[wplug] Pure newbie questions

Jonathan Billings jsbillings at mac.com
Thu Oct 3 18:50:06 EDT 2002


On Thursday, October 3, 2002, at 05:36  PM, Anna McCullough wrote:
>
> I'm completly new to the world of the penguin, folks, and I'm asking 
> your
> patience in advance. I know I'm going to be asking what will appear to 
> be
> completely stupid questions! I want to install Linux on my new 
> computer in the
> very near future; I'm not at all knowledgeable about this OS and I'm 
> looking for
> a place where I can ask questions when needed.

Welcome.

> I'm currently running a home-built 900 mhz system (Intel Socket 370) 
> with 512
> megs of RAM and this machine is currently dual-booting Win98 and 
> WinXP. I have a
> total of 80 gigs of drive space (two 40 gig HD's), with ten of those 
> completely
> unformatted and set aside, so to speak, for my upcoming dip in the 
> Linux pool :)
>
> It has NVidia TNT2 video and C-Media soundcard on board the mobo, as 
> well as a
> PCTEL riser-card modem and a TDK cd/rw drive, plus an external USB 100 
> meg Zip
> disk. I also have a SCSI UMAX Astra 1200S scanner - great machine! I
> *think* I'm okay with the video and sound in a Linux install, 
> particularly
> RedHat - but I'm not at all sure about the rest.

Sounds good so far.  Redhat should be able to detect the video and 
sound, and the zip disk should just show up as a 'mass storage' device 
when used.  We'll get the the PCTel modem later.

> Has anyone had any success with a modem like this, especially, and is 
> there a
> way to tell a modem that doesn't have support from the manufacturer 
> for Linux
> that it should be able to work anyhow?? Granted, replacing the modem 
> for a more
> Linux-friendly model is a no-brainer but hey, I'm up for learning 
> stuff :)

The PCTel modem is a winmodem.  But not all hope is lost, there are 
drivers for the PCTel modems, check out 
http://linux-sxs.org/pctel.html.  This'll require some hackery, so be 
forwarned.

> And for a totally raw newbie question - how does Linux refer to 
> drives? When I
> tell this program to jump into the unformatted ten-gigs (my machine 
> currently
> has physical drives of C, D, and E from a DOS standpoint, with the 
> blank part
> the potential drive F) - what's the designation I should be looking at?

Well, linux sees IDE disks like this:  there are 4 possible primary 
partitions on a disk.  You probably have C as the first primary 
partition.  D and E may also be primary partitions.  You may either 
make one last primary partition, or create an extended partition, which 
allows you to add more than 4 partitions.  in the extended partition, 
you can create logical partitions.

So, linux sees the first primary partition on the master IDE as 
/dev/hda1.  The second is /dev/hda2, third /dev/hda3 and the fourth 
/dev/hda4.  Now, if there is an extended partition, then the logical 
partitions start at /dev/hda5, and you can create up to /dev/hda16.

> Thanks much for any help, and apologies if these questions are
> kindergarten-level. I haven't even taken my first steps in Linux yet 
> besides
> buying a book, so there's so much to learn :)
>
> Cheers,
> Anna McCullough

We all have to start somewhere.  Plus, I think everyone needs to be 
familiar with the basics of IDE partitioning.

Jonathan




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