how i start linux intallation

asi2k7

i read so many material regarding intrallation of redhat 7.3 and also run the setup but i am still confused about intallation procedure(only partitioning the HDD )
i have 4 partition on 20GB HDD
which are C: D: E: F:
i make them by fdisk
C: is my primary and all other are extended
now i want to install
1)MS windows98
2)Red Hat7.3

*tell me about partition is they are correct or not
*which OS i install first MS windows98 or Red Hat7.3
*also tell me about mount point which intallation procedure ask me
*which loader is good LILO or GRUB etc.

hello,
1-create a free space "unalllocated"on the hard , this will be ur partition , include double ur ram size + 100MB for the /boot + the space u think u will use by linux.
2- install windows first
3-install linux , it will ask u for the patiotions , so as stated above
4- i didnt try lilo .
5-what do u mean by mount point .
note i installed fedora core 3 but i guess it will be the same procedure

asi2k7 said:

i read so many material regarding intrallation of redhat 7.3 and also run the setup but i am still confused about intallation procedure(only partitioning the HDD )
i have 4 partition on 20GB HDD
which are C: D: E: F:
i make them by fdisk
C: is my primary and all other are extended
now i want to install
1)MS windows98
2)Red Hat7.3

*tell me about partition is they are correct or not
*which OS i install first MS windows98 or Red Hat7.3
*also tell me about mount point which intallation procedure ask me
*which loader is good LILO or GRUB etc.

Click to expand...

For this first you have to delete your extended partitions and then you just make two partitions say d and e in your case and left the remaining space as unpartiotioned . so that when you start the linux installation it will automatically take that unpartitioned space as its premises

it doesnt matter which os you install first but as you look newbie install windows first and then linux as other way you hav e to install grub (bootloader) for dual booting

what mount points are you talking about ps describe as mount points are the points we create when we mount some alien filesystem on the filesystem of linux say when we mount windows on linux

ok:
do you mean that i delete my extended partition and leave some space for linux(unpartiotioned drive) start intallation am i right ?

mount point mean by (/) , (/boot) intallation procedure ask me for

and
thanx for your help

You must note that the linux filesystem does not work the same as the Windows filesystem. In linux you don't have different partitions accessible by letters ( C:, D: etc) and each partition with the files in a tree like in Windows. In linux you have the same tree-like filesystem, but you have only one root, denoted by "/". You can add another filesystem in this tree at any point you want, including at root ("/"), operations which is called mounting. Let me give you an example: if you want to see what files you have on a CD-ROM you have to create first a directory someplace, for example "/mnt/cdrom". Then you mount the cd-rom filesystem to this point in the linux filesystem tree and if you enter in the directory "/mnt/cdrom" you will see the content of the cd-rom. When you want to eject the cd-rom, you must first unmount the cd-rom filesystem.
Now, to your problem:
1. I recommend you to partition your disk first with fdisk and create your partitions for windows first and let the space you need for linux unpartitioned. For RedHat 7.3 I believe 2GB is more than enough, you may need more depending on what other applications you want to install.
2. Install Windows first, because if you install linux first windows will override your bootloader and as a linux beginner you don't want to reinstall the bootloader yet (altough it's not that hard).
3. Install linux. Linux will automatically detect the unpartitioned space. You need to create only 2 partitions: one ext2 or ext3 (better - but I dont remember if RH 7.3 supports ext3) and one swap. The size of swap is theoretically double your RAM size, but if you have more than 256 MB of RAM then 256 MB of swap will be enough.
4. Now, when linux asks what is the mounting point, it really asks where to put each created partition in the filesystem tree (except for swap). So what you want to do is to mount the ext2 partition you just created at "/" (root), since that will be the start of your linux filesystem.
Normally what each directory holds in any linux filesystem:
/boot - the boot loader
/bin and /sbin- core system programs
/usr/bin - some more system and user programs
/home - directories for each user account
/var - directory for logs and temporary stuff
/tmp - also temporary stuff

On a server installation, for ease of administration and security reasons you will normally find /, /boot, /var, /home assigned to different partitions, but for home use you need only one big / partition and a swap partition

5. If it helped, please click Helped

PS: Use Grub. It's better than Lilo, altough for you it won't make much difference...