response 14 of 257:

Jan 27 08:09 UTC 1999

re resp:12
For a first-time Linux installation, I recommend the following:
hda1: /dos-win  for legacy programs - as small as you can get away with.
hda2: /boot  about 5MB for kernel images
hda3: swap  2x your installed system RAM
hda4: /  root partition - the rest of your drive.

The reason for the small /boot partition is to work around a limitation
in most BIOS, that all files used by the initial boot loader be located
below cyl 1024.  Since modern drives have many more cyl than that, it's
necessary to create a small partition which is entirely contained below
that line for your kernel images.
  On one of my systems, I also separate out a partition for /home, so
that my personal files aren't touched when I do a clean install of a new
distribution.
  If you are blessed with a huge HD, you might want to define two
partitions the size of your root partition.  Hold the second one spare,
so that you can install your next distribution there, and still be able
to boot into your old system, or mount your old root and refer to
configs and scripts you forgot you customized until you booted the new
system and discovered an old problem cropping up again...

response 16 of 257:

Jan 28 03:29 UTC 1999

The original 386bsd was basically a release of 4.4bsd done by William
Jolitz, as the berkeley/at&t lawsuite was being settled.  Bsdi started
up at just about this time as well, using the same 4.4bsd code base, but
they quickly diverged with their own set of drivers.  386bsd had a fair
number of bugs, and many people quickly released patches for it.  Jolitz
didn't do much more work, so after a while, the netbsd people gave up on
patching 386bsd, and made their own release.  The netbsd people went on
to support a number of other platforms besides the 386 family, but
weren't always real good about squashing minor reliability bugs on the
386, so another group, freebsd, started up, with the explicit mission to
concentrate on the 386 family and on reliability, instead of worrying
about experimental features and portability.  Openbsd started up last;
their goal was to combine some of the best features of freebsd and
netbsd (which had not diverged *that* much), and to put an emphasis on
security features to make it more vandal proof.

response 18 of 257:

Jan 29 07:45 UTC 1999

IMHO, chopping up a drive into multiple partitions, and trying to figure
out how to size each one, is a waste of time, and asking for problems.
the more partitions you have, the more potential out-of-space errors you
can get.  Separate partition for swap is a must, separate partition for
/boot is a must if your drive is > 1024 cyl, and the first time you do a
complete re-install of the latest distribution, I think you'll agree that
/home is good to have in a separate partition.  Other than that, let it
all fall into one root partition.

response 20 of 257:

Jan 30 05:18 UTC 1999

Look on the RedHat CD, in the /dosutils directory.  You may find something
called fips, which will shrink your win95 partition just like partition
magic.  READ THE DOCS! The version shipped with RH5.1 didn't support
FAT32, and I had to search the web for the update.  Make sure the one they
shipped with 5.2 includes FAT32 support. You only need 5mb below the
1024cyl line. If you insist on wasting 2/3 of your drive on Win95, then
plan on booting Linux from a floppy.
  For a first-time Linux user, I'd recommend RedHat.  The Slackware and
Debian releases aren't quite as plug-n-play as redhat is, so I believe
you'll have an easier time installing and configuring using the redhat
tools.  My personal favorite right now is SuSE, if for no other reason
than they finally fixed the backspace/delete issue!

response 22 of 257:

Jan 30 21:13 UTC 1999

What backspace/delete "fix"? I was under the impression it was a termcap
issue, and RedHat doesn't muck with mine.. Telnetting to mnut can, though..
(Just like the ^J == [enter] issue in party there).

SuSE looks interesting, but I understand the docs are still in German, and...
Cheapbytes didn't have it cheap at ALL..
 
I was thinking of getting the RH 5.2 stuff, archive diskset, Debian and
Turbo-Linux from there.. SuSE if they had it.. FreeBSD is said to be short
some "options" (whatever the hell that means). 
 
Frankly, if I get a new HDD, I'll need to reinstall ANYWAY, so.. I'm guessing
a selection might be useful.

response 24 of 257:

Jan 31 07:24 UTC 1999

There's a Keyboard-and-Console HOWTO out there, that tells you all the
places that need to be patched to give backspace and delete the
functions we are accustomed to in the DOS/Win world.  It's not just
termcap, it seems to be everywhere.  Just the other day, I discovered
another one: my roommates, who login to my machine for their e-mail
using procomm on their DOS machine, discovered that 'delete' acted like
backspace.  So now, I've got to find out how to get the Procomm vt100
emulation to send a different code for that key, and I've got to figure
out just what that code should be...  What puzzles me is why it's taken
this long for a distributor to include those patches.  Did Linus grow up
without a delete key, so he doesn't see this as important enough to
include in the standard kernel source?
 I just received a second CDrom in the mail today, containing SuSE 5.3. 
It's not the 5-disk set I got in the box, probably more like the basic
cheapBytes version.  BTW, Linux Central in Royal Oak also stamps out
single-CD versions of the major distributions.  They frequently show up
at the Washtenaw Linux Users Group with a stack of them to give away. 
I've got their version of RH 5.0, RH5.1, and SuSE 5.2.  It's their RH5.1
that I'm running on my laptop right now.  I'm willing to pass on any of
these to anyone who wants to try Linux or upgrade from an earlier
release.

  Re: the booting issue.  There's also a program called 'loadlin' which
allows you to store your kernel image on your DOS partition, and boot
linux from there.  I don't hear much about it lately, and it would be
slow, since you'd have to wait for DOS to boot, then run loadlin to
start the linux boot process, but it is there.  I used it to boot Linux
from dos when first installing RH5.0 on the laptop.

response 26 of 257:

Jan 31 08:58 UTC 1999

Argh!  I got ZipSlack to work with _very_ little effort
on the computer at work.  (It uses the loadlin program and
'pretends' that c:/linux = / , and seems like an easy
way to play around with linux.

On my machine at home, I installed it and tried to run
it, and it gets through 2 or 3 screens full of startup 
stuff, then gets hung up trying the same thing forever.
I can't quite make out what it's saying, because it's 
flashing by at great speed, but i could make out something
like '03:01: rw=0, want=2570??? limit=2064???'
Does anyone have any clues?

response 28 of 257:

Jan 31 15:15 UTC 1999

        Is this "Linux Central" you mention webwise? I was looking for a
        CD of the SuSE stuff, but cheapbytes sells only a multi-cd package
        & book combo.. I'd like to get a variety of linux/FreeBSD CD's
        so as to be able to switch over - over even install for others -
        and have much of what I already search the net for around..

        On another note, installing the new 2.2.1 kernel is becoming a
        real challenge. it appears that, not only does it use a different
        module-loading scheme (kmod instead of kerneld), but.. My system
        seems to NEVER have been using modules right under my ol' reliable
        2.0.35 kernel.. Lotsa' munged-up stuff, and I've been debugging
        and cleaning up the /etc/rc.d/* stuff as I go along.

        Oh, and I _STILL_ can't figure out wtf generates the
        /boot/module-info files.. Plus, I get exciting messages like this
        one (in /var/log/messages):

Jan 31 09:50:22 localhost modprobe: no dependency information for module:
"/dev/modem"

        Further, I've seen warnings that the 2.2.1 stuff - or the modutils
        - can break your 2.0.x stuff.. Could be the case in some places,
        here.. Still, I'll be damned if I can find a decent doc on the
        "Use & Feeding of /etc/conf.modules" - it's like everyone should
        already "know" it.

        Additionally, by the time you get all the libs and packages
        upgraded in support of the 2.2.1 kernel, you'll suddenly discover
        that some of yer stuff is now broken good & proper.. Xmahjongg
        went first; then pico; then pico was reborn; then glint (and
        friends) refused to play; and lately, after upgrading gpm, 'mc'
        has decided to scream and die. Oh, and you ain't seen fun until
        two distinct packages decide to argue over whom is going to update
        the same two programs - THAT was fun..

response 30 of 257:

Feb 2 03:36 UTC 1999

MODVERSIONS is an option in the kernel config.  Simply answering 'yes' to
the 'Config Kernel Modversions?' question as you do the 'make config'
would accomplish the same thing as commenting out the test as you did.

response 32 of 257:

Feb 2 20:58 UTC 1999

Re the above discussions on partitioning...my own practice is that if I'm
setting up a server, I seperate out /usr.  This does two things; it makes
backups easier to handle for me, and if /usr gets corrupted somehow the
machine will still boot, since the damage will be contained away from /. 
It's a good idea to have a seperate /var in this situation, too, for the
above reasons, and also so a full mail spool won't cripple the whole system. 
/home is another natural to split off, but on my system it's part of /usr. 
This is partially because of how I set up the machine.  I'm using old, small
disks; /, /var, and swap are partitions on the first drive, which is 130
megs.  /usr is the entire second drive, which is 450 megs.  Obviously you
have a lot of flexibility here if you know what you're doing, but it takes a
while to get a feel for how big each partition should be.

For my desktop machine, where I'll be the only user, these aren't issues, so I
generally make one big filesystem, so I don't run out of space as easily.  I
gig should be enough to experiment with Linux.  I used to use it extensively
on a 400 meg partition.  (Of course, on my current machine I have 1 gig for
Windows and 5 for Linux.) ;)

The swap space issue is a little less clear-cut than most people make it. 
2x the physical RAM is an okay starting point, but use your judgement.  If
you have an 8 meg machine, you may need more memory than this, so you might
want to make a 20 meg swap partition.  If you have 64 megs of RAM, you're
probably not ever going to need 128 megs of swap, unless you're doing
something amazingly heavy, like editing huge image files.  My 64 meg machine
has 64 megs of swap, and it rarely uses any of it.  (Let me tell you, a
machine that doesn't have to swap is *ungodly* fast.  If you're swapping a
lot, upgrade your RAM before you even think about a processor upgrade.)

response 34 of 257:

Feb 3 16:03 UTC 1999

        Hmm, check yer kernel's out, and distributions, too..

        From what I can see, they typically bypass the bios, and I've had
        to save space my removing all SORTS of different arch/
        directories.

response 36 of 257:

Feb 4 11:13 UTC 1999

At work, I run openbsd on a IIci, with 8M ram & 258 M disk.  I'd
consider that more or less a minimal system for 4.4bsd.  The IIci has a
68030.  The 68020 is similar, but lacks an MMU.  You need the MMU to run
unix.  The install setup with openbsd (and friends) uses a ram disk; so
8 M of ram is pretty much the minimun.  (It *might* run in 5 M; but
definitely won't work in 4 M.  I think the IIci takes memory in 4 M
increments.) The basic system seems to be about 90 M, including the
compiler.  There is some fat here; perhaps this could be trimmed down.
But it's cheaper timewise to just get a larger disk.  You could also try
this on a q700, which is basically a faster IIci.  In theory, X would
run on the IIci, but it would be really slow, and nobody seems to have
bothered putting work into frame buffer support for openbsd.  Besides
the macintosh line, you should also look at getting a cheap 386 system.
It's a lot easier to find peripherals for the isa bus.

The original Mac II's were shipped without MMU's, but could have one
plugged in after-market; so some will have that and some won't.  Apple
never sold any 68010 systems; but, if you ran across such a machine,
again, you'd need an MMU, support in the kernel for the MMU on the
machine, & it will be very slow by modern modern standards.  (The 68020
is, roughly, a 2mips processor; the 68010 is about a .5 mips processr,
or one quarter the speed.) The SUN-2 design was based on the 68010.  The
kernel that Sun sold on this machine was basically 4.2bsd.  The 68010
can address a maximum of 16M of ram; however, with the memory chips of
the time, 2M systems were most common.

The 68000 can't restart instructions after a page fault, so can't
support demand paging.  Systems based on the 68000 included the altos
68000 (that m-net used to run on), and the sun-1 design.  The altos ran
system III; the sun-1 ran unisoft unix, basically version 7 unix.
Neither of these versions of unix supported networking.  Networking came
in sometime after demand paging, so it would be very hard to find tcp/ip
in any version of unix for the 68000.  When the 68000 was popular,
networking most often meant uucp.

None of the 68000 macintoshes had MMU's, so getting a "real" version of
Unix to run is most unlikely.  Getting the "fork" primitive in Unix to
work basically requires having some form of memory mapping hardware.
Either that, or *really* fast swap I/O (which is what they actually did
do on one of the cray's.)

(The reason I used the IIci at work was not because of its outstanding
performance, but because it turned out to be easier to scrounge the
hardware and several ethernet adapters to put together a really cheap
router based on the IIci, than to put together the same thing with the
386.  I think this is because 386's were worth more $ at property
disposition.)