advice please

[Janina Sajka]

Hi:

Looks like an OK plan to me mostly. A few comments:

You need swap. It's just a good idea. Rule of thumb is double your RAM to get its size. So, you should do 512. Will you
need it all? Probably not--but when you start messing with accessible GNOME later this year, you might appreciate it.
And, if you start editing wav files, you'll appreciate it.

I know Red Hat does a separate / and /boot. I do not and haven't had a problem. I have 256mB in slash, and am just over
50% full. But, I symbolically link my /var/ftp, /var/www, and /var/spool/mail to directories on /home for a reason I
will provide below.

You should absolutely have /usr and /home as separate partitions. I also symlink /usr/local to a directory in my /home
for the same reason as alluded above. Namely, if /home is fully separate from / and /usr, it becomes very easy to
upgrade your OS, even easy to reinstall from scratch without losing data. I simply backup /etc to /home/bk/etc (plus a
few other key files), and I have no compunctions about reformatting / and /usr to upgrade, whenever I like.

About booting and lilo: You'll get the choice of mbr or first partition for lilo when you install. Select mbr. You'll be
asked to provide labels for "other bootable partitions" meaning your Windows partition. Call it whatever you like. That
makes it bootable from lilo.

The lilo prompt then becomes the first thing you deal with when booting. You can make it accessible in several ways--a
couple of beeps from /boot/message help. You can get this by doing:

echo -e \a "Welcome to Linux!" \a >/boot/message


Also, if you're using a serial speech synth, lilo can say "boot" for you as you get to the lilo prompt by having the
following line in your lilo.conf:

serial=0,9600N8

assuming that your synth is on the first serial port.

Your lilo.conf file will have a default. If you do nothing, after a time out period, the default is booted.

You can have alias designations for your various boot images. I use single character alias designations. So, when I boot
with a litetalk, in just type l and press enter. When I boot with a Transport, I press t and enter. When I want Windows,
I type "dos" and press enter.

I've attached my lilo.conf to give you an idea.

PS: my vga= is specific to my video, but it gives me screens of 48 lines and 135 chars.

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Cecil H. Whitley wrote:

> Hi,
> I am in the process of readying my home machine for skipjack (latest redhat beta).  It already has windows 98 loaded.  The drive currently looks like:
> primary partition (c:) 3gb
> unallocated space 25gb
> extended partition (10gb)
> logical drive (d:) 10gb
> 
> In the currently unallocated space I expect to place:
> swap (256mb) **I have 256mb ram, do I need swap?**
> /boot (100mb)
> / (512mb)
> I will split the remainder between /usr and /home or I could join /usr and slash if appropriate, does /var need to be in the first 4096mb/1024 cyls?  
> 
> What pitfalls await?  How and where do I put lilo?  How do I choose between windows and linux when booting?  Do I always boot to windows and then lilo to linux?  Clarification would be greatly appreciated!  Oh yeah, and where in the initial config do I  change the settings to have it operate properly.  I have partition magic and so I can move the partitions if needed.  
> 
> Regards,
> Cecil Whitley

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org
-------------- next part --------------
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
compact
prompt
timeout=500
message=/boot/message
lba32
default=current
serial=0,9600N8

image=/boot/vmlinuz-new
label = new
alias = n
vga=0X317
#initrd=/boot/initrd.img-new
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=current
alias = c
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=express
alias = x
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "speakup_synth=dectlk hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=litetalk
alias = l
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "speakup_synth=ltlk hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=bns
alias = b
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "speakup_synth=bns hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label=transport
alias=t
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
vga=0X317
	read-only
	root=/dev/hda1
	append="speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0 hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=vmware
alias = v
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda1

image = /boot/vmlinuz-previous
label=previous
alias = p
vga=0X317
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-previous
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
append = "hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi"

other=/dev/hda3
optional
label=dos