[PlanetCCRMA] FC8 basic install question

[Nigel Henry]

On Wednesday 09 January 2008 12:16, Oded Ben-Tal wrote:
> I am planning to take the plung and install FC8. Previously when I fell
> too far behinf the planet and upgraded (I'm currently at FC5) I replaced
> the existing linux with the new one. This time I want to install FC8
> without removing FC5 (at least till I have everythin working on FC8). So I
> would like a bit of advice about doing that.
> I currently have 2 partitions (+ a swap one)
> - Ext3 with FC5 (containing both root installations and home directories.
> I don't have a separate /root partition)
> - FAT32 partition for sharing with windows system
> So the first stage is creating another Ext3 partition for FC8, any
> suggestions how big should I make it?
> And after I install FC8, will I need some magic tricks to have grup
> identify the new version on a different partition?
> thanks
> Oded

Hi Oded. I have quite a lot of dual, and triple boot installs on my drives, 
and normally create both a / partition, and a /home for each of them. I would 
suggest about 12GB for the / partition, and if you going to have your /home 
within your / partition, as on your FC5 install, just add whatever you think 
you might need for the /home to the 12GB that I suggest for the / partition.

How much you allow for the /home partition depends very much on what you are 
going to use it for. If you have sufficient harddrive space I'd suggest a 
minimum of about 20GB for the /home. So added to the 12GB for the /, would 
give you a new partition size of 32GB.

About Grub:

For the 1st distro I install on a drive, I put Grub in the MBR, which is where 
your FC5's Grub will be. When I add a new distro to the drive, I put Grub for 
the new distro in the / partition for the new distro. That way your FC5's 
Grub in the MBR will not be overwritten.

You will have to be carefull when you get to the "Installing the bootloader" 
page with the F8 install, as the default is to put Grub in the MBR, but on 
that same page there is a box you can click to customize the bootloader. That 
takes you to another page where you can decide where the bootloader goes.

So for example, you have FC5's / partition as hda1, and the swap as hda2, so 
if you only create one big partition for your /, and /home with F8, the 
partition would be hda3 for F8's /, and this is where you want to put Grub.

The naming of partitions has changed since F7. They are now all named as scsi 
drives, so you will see the partitions as sda1, sda2, sda3, etc.

So far so good, and presuming your F8 install goes well (I have seen folks 
having problems installing F8) you now reboot. At the moment you will not be 
able to reboot F8, as the bootloader is in F8's / partition, so boot up FC5, 
su to root on the CLI (terminal), open a text editor, kwrite, gedit, etc, and 
go to /boot/grub/grub.conf.  You may find you only have /boot/grub/menu.lst, 
and that will do the same thing.

You will need to add a chainloader entry to the file. Grubs naming of drives 
is different, so hda in grub would be hd0. hda1 is hd0,0 , hda2 is hd0,1 etc, 
so if your F8's / is sda3, the lines you need to add to the file are as 
below.

title F8
root (hd0, 2)
chainloader +1

The (hd0,2)  is the same as hda3, or in the case of F7, and F8 sda3, but you 
need to use Grubs way of naming the drives.

Having added the above lines, changing (hd0,2) if your / partition is 
different, save the changes, close the editor, and the terminal, and reboot. 
You should now have a Grub menu for your FC5 kernels, and an F8 entry. Select 
the F8 one, and enter, and you will be taken to F8's Grub, where you can boot 
up F8 (hopefully).

All the best on the F8 install.

Nigel.