F7
Installation
Procedure
Assuming that you have partitioned your
hard drive, you need to change the BIOS settings on your computer to
allow it to boot from the CD/DVD drive first.
After you turn on the power to your computer, getting into the BIOS
configuration is typically
done by pressing either F2 or F12 after you see the initial
splash screen being displayed on the monitor.
boot Options
The next step is to insert the Fedora 7 DVD Disk into your
CD/DVD drive, and reboot the machine. A simple VGA splash screen
will appear, allowing you to install
or upgrade
in graphical
or text mode,
rescue an
installed system, or boot from a local drive.
It is important to note that you can also pass other
parameters the
kernel, such as setting the resolution. The option for doing so is
given by the hitting the Tab key. A list of boot options
is provided by Finley at http://stanton-finley.net/kernel-parameters.txt.
When I originally installed FC6 on a new Dell D620 laptop
(conveniently
given to me by the university a day after FC6 was released), the kernel
had a
bit of difficulty determining the appropriate resolution of the display
(1440 x 900), although Fedora 7 has had no such problems. If you are
having problems with the graphical installer on F7, you can
use the 'resolution=<width>x<height>'
option to
try and force a particular resolution. For example, you could boot with
'vmlinuz
initrd=initrd.img resolution=1024x768'. Regardless, select
the Install
or upgrade an exisiting system and hit Enter.
The boot process will then begin.
Testing
Media
Next
you will be prompted to
test the DVD media. I strongly recommend testing the DVD
to make sure that the disk will work (i.e., it has been burned
correctly). Hit OK,
followed by Test,
and the DVD will be checked for errors. If it passes,
you
will be given the opportunity to check additional disks if you burned
multiple copies of the DVD. When
you are finished testing, hit OK,
then use
the Right Arrow
to select Continue. Make
sure the Fedora 7 DVD is in the CD/DVD drive.
Selecting the
Language
and Keyboard Layout
The Red Hat/Fedora Core installer anaconda will
now fully load. Go ahead and hit Next
once the
Fedora splash screen appears, and choose your language and keyboard
selection. If you are in the United States, choosing English
(English) and U.S.
English, respectively, is probably a good idea, unless you
feel like trying to pick up a new language while simultaneously
learning a different keyboard layout. After you make
each selection, click Next.
Fresh Install
vs. Upgrade
You are now given an option as to whether or not you wish to perform a
fresh install of Fedora, or if you want to upgrade an existing
installation. Since I perform automatic backups of all
relevant data, I find it easiest to just install Fedora from scratch to
avoid any upgrade problems — which is not uncommon, even when using
another Linux distribution. Make
sure the Install
Fedora Core option is selected, and hit Next.
If you do not have a previous version of Fedora installed,
this screen may be skipped automatically.
Mounting and
Formating
Partitions
Even if you have not already partitioned your hard drive, it is
vitally
important that you do
not allow anaconda
to Remove linux
partitions on selected drives and create a default layout. Even
more so, do
not ever allow anaconda
to Remove all
partitions on selected drives and create a default layout,
unless you enjoy watching your Windows partition get blown away.
Justification for manually setting up your partitions, and
keeping your Windows partition is provided on the Partition Sizes and Dual Boot Options pages.
This implies that I do
not advise choosing
the Use free
space on selected drives and create default layout option
either. Instead,
select the Create
custom layout option, and hit Next.
If you have already partitioned your drive, you will only
have to set
mount points and re-format the partitions. If you have not
fully partitioned your hard drive yet, you will need to create new
primary and logical partitions, but you will be unable to do so if your
Windows partition is currently taking up the entire space on
your hard drive. In this case, you will need to use
an external tool to first resize the partition, such as PartitionMagic
8.0.1, gparted,
or qtparted.
See the Pre-Installation
Tasks page for details.
Since I typically tweek my partition sizes a bit
before
installing a fresh version of Fedora, my partitions are always created
ahead of time. To set the mount point, simply double click on
a partition, and type in the label for the Mount
Point based upon the partition size (i.e., /boot, /, /opt, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local, /var, /backup, and /home).
After typing in the mount point, click on the Format
partition as: option, and choose the ext3
partition (to enable file journaling for graceful recovery from system
crashes) for every partition except the SWAP
partition, which should be formatted as swap
(please note that you will not be able to set a mount point for the swap
partition). Your
NTFS partition, if you have one, should NOT be labeled or formatted!
Once the appropriate mount points and formatting options have
been set, hit OK,
and move to the next partition. After all partitions have
been configured, hit Next
and verify that each of the partitions have their mount point labeled
correctly and will be formated when the Format
Warnings window pops up. If you are satisfied,
click Format.
GRUB
I typically allow GRUB
(the GRand Unified Boot loader)to
be installed on the hard drive,
and am satisfied with it taking over the Master Boot Record, simply
because I always have a dual boot system on each of my computers, and
have never found a reason to remove Linux from any one of them.
Therefore, click on The
GRUB boot loader will be installed on ... option.
Next, decide which operating system you want to boot into by Default,
and click on the appropriate box. The "Other"
operating system is your NTFS Windows partition (if you have one), so
go ahead and double click
on it and change the label to "Windows
XP Professional", or whatever best describes what you
have. Click OK,
followed by Next.
Network Devices
Unfortunately, most Linux distributions do not recognize
many wireless cards, so do not be surprised if you cannot
configure your wireless network connection here. This is the
case for my Dell D620 laptop (and my server only uses an ethernet
connection), so we'll configure it later with some hacking once Fedora
is fully installed. If you have an ethernet card, you can set
the options for your ethernet connection by clicking Edit
when the eth0
device is selected. You will be given the option of setting
your IP
address, whether you want to enable only the IPV4
protocol, or if you also want to enable the IPV6
protocol. Since I am at a university, I have no current need for the
new IPV6
protocol, so I have unclicked it. I also have a dedicated IP
address, so I do not use DHCP
on my ethernet connection. Once you have set the options,
click OK,
and type in your Hostname
and Miscellaneous
Settings, if applicable (i.e., you are not using DHCP).
Then click Next.
Time
Click on the map location that is nearest to where you live (for me
this means choosing America/Los_Angeles
even though I am in Fresno), and unclick the System
clock uses UTC. This is because I also have a
Windows partition that interacts with the hardware clock, and the two
do not play nicely with each other if UTC is enabled. Click Next
to continue.
root Password
Enter your preferred root
password, but be sure to choose something that contains both alpha and
numeric characters, along with at least one special character to ensure
that it will not be easily cracked by other people trying to break into
your system. Click Next,
and you will see a message "Retrieving
installation information..."
Package
Installation
Options
The package installation page provides general groups of software that
can be installed. As I have already provided reasons why I
like to install everything when using Fedora (as discussed on the Fedora 7 Installation
page), click on the Software
Development and Web
server options, and click on the Customize
now button. Then click Next.
(We will deal with repositories later.)
Next you are presented with a dialog page that allows you to
select
more specific software groups and sub-groups, and even individual
packages if you click on the Optional
packages button. Since I like to install as much
of "Everything" as possible, the simplest way to do this is to click on
each of the groups (Desktop
Environments, Applications,
etc.) and right click
on each of the sub-groups (GNOME
Desktop Environment, KDE,
etc.) and choose the Select
all optional packages option. Even simpler, you
can highlight all of the sub-groups at once using the Shift
key and clicking on the bottom group, which means that you only
have to Select
all optional packages 5 times, based upon the number of
groups that are present. The only group that I do not do this
for is the Languages
group. I have absolutely no need for Assamese, Bulgarian, Southern Ndebele,
Xhosa,
Zulu,
or any other language besides English.
When you are finished selecting your packages, click Next.
You will see a message that says "Checking
dependencies in packages selected for installation...",
which will take a minute or two to complete, depending upon how many
packages you have chosen to install.
Package
Installation
This is your last chance to go back and make changes before reaching
the point of no return. If you are satisfied with your
configuration setup, click Next,
and anaconda
will begin the process of installing Fedora 7 onto your hard drive
after you hit Continue. You
will then see messages "Formatting
/ file system...", "Formatting
/backup file system...", etc., until all of the partitions
have been formatted, followed by "Transferring
install image to hard drive...", "Starting
install process. This may take several minutes...",
and "Preparing
transaction with installation source". Once
finished, click on Reboot,
and allow the computer to
reboot into Fedora 7.
Next up is the First Boot page.
