD1.iso
Size: 668 MB

Mirror:

Show Link
Downloads: 34717
ISO MD5 Sum: 51762279C1A56D246D0B060F72B7DE8D

thatd be the sum you'd want to match.

the only reason i said to install things in that order was to make things more convenient in dealing with the bootloader. you could install windows | linux | pc-bsd but then if you wanted to keep the linux bootloader, you would have to tell pc-bsd to NOT install its bootloader and then open up the config file for the linux bootloader and add an entry for your new bsd installation so that you could boot to it.

I succeeded installing PC-BSD.
I installed Red Hat Linux 9 using the remaining 6660 MB that was left unpartitioned. Somehow, it didn't allow me to create /,/boot/,/swap together. I could create only two of these.
Error Message:
"boot disk may not meet booting constraints for your architecture Creation of a boot disk is highly encouraged" - when I try creating boot disk as the last partition.

So, I created / and /boot leaving /swap part untouched. After finishing the installation, I had to restart. It didn't do anything. It just loaded Winxp directly. Any suggessions?

How do I get back to Linux?

You'll have to edit your grub.conf (look in /etc/grub.conf) to contain the other versions of Linux.

If you continue to have problems with this, please create a new post with a detailed description (like GRUB problems) rather than continue attaching to this 3 year old thread.

what?!?

you're going to have to be quite a bit more descriptive.

but really, if you want it - no ones stopping you - start downloading. 😛

I am planning to learn Unix administration, please give a link where I can download free Red Hat Linux.