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Most of you will want to designate the remainder of the hard drive as the Linux partition, so that’s the assumption made in the remainder of this chapter. With Command (m for help): on your screen, select n for new partition. You’ll see the following:
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
Type p, and enter the partition number. If you’ve already installed a DOS or OS/2 partition, you’ll need to select the number 2, as partition number 1 is already is use:
Partition number (1-4): 2
If you’ve already installed a swap partition, you’ll need to designate this partition as 3.
You’ll then be asked where to place the partition and how large to make it. Generally speaking, you’ll want to place the partition immediately after the previous partition:
First cylinder (64-1010): 64
Your numbers will undoubtedly be different. The point here is that fdisk automatically lists the first unassigned cylinder here (in this case, it was cylinder 64), and you should go with that number.
You’ll then be asked how large you want to make the partition:
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (64-1010): 1010
Since Linux gives us the number of the last cylinder (1010), we’ll go with that. There are no advantages to creating more than one Linux partition, unless you’re using a very large hard drive (larger than 4 gigabytes).
NOTE: This won’t apply to most users, but Linux doesn’t do very well if it’s installed as a boot partition on cylinder 1023 or above. (This occurs with very large hard drives—1 gigabyte or larger.) This has nothing to do with Linux, but rather with the limitations in the PC’s BIOS. Subsequently, you should avoid installing the Linux boot partition on a partition containing this cylinder or higher.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure that this is a Linux boot partition so you can boot from the hard disk in the future via LILO. The t command toggles whether or not you want to use a partition as a boot partition. Type t, and then specify this partition (2) as the partition you want to boot from.
Fdisk will then ask for a command. You’ll need to make sure your changes are recorded, so select w, which writes the partition table to disk and then exits fdisk. After this is done, Linux gives you a command prompt (#) again. It’s now time to run the setup program.
OS/2 Partitions and the Linux Fdisk Command
If you’ve used the OS/2 FDISK command to create your Linux partition, now is the time to change the partition from an OS/2 partition to a Linux partition.
With the Linux fdisk command, you can change the current status of partitions by changing the tag. Using the Linux fdisk, you’ll change the tag of the OS/2 partition to a Linux native partition. In this instance, you’ll need to change the type of the partition. When you created this partition, it was set up as an OS/2 partition. However, Linux needs to know that this is a Linux partition, so you need to change the type with the t command:
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83
Linux supports a wide range of partition types, as you’d see if you typed L. However, you can take our word for it; 83 is the proper hex code for a Linux native partition.
Quit fdisk using w, making sure that your changes are written to disk. It will take a few seconds for this to happen.
Now comes the fun part: actually installing Linux. For this, you’ll run the setup command from a command line:
# setup
You’ll then see a menu with the following choices:
HELP Read the Slackware Setup Help file
KEYMAP Remap your keyboard if you're not using a US one
MAKE TAGS Experts may customize tagfiles to preselect files
ADDSWAP Set up your swap partition(s)
TARGET Set up your target partition
SOURCE Select source media
DISK SETS Decide which disk sets you wish to install
INSTALL Install selected disk sets
CONFIGURE Reconfigure your Linux system
EXIT Exit Slackware Linux Setup
You should first look through the help file, which is listed first. Some of the steps presented therein may assist you in the Linux installation process.
To move through the selections in this menu, you use the cursor (arrow) keys or type the first letter in each line (such as H for help).
Basically, the installation from CD-ROM is pretty simple. It follows these steps:
Each of these steps will be covered in its own section.
NOTE: Before you get started on the installation steps, you should know that the Slackware distribution of Linux supports many different keymaps for different languages and setups. If you want access to another language—say, German—or another keyboard layout—such as the Dvorak keyboard—you should select Keymap from the Setup menu.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, a lot of Linux installation involves an actual installation and then additional steps, telling Linux about the installation. This is certainly true if you’ve installed a swap partition. (If you have not, you can skip this step.) You’ve already installed the partition, made it active, and changed its type to a Linux swap partition. You again need to tell Linux about this partition. However, you don’t need to format this partition, as you’ve already done so with the mkswap command.
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