Looking for DOS install to download

[Flying Mullet]

I want to load Red Hat 7 on a computer, but the installation croaks on me. The computer that I am installing on has Windows Me on it, and I want to completely wipe if off of my computer, so it will be a Linux only machine. Well the install process has me point to a partition with DOS(in this case the hard drive is only one partition), as it says that it needs it to install Linux to a partition with DOS. My Me was doing bizzare stuff at the end of it's life and I'm wondering if it might have corrupted my DOS somehow. So I'm looking for a DOS install that I can download and put on a CD or floppy and then boot the computer from that to install a clean DOS, then Red Hat.

Any help would be appreciated, even if it's help as to why my Linux install is failing.

[Dr Unne]

You shouldn't need a partition with DOS to install Linux to. During the Linux install process doesn't it have a utility to let you repartition your drive? If you want a Linux-only drive, delete all the partitons on your drive and then create a new ext3 partition (or two or three), and a swap partition. I thought RH always had an option that would give you a "recommended" partition scheme too. If RH7 doesn't let you do that, maybe you should get an updated version of RH, because almost certainly, newer versions do that. By "DOS partition" I assume you mean FAT32, but installing Linux to a FAT32 partition = very bad, because FAT32 partitions don't store file permissions like ext3 or reiserfs or xfs partitions do.

[Flying Mullet]

The documentation says that it usually has an option for an auto-partition but my guess is that Me screwed the hell out of my hard drive, so I'm more than happy to axe it.

Is an ext3 partition similar to a Linus native partition?

EDIT: Also, if I have a 60gig drive(55 or so usable), what's a good set-up for the native partition, swap partitions, etc...

I hope you don't mind me asking but I'm clueless as to Linux, this is my first attempt at an install.

2nd EDIT: BTW, I have the partition options of
Linux swap
Linux native
Linux RAID
DOS 16-bit<32M
DOS 16-bit>=32M

[Dr Unne]

Partitioning is one of the most confusing things to get the hang of. Linux native is likely ext3, yeah. Not sure which version of RH you have exactly, but you should get to a screen like this: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.1-Manual/install-guide/s1-guimode-autopart.html Pick "Manually partition with Disk Druid." Then you should get to a screen like this: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.1-Manual/install-guide/s1-guimode-partitioning.html

You want to delete every partition that it lists. If it lists no partitions, because ME b0rked your drive or something, it doesn't matter. If you're unable to do this, then maybe your drive is physically damaged? It should let you list/delete partitions in Disk Druid. If not, there are other things you can try. Just make that list of partitions empty, however you can.

Then go to Add and add your new paritions. There are a lot of different schemes you can use. The RH recommended one is pretty good. The first partition on your drive should be an ext3 (native Linux) boot partition (mount point /boot), that should be at least 64 MB in my opinion, if not 100MB, since your drive is so huge, and more space can't hurt. You also need a swap partition (type Linux swap) that should be approximately 1.5-2 times however much RAM you have (so if you have 64 MB of RAM, make your swap be 96MB or 128MB or so). Finally a root partition (native Linux ext3, mount point / , size = the rest of your drive), which will hold all the files on your computer, except your boot files which'll be in /boot of course.

Once you're all done with that crap, it should format your new parititions for you. When it asks later where you want to install your boot loader (GRUB or LILO, either one), install it in the MBR (Master Boot Record), NOT in the /boot partition. Once you overwrite the MBR with GRUB or LILO, all traces of whatever ME did to your drive will be gone.

[Flying Mullet]

Awesome, this is good to know, thanks. :)

Yeah, I have a partition screen identical to the one that you linked to. It shows my FAT32 partition taking up the whole drive. I deleted that and added a boot partition using 1,000M, a root partition using 54,000M and a swap partition using 2,000M(I have 512M RAM) and that takes up pretty much all of my hard drive.

Now I've got my fingers crossed as I start the install...

[Dr Unne]

1,000 MB for a boot partition? That's way way too much. Not that it'll hurt anything, but that's a gig worth of space you're going to be wasting. :( You really don't need that much swap space either. The more RAM you have, the less swap space you need, even. If you have 512MB RAM, you shouldn't really need more than 512MB swap space. It's good to get the sizes right when you first install, because if you ever change you mind later, resizing your partitions is generally extremely dangerous, if it's even possible.

[Flying Mullet]

Hmm, okay, well other than splitting a partition for two later on will it hurt to leave the settings where they are, other than the wasted space? I can't think of how I would miss the space.

[Dr Unne]

Nah, it shouldn't hurt anything.

[Flying Mullet]

Cool, well it's formating away right now, and as I told it to check for back sectors/blocks, it'll take it a while to chug through 60 gigs. Good thing that I can leave it running while I work.

Thanks for your help.:)

[Flying Mullet]

Cool, well just an update, my install went off without any complications and I have a desktop running Linux now so I can learn the OS. I installed Red Hat 7 because my fiance has a "Linux for Dummies" book that came with Red Hat 7. Now I'm going to go through the book to learn the basic in's and out's of the OS so I can get comfortable with it.

Again, thanks for all of your help. :)

p.s. I'm double posting because I feel that the subject of this post is different than the previous post and I wanted it to be seperate.

[crono_logical]

I think I'd suffocate on a 60 GB HD, that's way too small for me :p

[Flying Mullet]

With all of my music and a few games on it, I think I was pushing 30 gigs, and that's the most storage space I've ever used on a computer.