Chapter 3. Installation and Initial Configuration
At this point, you should have your Linux distribution and have disk space set aside for Linux. In this chapter, we present a general overview of the installation process. Each distribution has its own installation instructions, but armed with the concepts presented here, you should be able to feel your way through any installation. Appendix A, lists sources of information for installation instructions and other help, if you’re at a total loss.
Different Linux distributions store files in different locations,
which can make it hard to describe how to administer Linux. For
instance, the same files may be found on Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian
systems, but they may be under the /etc
directory on one system and the /sbin
directory
on another. Gradually, the vendors are standardizing the set of
locations listed in a document called the
Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard, but in this book we’ll just try to deal
with lagging discrepancies by listing the locations of the most
important files in the version of each major distribution that we
checked.
Installing the Linux Software
After resizing your existing partitions to make space for Linux, you are ready to install the software. Here is a brief overview of the procedure:
Boot the Linux installation medium.
Run fdisk under Linux to create Linux partitions.
Run mke2fs and mkswap to create Linux filesystems and swap space. (You may need to use a different command than mke2fs if you want to install ...
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