158 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
158 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
INSTALL NOTES FOR LINUX v0.95a
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Jim Winstead Jr. - March 17, 1992
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This file contains basic instructions for installing Linux v0.95a.
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More detailed instructions are being written by others. Read
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alt.os.linux for details on this, and to see preliminary drafts.
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COPYRIGHT
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Linux 0.95a is NOT public domain software, but is copyrighted by Linus
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Torvalds (torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi). The copyright terms follow the
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GNU Copyleft. See the file COPYING from any GNU software package for
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the finer points. Note that the unistd library functions and all
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library functions written by Linus Torvalds are exempt from this
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copyright, and you may use them as you wish.
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INSTALLATION
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1) First, and absolutely the most important step, MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR
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SYSTEM! This system won't do anything nearly as nasty as coredump all
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over your harddrive (see 386BSD v0.0), but it is quite easy to
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accidently screw something up while installing.
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2) Test out the Linux v0.95a boot disk with the Linux v0.95a root
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disk. If you are unable to get the boot disk to work properly on
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your system, try posting to alt.os.linux, or contacting Linus.
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Notice that Linux (as of v0.95) contains an init/getty/login suite,
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and this will start up 'login' on the first four virtual consoles,
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accessed by Left-Alt-F[1234]. If you experience problems on one
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virtual console, it should be possible to switch to another one.
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(There is a good chance the backspace key will not work with
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/bin/sh on your first virtual console, as this how it often behaves
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on my machine. I've noticed that it usually works in the other
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virtual consoles, however.)
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3) Run the 'fdisk' program on the root floppy. This will tell you how
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each of your harddrives is partitioned. Note that the names of the
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hard drive partitions has changed from v0.12, and 'fdisk' now
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properly reports the new device names (unlike the fdisk with v0.95).
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If 'fdisk' tells you about any partitions at all, Linux can
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successfully read at least part of your harddisk, and you will most
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likely be able to install Linux on your harddrive.
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If you have used previous versions of Linux, you will notice that
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'fdisk' now recognizes extended partitions. Support for this in
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the kernel, however, is largely untested. If you're feeling brave,
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go ahead and try, and report any problems to Linus.
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4) Make sure you have a free (preferably primary) partition on your
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hard drive. If you want to repartition your harddrive, you can use
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the pfdisk program on the root floppy. See pfdisk.man in the
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/INSTALL directory for more details on using this program. (NOTE:
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you will need to know your hard drives disk geometry to use pfdisk.
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You can find this out by examining your CMOS setup on most computers.)
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5) If you have used pfdisk to change your partition table, be sure to
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reboot Linux now, so the new partition table will be recognized by
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Linux.
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6) Use 'fdisk' again to check the partitions on your hard drive, and
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use 'mkfs' to make a Linux (minix) filesystem on the partition you
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want to be using for Linux. The proper command is "mkfs
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/dev/hdX nnn" where X is the partition (i.e. a1, a2, b3, etc.) and
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nnn is the size in blocks (kilobytes) of the partition as reported
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by fdisk. You should be able to use the size of the partitions to
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tell them apart.
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7) Mount the new filesystem. This can be done by using "mount
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/dev/hdX /mnt", which will mount the partition into the directory
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/mnt.
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8) Run the script in /INSTALL called 'mktree'. This will create a
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bare directory tree built down from the specified directory. So,
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for a standard installation, you would use "mktree /mnt", which
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would build the bare directory tree starting from /mnt.
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9) Run the script in /INSTALL called 'mkdev'. This will create the
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standard Linux devices in the directory 'dev' in the specified
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directory. For a standard installtion, this would mean typing
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'mkdev /mnt' to create the devices in /mnt/dev.
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NOTE: This step is really optional, since the 'install' script
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(next step) will do this if it sees you haven't.
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10) Run the script in /INSTALL called 'install'. This will copy over
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the binary programs from the root disk to the directory tree on
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the specified directory. This means typing 'install /mnt' for a
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standard installation.
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NOTE: (for those upgrading from previous versions of Linux)
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The 'install' script uses the +interactive switch for copying
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files from /etc, which means you can tell it whether or not to
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overwrite any of these files. 'install' will also go through
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your /usr/bin and /bin directories and ask you if it should
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remove any incorrectly placed files. (Such as /bin/update and
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/bin/init, which have both been moved to /etc.)
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11) You should now have a complete (but very basic) root filesystem on
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your harddrive. To be able to boot from floppy with this as your
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root filesystem, you will have to edit the boot diskette. This is
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done by modifying the word at offset 508 (decimal) with a program
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such as Norton's Disk Editor, or use pboot.exe (available where
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you got this file, the boot disk and the root disk, hopefully.)
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This word is in 386-order (that is, least-significant byte first),
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which means it should look like one of the following:
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LSB MSB - device
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--------------------------
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01 03 - /dev/hda1 LSB = Least-Significant Byte
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02 03 - /dev/hda2 MSB = Most-Significant Byte
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03 03 - /dev/hda3
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04 03 - /dev/hda4
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41 03 - /dev/hdb1
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42 03 - /dev/hdb2
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43 03 - /dev/hdb3
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44 03 - /dev/hdb4
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The numbers are in hex, and if you're editing the boot diskette by
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hand, these two bytes should initially be 00 00 (and are followed
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by two non-zero bytes).
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Note that pboot.exe predates Linux 0.95a, so some of the
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information it presents is inaccurate (it refers to the old hd*
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naming scheme). The codes to use are as above, but with the most-
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significant byte first. (So /dev/hda1 = 0301, /dev/hda2 = 0302,
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etc.)
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12) You should now be able to boot from this diskette and it will use
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your new Linux partition as the root partition. You'll notice,
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however, that you can't do a whole lot with just the programs on
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the root diskette. You'll need to get further packages from
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whereever you got the root and boot diskettes, and read these from
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a floppy using tar and compress. (Simple instructions: Download
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the file to DOS, use rawrite to write the tar file to diskette.
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Use 'tar zxvf /dev/<floppy>' to read the file from floppy, where
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<floppy> is the appropriate floppy device. (PS0 is a 1.44 meg
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3.5" as A:, PS1 is a 1.44 meg as B:, at0 is a 1.2 meg as A:, at1
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is a 1.2 meg as B:.)
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13) Before you ever reboot your machine when it's running Linux, you
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should run 'sync'. This flushes Linux's disk buffers, making sure
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everything has been written to disk. Failing to do this could
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result in badly corrupted filesystems.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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These instructions are not the best, but should be enough to get you
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going. If you have more questions, either post on alt.os.linux, or
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send mail to me (jwinstea@jarthur.Claremont.EDU), or to Linus
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(torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi). Remember, the only stupid questions are
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the ones that you don't ask.
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