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<TITLE>4mb Laptop HOWTO: The Pre-installation Procedure</TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="s4">4. The Pre-installation Procedure</A> </H2>
<P>This section covers creating a swap partition and a temporary root partition
on the laptop's hard disk. Nothing here is Slackware-specific.
<H2><A NAME="sec:mulinuxprep"></A> <A NAME="ss4.1">4.1 muLinux Preparation</A>
</H2>
<P>If you are going to use only muLinux to for this procedure then you need
to prepare a disk with mkfs.ext2 and supporting libraries on it. From the muLinux
setup files uncompress USR.bz2 and mount it as a loop file-system. If you are
in the same directory as the USR file and you want to mount it as /tmpusr then
the sequence for this is:
<P>
<HR>
<PRE>
losetup /dev/loop0 USR
mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0 /tmpusr
</PRE>
<HR>
<P>>From there copy mkfs.ext2, libext2fs.so.2, libcomerr.so.2 and libuuid.so.1
onto a floppy.
<H2><A NAME="sec:preproot"></A> <A NAME="ss4.2">4.2 Prepare the installation root files.</A>
</H2>
<P>Select the root disk you want - I used the color one with no problems but
the text one would be slightly faster in these low memory conditions. Uncompress
the image and mount it as a loop device. The procedure is the same as in the
above section but the root disk image is a minix file-system.
<P>Next you need 3 1722 floppies or 4 1440 floppies with ext2 file-systems
- it's better with 1722 disks as you don't need to split the /lib directory.
Give one floppy twice the default number of inodes so it can take the /dev
directory. That's 432 nodes for a 1722 disk or 368 for a 1440. If you specify
/dev/fd0H1722 or /dev/fd0H1440 then you don't have to give any other parameters
so for a 1722 disk do
<P>
<HR>
<PRE>
mke2fs -N 432 /dev/fd0H1722
</PRE>
<HR>
<P>If you have mounted the root image as /tmproot and the destination floppy
as /floppy then cd to /tmproot. To copy the dev directory the command is
<P>
<HR>
<PRE>
cp -dpPR dev/* /floppy/
</PRE>
<HR>
<P>For the other directories with files in (bin, etc, lib, mnt, sbin, usr,
var) it's
<P>
<HR>
<PRE>
cp -dpPr directoryname/* /floppy/
</PRE>
<HR>
<P>Don't bother with the empty ones (floppy, proc, root, tag, tmp) because
you can simply create them on the laptop. boot and cdrom are soft links pointing
to /mnt/boot and /var/log/mount respectively - you can also create them on
the laptop.
<H2><A NAME="ss4.3">4.3 Create the partitions.</A>
</H2>
<H3>Mini-Linuces and ext2 file-systems - an important note. </H3>
<P>To save space, small-Linux designers sometimes use older libc5 librariesand
where they do use up-to-date libc6 they leave out may of the options compiled
into full distributions, including some optional features of the ext2 file-system.
This has two consequences:
<P>
<UL>
<LI>Trying to mount ext2 disks formatted using a modern Linux system can generate
error messages if you mount them read-write. Be sure to use the -r option when
mounting floppies on the laptops.</LI>
<LI>It is not wise to use the mkfs.ext2 that comes with the mini-Linux to create
file-systems on the partitions into which SlackWare will be installed. It should
only be used to create the file-system on the temporary root partition. Once
installation is complete this partition can be reformatted and re-used.</LI>
</UL>
<H3>Procedure </H3>
<P>If installing on an Aero, make sure the floppy drive is inserted before
switching on and do not remove it.
<P>
<OL>
<LI>Boot from the mini-Linux
<BLOCKQUOTE>With muLinux, wait until the boot-process complains about the small memory
space and offers the option of dropping into a shell - take that option and
work in the limited single-user mode it gives you. </BLOCKQUOTE>
</LI>
<LI>Use fdisk to create the partitions. </LI>
<LI>Reboot on leaving fdisk (with muLinux you may simply have to turn off and
on again at this point).</LI>
<LI>Use mkswap on the swap partition and then activate it (this will make muLinux
much happier).</LI>
<LI>If using muLinux then mount the extra floppy created in
<A HREF="#sec:mulinuxprep">muLinux Preparation</A>, copy mkfs.ext2
into /bin and the libraries into /lib.</LI>
<LI>Use mkfs.ext2 to create the file-system on the temporary root partition.</LI>
<LI>If you have been using SmallLinux, shut down and reboot using muLinux.
Don't forget to activate the swap partition again.</LI>
<LI>muLinux will have mounted the boot floppy on /startup - unmount it to free
the floppy drive.</LI>
<LI>Now mount the temporary root partition and copy onto it the contents of
the disks you created in
<A HREF="#sec:preproot">Prepare the installation root files</A>. Do not be alarmed by the error messages: if, for
example, you copy usr from the floppy to the temporary root partition by typing
"cp -dpPr usr/* /tmproot/" then you'll get the error message "cp: sr: no such
file or directory". Ignore this, nothing is wrong.</LI>
<LI>cd to the temporary root partition and create the empty folders (floppy,
proc, root, tag, tmp) and the soft links boot (pointing to mnt/boot) and cdrom
(to var/log/mount).</LI>
<LI>Unmount the temporary root partition - this syncs the disk.</LI>
<LI>You can simply turn off the machine now.</LI>
</OL>
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