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Chapter 20:
Installing Linux
run from a bootable "live" CD-ROM, which lets you run a fully functional build of
the Linux distribution, without affecting your computer's existing installed operating
system. If you like the Linux distribution, there is usually a simple procedure you can
run from within the live CD environment to install that distribution to the hard disk.
Because the focus of this chapter is server installations, this section will not cover
the details of building a dual-boot system. Anyone with a little experience in creating
partitions on a disk should be able to figure out how to build such a system. If you
are having difficulty, you can refer to the installation guide that came with your
distribution or one of the many beginners' guides to Linux.
To repartition a system that has already had Windows installed on it, without needing
to reformat the disk and rebuild from scratch, you can use a commercial software program
such as Norton's PartitionMagic.
Installing Fedora Linux
This section describes how to install Fedora Linux (version 10) on a stand-alone system.
The section takes a liberal approach to the process, installing all the tools possibly
relevant to server operations.
Before you begin the actual installation procedure, you need to decide how you will
run the installation program.
Choosing an Installation Method
With the improved connectivity and speed of both local area networks and Internet
connections, an increasingly popular option is to perform installations over the network,
rather than using a local CD-ROM. Network installations can be a great convenience
when installing a large number of hosts.
TIP
In UNIX (or Linux) parlance, a host is any computer on a network, regardless of whether the
computer is functioning as a server or as a workstation.
Typically, server installations aren't well suited to being automated, because
each server usually has a unique task and thus a slightly different configuration. For
example, a server dedicated to handling logging information sent to it over the network
will have especially large partitions set up for the appropriate logging directories. This
is in contrast to a file server that performs no logging of its own.
Because servers are not usually set up using a "one-size-fits-all" approach, the focus
in this section is exclusively on the technique for installing a system from a CD-ROM.
After you have gone through the installation process from a CD-ROM once, you will
find performing the network-based installations straightforward.