OK, here it is. I started a Gentoo universal, stage 3 install, on a new hdd, and couldn't finish (this stuff's way over my head). Anyway, I want to start over, with a clean hdd. All I have on it is what's leftover from the screwed up attempt. How do I clean my hdd so that it's totally empty? Is this the right category?
Cleaning out my HDD
- Thread starter TwoBills
- Start date
If you have another computer, add the HDD to it and reformat it. Otherwise, can't you just reformat it as part of the install, I'm sorry I don't use Gentoo so I am not sure of the latter.
Man, I'm a total noob at this stuff. I was following the Gentoo handbook and watching the strings of code going by, got to the point where I was about to move to a new enviroment, whatever the hell that means, when I started to get errors. Screwed up when I turned on a duplicate flag, I think.
If I go back and start at fdisk, and reformat my hdd, does that reset everything forward?
My biggest problem is the terminalogy. Jeez, it took me two days just to figure out what the # was for. Anybody got any recommendations for a real basic book on this stuff? Something that lays out the basic navigation and terminalogy. Seems that everything I've read starts at step 3 or something.
If I go back and start at fdisk, and reformat my hdd, does that reset everything forward?
My biggest problem is the terminalogy. Jeez, it took me two days just to figure out what the # was for. Anybody got any recommendations for a real basic book on this stuff? Something that lays out the basic navigation and terminalogy. Seems that everything I've read starts at step 3 or something.
For a decent introduction to Linux I always recommend looking at the guides at the linux documentation project
Of course it's best that you would have a Linux box avaible to follow along with stuff. It makes it easier to stick in your head (at least for me).
here is a decent "hands on" introduction to Linux. Shows the basics, introduction to terminology and will give you the ability to carry out basic tasks.
there is the bash guide for beginners Which introduces you to bash and simple bash scripting technics. Most of the administration stuff is taken care of by bash scripts, like the start up scripts are generally bash scripts. Helps out a lot when moving around on the command line.
here is a slightly more advanced guid. It's for Linux administrators and would be good for somebody already experianced with stuff, but maybe in a different OS.
That one teaches basics on how the OS works in general. Gives some hints and tips about what to do and what to look for. Doing basic backups and dealing with services and stuff.
I like tldp.org because it's mostly distro agnostic. What you see in their will be mostly applicable to all distros. Although when trying to figure stuff out it always pays to check out your distro's aviable documentation and look for distro specific howtos on the web incase your distro's maintainers have weird ideas or already setup a way to do some task easily.
There are lots of howtos and guides on the internet. Many geared towards newbies. Some try to be very basic, some try to be enternaining or geared towards "I want it done now and I don't realy care about the why or how" sort of person. Just google around. In tldp there are lots of specific howtos and mini-howtos that will be geared towards specific tasks. Such as getting a winmodem working, or setting up Apache web server.
there is also the linux dictionary
Oh and when you repartition or at least re-format your disk's partitions you wipe out all the files on those partitions (technically) so after you format everything you will be back to square one.
Formatting means to setup the underlyning structure of the filing system inside a partition. Partitioning means to setup the disk into sections that will be used as filing systems by your os. Linux you need a minimum of 2 partitions, root (/), and swap. Swap is used for swap space, that is when your memory runs out of room or whatever it will begin using the swap as "pretend" RAM. In windows this is done in a file inside one of your system's partitions/filing systems. (usually C
. In linux it's kept seperate.
But you can have more partitions. I like to setup a seperate /boot and a seperate /home partition. But it's up to you. But since you already have your partitions setup, just re-formatting them will wipe those files out and you restart there.
Good luck.
Of course it's best that you would have a Linux box avaible to follow along with stuff. It makes it easier to stick in your head (at least for me).
here is a decent "hands on" introduction to Linux. Shows the basics, introduction to terminology and will give you the ability to carry out basic tasks.
there is the bash guide for beginners Which introduces you to bash and simple bash scripting technics. Most of the administration stuff is taken care of by bash scripts, like the start up scripts are generally bash scripts. Helps out a lot when moving around on the command line.
here is a slightly more advanced guid. It's for Linux administrators and would be good for somebody already experianced with stuff, but maybe in a different OS.
That one teaches basics on how the OS works in general. Gives some hints and tips about what to do and what to look for. Doing basic backups and dealing with services and stuff.
I like tldp.org because it's mostly distro agnostic. What you see in their will be mostly applicable to all distros. Although when trying to figure stuff out it always pays to check out your distro's aviable documentation and look for distro specific howtos on the web incase your distro's maintainers have weird ideas or already setup a way to do some task easily.
There are lots of howtos and guides on the internet. Many geared towards newbies. Some try to be very basic, some try to be enternaining or geared towards "I want it done now and I don't realy care about the why or how" sort of person. Just google around. In tldp there are lots of specific howtos and mini-howtos that will be geared towards specific tasks. Such as getting a winmodem working, or setting up Apache web server.
there is also the linux dictionary
Oh and when you repartition or at least re-format your disk's partitions you wipe out all the files on those partitions (technically) so after you format everything you will be back to square one.
Formatting means to setup the underlyning structure of the filing system inside a partition. Partitioning means to setup the disk into sections that will be used as filing systems by your os. Linux you need a minimum of 2 partitions, root (/), and swap. Swap is used for swap space, that is when your memory runs out of room or whatever it will begin using the swap as "pretend" RAM. In windows this is done in a file inside one of your system's partitions/filing systems. (usually C
. In linux it's kept seperate.But you can have more partitions. I like to setup a seperate /boot and a seperate /home partition. But it's up to you. But since you already have your partitions setup, just re-formatting them will wipe those files out and you restart there.
Good luck.
Thanks, Drag. Tldp is what I was looking for. You've got me back in the game. I"ll be reformatting in a couple of days, after some heavy reading.
BTW, I've got 2 machines set up. I wouldn't even try it w/o.
BTW, I've got 2 machines set up. I wouldn't even try it w/o.
If you ever get stuck and you only have one machine, remember that the internet was around before you had GUI's.
Two realy popular text-based browsers are links (elinks) and lynx. Lynx is older fasioned, and elinks supports javascripting, frames, and even full-color images in a console if you have some hacked versions. So you can look up for help.
For instance links you type: links.
once it opens up you have a blank screen and you hit the "g" button and it will open up a url bar, type www.google.com there and press enter, there you go! There are menus accessable thru the F# buttons I beleive, including a help menu that will teach you the various buttons for scroll around (side to side and up and down) and moving from link to links.
Basicly you can use the arrow buttons.. --> or enter follows a link. <--- goes back. Up goes to the previous link in the page, and foward goes to the next. Space bar scrolls one page down... and I THINK that [ ] will scroll side to side. I forget the scroll up and down buttons. You may have to do ctrl-key combos. I forget.
(lots of webpages actually work decently with text browsers. some places have good enough webmasters that they program for accessability for blind people using braille computer screens)
Two realy popular text-based browsers are links (elinks) and lynx. Lynx is older fasioned, and elinks supports javascripting, frames, and even full-color images in a console if you have some hacked versions. So you can look up for help.
For instance links you type: links.
once it opens up you have a blank screen and you hit the "g" button and it will open up a url bar, type www.google.com there and press enter, there you go! There are menus accessable thru the F# buttons I beleive, including a help menu that will teach you the various buttons for scroll around (side to side and up and down) and moving from link to links.
Basicly you can use the arrow buttons.. --> or enter follows a link. <--- goes back. Up goes to the previous link in the page, and foward goes to the next. Space bar scrolls one page down... and I THINK that [ ] will scroll side to side. I forget the scroll up and down buttons. You may have to do ctrl-key combos. I forget.
(lots of webpages actually work decently with text browsers. some places have good enough webmasters that they program for accessability for blind people using braille computer screens)
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