Collecting Information About Your System

In order to be able to complete the installation procedure smoothly, you should collect certain information about your system before beginning the installation. Often the installation utility will be able to determine your system configuration automatically but when it fails to do so, you must be prepared to supply the needed information. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to terminate the installation procedure, obtain the information, and restart the installation.

Information You Need

Table 2.1 specifies the configuration information you need. To obtain this information, you can consult your system documentation and the documentation for any devices installed by you. If your documentation is missing or incomplete, you may need to contact your hardware vendor or manufacturer. Alternatively, you may be able to find the needed information on the manufacturer’s web site; use a search engine such as Yahoo! or AltaVista to discover the URL of the web site.

Table 2-1. Configuration Information Needed to Install Linux

Device

Information needed

Hard Drive(s)

The number, size, and type of each hard drive.

Which hard drive is first, second, and so on

Which adapter type (IDE or SCSI) is used by each drive.

For each IDE drive, whether or not the BIOS is set for LBA mode

RAM memory

The amount of installed RAM

CD-ROM Drive(s)

Which adapter type (IDE, SCSI, or other) is used by each drive

For each drive using a non-IDE, non-SCSI adapter, the make and ...

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