Subject: requests install advice (partitions): Wallstreet PBG3 233, YDL2.1
From: Andrew Stout (astout2@swarthmore.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 12 2002 - 02:44:15 MST
...Hi. I'm coming to Yellow Dog Linux after an almost- but not
quite- successful installation of LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 (installed, but
with X-server -related problems). I'm an undergrad computer science
major, so I'm moderately experienced with using Unix/Linux, but this
is more or less my first go at installing it on my personal computer.
My system:
Wallstreet Powerbook G3, 233Mhz
288Mb RAM (shipped with 32 back in the day)
18Gb hard drive (shipped with a 2Gb HD, which I replaced this fall)
not certain what the video card specs are, but they're whatever all
the other Wallstreets were, which proved to be a sticking point for
LinuxPPC.
I partitioned my hard drive right after installing it. It's got a
5Gb HFS+ partition holding MacOS 9.1 and MacOS X 10.0 (which is more
or less unused, as my little 233Mhz processor isn't quite powerful
enough for OS X), an 8Gb HFS standard partition intended to be
accessable from both Mac and Linux, and a 5Gb partition for the Linux
root. Also a 50Mb /boot partition, and four 128Mb swap partitions.
The /boot partition is not contiguous with the swap and / partitions,
which in retrospect was not such a good idea. A knowledgeable friend
of mine recommended that swap be between 1x and 2x the size of RAM,
and LinuxPPC said it couldn't handle swap partitions bigger than
128Mb. (But apparently it couldn't handle my video card, either.
grumble.)
I've scoured recent YDL list archives for indications that YDL will
go better than LinuxPPC on my machine, and I have now downloaded the
(fuji) .iso image and burned what appears to be a fully intact YDL
2.1 install CD, which I have not yet actually tried to use to install
YDL. (But it mounts on Mac, and it looks like everything is there.)
My questions:
1. From the online documentation it looks like the Yellow Dog
installer isn't gonna like that I've already partitioned my
disk...even the Custom install mode. Is this in fact the case? I
don't really want to back up everything I've got on this disk and
repartition. Is there a way to install without repartioning?
2. If I do have to repartiton (ugh), how much swap space do I want,
what's the limit on the size of a swap partition, and will the
installer let me make more than one?
3. Any other useful pointers? (At this point--having wrestled with
LinuxPPC on and off since October--I've grown a bit impatient to get
Linux up and functional, so if at all possible I'd like to get this
right in as few tries as possible, before I leave the country in a
few weeks...)
Thanks in advance,
Andrew Stout
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sat Jan 12 2002 - 02:59:15 MST