Fedora Linux

swap size. Although traditional wisdom dictates a swap size twice as large as the system memory, it's reasonable to give a system with more memory less swapspace, and a system with less memory more swapspace. If in doubt, use the traditional figure as a starting point, since it can be changed later. The swapspace should be at least as large as the installed RAM (Disk Druid will warn you if it is not).

Once you have configured all of the logical volumes, click OK in the Make LVM Volume Group window, and then click Next in the main Disk Druid window. Proceed with the installation as outlined in Chapter 1 .

10.2.2. How Does It Work?

Like most of the Fedora system administration tools, Disk Druid (and Anaconda) are largely written in Python and interface with other open source tools such as parted , libparted , and lvm .

The purpose of Disk Druid is to improve the installation experience by taking care of many of the partitioning, RAID configuration, and LVM setup details automatically.

While other partitioning tools such as fdisk and parted require the user to keep track of partition numbers and starting and ending locations, and to use cylinders as a unit of measure, Disk Druid handles partition numbering automatically (even including drive selection, where appropriate).

On a PC, the first sector of each disk drive stores a Master Boot Record (MBR). The last 64 bytes of the MBR contain a partition table , which can hold a maximum of four entries; each entry contains a starting and ending cylinder number, boot flag, and partition type code. If more than four partitions are required, one of the MBR entries is configured to point to an extended partition , which contains its own extended partition table . The extended partition table can contain a maximum of one partition entry and one additional extended partition entry, both of which must be located within the extended partition. In this way, any number of partitions may be created.

10.2.3. What About...

10.2.3.1. ...disk partitions on non-PC systems?

There are many different types of disklabels , or disk partition table types, used on different types of systems. Of particular note for Fedora users is the fact that Mac systems use a different, more capable disk partition table. parted is able to display, create, and manipulate nine different types of disklabels, including those for IBM AIX Unix systems, Macs, PCs (called msdos in the parted documentation), Sun systems, and many others.

10.2.4. Where Can I Learn More?

? The manpages for parted , fdisk , lvm , and mdadm

? The Anaconda project page: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/anaconda-installer/

? The Anaconda Wiki page: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda

10.3. Preparing Alternate Installation Media

The Fedora Core installation process is usually booted from CD or DVD, but it may also be booted from a USB flash disk or hard disk drive, or from a PXE boot server.

In addition, Fedora Core permits the use of an FTP or HTTP server as the package source during installation.

These alternate installation media must be specially prepared before use.

10.3.1. How Do I Do That?

Before preparing alternate boot media, check that the target system can boot from the media you wish to use. Examine the BIOS of the system on which Fedora will be installed to see if it supports booting from a USB flash drive or a PXE server; if not, select a different installation medium.

10.3.1.1. Preparing a USB drive

To configure a USB drive for booting, download the USB boot image by selecting a mirror site from the web page http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html and going to that mirror with a web browser. Select the directory for the desired Fedora Core version number (e.g., 6 ), then the directory for your machine architecture ( i386 , PPC , or x86_64 ), then select the os directory, and then select the images subdirectory. Download the file named diskboot.img (you can also find this in the /images directory of the Fedora Core DVD or the first disc of the CD set).  

The directory layout varies slightly among the mirror sites.

Once you have obtained the diskboot.img file, transfer it to your USB flash drive using a Linux system. First, insert the drive into the system; you should see an icon appear on the desktop.

This procedure will wipe out everything on your USB flash drive! Back up the drive contents before proceeding. 

Use the df command to determine the drive's device name:

$ df -h
Filesystem             Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on