[wplug] Pure newbie questions

[Ivan Jager]

On 2002.10.03 17:36 Anna McCullough wrote:
> Hello all...
> 
> I found this newsgroup by following a link from Linux.org, and I'm
> hoping for a
> little direction.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 :)

Only 10 GB? :)

> 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.

You would need to download the binary only drivers from nvidia if you 
want 3D HW acceleration. The sound card is supported. I don't know 
about that modem... You could check the Linmodem HOWTO. I've never had 
trouble with any cd-rw. It should work. :) I've never used a zip drive, 
but I they are supposed to be supported. Not sure about USB though. 
Lots of scanners seem to be suported, but I never used any. I don't 
know if that particular one is supported.

> 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 :)

I used one of those cheap Conexant modems. It worked good enought, but 
I would still prefer a "real" modem.

> 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?

Just knowing that it is drive F in DOS we can't tell what it would be 
called in linux. :( In linux, the partitions names depend on what hard 
drive they are on, and what partition on the hard drive they are.

First you have the names of the hard drives. The primary HD on the 
first IDE is hda. The slave on the first IDE is hdb. The primary on the 
sencond IDE is hdc, and so on.

Then you have numbers for the partitions. 1-4 are for the 1st - 4th 
primary partitions respectively. Logical partitions start at 5.

So, the first partition on the master on the 1st IDE would be called 
hda1, the second one would be hda2 and so on. If you don't have 4 
primary partitions some numbers would be skiped. If you have logical 
partitions, then at least one of the primary partitions must be an 
extended partition.

I think I might not be too good at explaining this. :( I hope you 
understand it. Here is an example (my HD):

# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       243   1951866   83  Linux		 
(primary)
/dev/hda2           244       358    923737+  83  Linux		 
(primary)
/dev/hda3           359       601   1951897+  83  Linux		 
(primary)
/dev/hda4           602     10011  75585825    5  Extended
(Everything under this is a logical partition.)
/dev/hda5           602      1209   4883728+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6          1210      1817   4883728+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7          1818      1848    248976   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda8          1849      2715   6964146   83  Linux
/dev/hda9          2716      5147  19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/hda10         5148      7579  19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/hda11         7580     10011  19535008+  83  Linux

Since you have two hard drives you probably put the second one as a 
master on the second IDE, so it would probably be hdc, but I don't know 
what partition number the partition you made for linux would have.

I hope that helps,
Ivan