Installing Linux (Running Linux, 4th Edition)

B.3. Installing Linux

Okay, you have collected your hardware manuals and selected the Linux distribution to install (one that meets your requirements based on the hardware you have). This section guides you through a high-level view of what you need to do in order to successfully install Linux.

B.3.1. General Procedure

A typical Linux CD-ROM installation generally proceeds as follows:

Collect system hardware information to select the correct installation files and procedures. Look at your system hardware manuals or system administration manuals. Get bug reports and review the patches to the current software distribution that you will use to install your package. Collect current software installation documentation if you believe the information provided by the vendor is obsolete or incomplete.

Consider the size of your hard-disk drives and decide how they are (or will be) partitioned for Linux. Chapter 3 offers basic considerations for allocating disk space and partitioning, although you must adjust the numbers for Alpha. The installation utilities that you choose will support one or another disk-partitioning method, but cannot be used for all partitioning requirements.
Determine how you want Linux to boot when the installation is complete. This may affect your choice of installation method.
Choose your Linux installation method based on your hardware and its firmware, your disk-partitioning requirements, and Linux's booting behavior. For almost all installations, we think that SRM is the best firmware utility for loading Linux.
If you're not booting from CD-ROM then create the correct data diskettes (kernel image, and ramdisk image) diskettes for your system.
Configure your system hardware as needed to support the installation of Linux.
If you use the usual Milo installation procedure, create the correct Milo image diskette for your system.
Power up the system and access its console. If you are using MILO, you will need to load your Linux loader (usually the LINLOAD.EXE program, which is then used to load Milo). If you have Windows NT installed on your system, you can use the NT OSloader to load Milo; otherwise you will use system firmware to load a bootstrap loader that will then be used to prepare the system to install Linux.
If using Milo, use Milo to boot the kernel, and run the CD-ROM installation program.
Perform any additional disk partitioning and formatting for your system booting requirements.
Load additional Linux utilities, applications, compilers, and programming languages or libraries. Recompiling a current, stable release of the Linux kernel tailored to your system requirements is highly recommended.
When you are happy with your Linux installation, set it up to autoboot or boot from a boot manager selection menu. For some older systems, this may also require setting jumpers. Most systems require changes in the firmware console.

B.3.2. Preparing Software for Installation

Check the web site of the company that provided your CD-ROM distribution for bug reports, patches, and later versions of the software version you are installing. Also check the AlphaLinux web site for independent verification of bug fixes and patches.

If you are not booting from a CD-ROM, make the boot diskettes that you need for the Linux installation (2 for booting from SRM, 3 for booting from AlphaBIOS or ARC via MILO). To determine what diskette you may need for booting, visit the chart located on the AlphaLinux web site at:

http://www.linuxalpha.org/docs/systypes.txt

You can make the diskettes on an IBM PC/MS-DOS system by invoking RAWRITE.EXE to create image file disks or using dd under Unix.

B.3.3. Preparing Hardware for Installation

The key issues you have to consider with Alpha hardware are disk-drive partitions and filesystems and supported video adapters. During disk configuration, we recommend that you use basic fdisk tools for reliability rather than a GUI-based utility.

Your hardware manual will assist you in any required troubleshooting, such as providing beep code definitions. The UDB, for example, has a diagnostic LED character array that flashes a number or letter if a necessary firmware program in nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) or system ROM (SROM) error is detected on system boot.

WARNING: If your system has been idle for some time, make sure that the cooling fans are working. Overheating your system in the middle of firmware reconfiguration would be particularly annoying.

B.3.4. Setting Up the System Firmware to Start the Installation

Because we cannot possibly cover all BIOS configurations in this book, we give pointers in the following table on where to find detailed installation and configuration information for each type of firmware used with Milo.

Firmware	Location of information
ARC Console	http://www.linuxalpha.org/faq/alphabios-howto.html
AlphaBIOS	http://www.linuxalpha.org/faq/alphabios-howto.html
SRM	http://www.linuxalpha.org/faq/srm.html

B.3.5. Loading the Linux Boot Kernel

As we said earlier, there are two possible paths to follow in loading Linux on an Alpha system. We will cover the SRM path first, followed by the MILO path. We will not cover loading MILO from SRM.

When SRM console has finished initializing you should be presented with the following prompt (note that later systems prepend a P00 to this prompt):

>>

To see a list of devices that SRM recognizes, use the show dev command:

>> show dev

It's important to look through the list of devices that SRM recognizes to see if your boot device it visible, and to find out its name in SRM.

Now we are ready to load a Linux kernel and start the installation. The basic syntax used when booting from SRM is:

boot device -file file_name -flags "kernel flags"

The following directions show how to start the installation from the floppy drive.

Enter a command such as the following at the SRM prompt:
```
>> boot dva0 -file vmlinux.gz -flags "root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1"
```
In the above example we are assuming that the kernel is named vmlinux.gz, but this could differ based upon the distribution you are installing. It is important that the flags section be enclosed by double quotes. If they are not, the kernel will be passed only the first of the flags parameters.
When prompted, insert the root floppy disk that you created earlier and press the Enter key to continue.
Continue with the installation as directed by the distribution's software.

The following directions show how to start the installation from the CD-ROM drive.

Determine the CD-ROM device name using the show dev command described earlier. If your CD-ROM drive is SCSI, the name will start with dk. If it is IDE- based, the name will start with dq. For the sake of this discussion we'll assume the name to be dka400.
Start the CD-ROM installation using a command, such as the following:
```
>> boot dka400 -file vmlinux.gz -fl "root=/dev/sr0"
```
In the case of an IDE CD-ROM, you would also need to change the flags line to represent the Linux kernel's naming convention for IDE devices. Also note that many newer distributions set up a preconfigured boot selection in aboot. Consult your distribution's documentation for directions on using these boot selections.
Continue with the installation as directed by the distirution's software.

If you have chosen to boot the installation through MILO, you will see the Milo prompt after you have successfully configured your BIOS to load Milo:

MILO>

Because Milo is a microkernel, it has many options you may want to explore before bootstrapping the Linux kernel. To see Milo options, enter Milo's help command:

MILO> help

To see how Milo is configured up, what devices it knows, and the filesystems that it recognizes, enter the show command:

MILO> show

If everything looks fine, you can continue with the installation and load Linux from the prepared Linux kernel image.

Bootstrapping the kernel with Milo is very straightforward: one command.

To load the Linux kernel from the first disk drive, type the following:
```
MILO> boot fd0:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1
```
Note that this assumes you use the floppy image file that you prepared from a disk image file; Milo assumes an ext2 partition by default and that fd0 is the correct floppy drive. If you wanted to boot from an MS-DOS-formatted disk, such as the alternate disk previously prepared, you could enter:
```
MILO> boot fd0 -t msdos -fi vmlinux.gz load_ramdisk=1
```
Insert the ramdisk floppy when prompted.
Run your CD-ROM distribution's installation and configuration program.
After you finish installation, install Milo on a small disk partition on your machine to use for reconfiguring. If you want Milo to be able to load on booting, this partition must be a primary MS-DOS partition. You can create it using MS-DOS's or Window NT's fdisk command.