I finally made the Switch to Linux...

[ant80]

After trying around for the past couple of weeks, I decided to connect the 120 and 160 drives to the ordinary pata connectors on my Gigabyte mobo. I installed Ubuntu linux v5.04 and it is running well.

I am starting to read the how-to's from www.linux.com and it has been very useful in helping me achieve a rudimentary understanding of the file system.

First off, I accessed the Device manager and I saw that it detected both the hard drives. I had initially erased the partition on the 160 and wanted to install the OS on the 120GB drive. But now I understand that I have to access the hard drive through the corresponding filename in /dev folder. There are too many and I can't figure which is which. My question is, how can I access the 2 hard drives and partition it appropriately?

Next, I need to install Azureus on the OS. I want to learn to compile it because I will need to do that again to the statistics program FSL. Since, as I understand it, different distributions have different locations where files are stored, how can I find where I need to store each file in Ubuntu? Also, I understand that I need to write the makefile. I don't have any experience writing makefiles, and I would greatly appreciate any help in this. How do I write the makefile, where do I store it, how do I compile the program?

Also, is java already installed with this OS? Or do I need to do it separately? That brings up another question of how to install Java if it isn't installed already. Should I download the rpm.bin file or just the ordinary .bin file?

There are a lot of other questions that are in my mind, but once I understand the file system and understand how to compile files, I think I'll be in good shape for the time being. I'd greatly appreciate any assistance. Thanks.
- Ananth

 

[Crusty]

For java, the easiest way is to download java-package, and fakeroot by doing sudo apt-get install java-package(fakeroot should be a dependancy). Then go download the right .bin file from http://java.sun.com. cd to the directory you downloaded the .bin file and do fakeroot make-jpkg <insert java file here>.bin This will create a .deb file in that same directory. Then just dpkg -i <insert deb filename here>.deb will install java for you.

As for makefiles, when you download the source, there should be a README file that will help you to compile it, you are going to need to install a java sdk kit instead of the jre though. I would just skip compiling Azeurus and stick with compiling a C/C++ program. Generally it's as easy as ./configure && make && make install, although sometimes there are specific instructions to do it.

 

[sourceninja]

If your using ubuntu, follow the instructions on ubuntuguide.org it will get you everything you are asking for the ubuntu way.

Its a very nice getting started tutorial for newbies.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: ant80
After trying around for the past couple of weeks, I decided to connect the 120 and 160 drives to the ordinary pata connectors on my Gigabyte mobo. I installed Ubuntu linux v5.04 and it is running well.

I am starting to read the how-to's from www.linux.com and it has been very useful in helping me achieve a rudimentary understanding of the file system.

First off, I accessed the Device manager and I saw that it detected both the hard drives. I had initially erased the partition on the 160 and wanted to install the OS on the 120GB drive. But now I understand that I have to access the hard drive through the corresponding filename in /dev folder. There are too many and I can't figure which is which. My question is, how can I access the 2 hard drives and partition it appropriately?

<SNIP>

There are a lot of other questions that are in my mind, but once I understand the file system and understand how to compile files, I think I'll be in good shape for the time being. I'd greatly appreciate any assistance. Thanks.
- Ananth

Hard drives are listed as /dev/hdxy where x is a, b, c, d, etc, designating each hard drive or non-writable (ROM) optical drive installed (/dev/sdx is used for SATA and SCSI drives as well as writable optical drives) as they are detected by the BIOS (a = primary-master, b = primary-slave, c = secondary-master, d = secondary-slave). y is a number designating each partition on that drive in order. Your first partition of the drive is 1, second is 2, etc.

So, your 120GB drive is likely /dev/hda while your first partition on that drive is /dev/hda1, second partition is /dev/hda2, etc, with the only difference being if the 2nd partition is a primary partition or part of the extended partition. The first partition of the extended partition is /dev/hda5 and additional partitions are numbered accordingly.

Your 160GB drive is then /dev/hdb if it is a slave of the primary IDE channel. If the 160GB drive is on the secondary IDE channel it will be labeled /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd.

I'll let someone else handle the compile and java questions (though I doubt it is in your best interest as a newb to compile programs), and I hope this helps more than it confuses...

 

[pack1]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
If your using ubuntu, follow the instructions on ubuntuguide.org it will get you everything you are asking for the ubuntu way.

Its a very nice getting started tutorial for newbies.

Also ubuntuforums.org was very helpful when I tried the distro out. Use the search, most likely someone has already asked the questions you have or fixed the problems you might encounter.

 

[daniel49]

if you follow thier instructions for adding repos at
http://ubuntuguide.org/

you will see a package for j2re...basically point and click bout 30 mb worth.

most other common questions are addressed there.

 

[ant80]

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
Hard drives are listed as /dev/hdxy where x is a, b, c, d, etc, designating each hard drive or non-writable (ROM) optical drive installed (/dev/sdx is used for SATA and SCSI drives as well as writable optical drives) as they are detected by the BIOS (a = primary-master, b = primary-slave, c = secondary-master, d = secondary-slave). y is a number designating each partition on that drive in order. Your first partition of the drive is 1, second is 2, etc.

So, your 120GB drive is likely /dev/hda while your first partition on that drive is /dev/hda1, second partition is /dev/hda2, etc, with the only difference being if the 2nd partition is a primary partition or part of the extended partition. The first partition of the extended partition is /dev/hda5 and additional partitions are numbered accordingly.

Your 160GB drive is then /dev/hdb if it is a slave of the primary IDE channel. If the 160GB drive is on the secondary IDE channel it will be labeled /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd.

I'll let someone else handle the compile and java questions (though I doubt it is in your best interest as a newb to compile programs), and I hope this helps more than it confuses...

Folks, thanks for all your comments. I have gotten azureus to work now and I understand how to access the hard drives from thanks to Annonymous User's comments.

How do I partition the hard drive? When I do a df -h, as was shown in one of the guides, I get the following.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1 109G 5.3G 98G 6% /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /dev/shm
/dev 109G 5.3G 98G 6% /.dev
none 5.0M 2.8M 2.3M 55% /dev

So I assume only the 120GB hard drive is actually partitioned and formatted. HOw do I partition the 160GB hard drive? I only have a rudimentary understanding of the file system, and I don't know a lot of things. So what commands do I use, how should I partition the HDD, etc.

Next, in windows, there is a program called winrar that allows me to divide large files up into several pieces. Is there a program that would read those divided pieces in linux? How would I install it? The archive manager doesn't seem to be able to recognize the format.

Next, I tried to download Samba, andI downloaded the file called samba-latest.tar.gz. I used the command tar xzvf samba-latest.tar.gz as was shown in the How-to compile programs hosted on www.linux.com. However, though I have read through the entire package, I don't know what the next step is. Could someone please help me with this? Thanks.
- Ananth

 

[daniel49]

I dunno but if you follow repo instructions above you can get samba also without having to worry about compiling it.

 

[Crusty]

Learn to use aptitude, it's the best part of using a debian based distro. To install samba, you just do, sudo apt-get install samba

It's 10000000000000000000x easier then compiling samba from source.

To partition a hard drive, just use fdisk.

fdisk /dev/hdc

That is assuming your 160gb drive is your Secondary Master drive on your IDE channels.

Once you get it partitioned, you can use mkfs.ext3 (i think) to create the filesystems.

 

[lucky9]

I run (among others) Kanotix and Simply Mepis as my primary OS's. Both have Synaptic available and it's great for installing things. 'Course it's in KDE not Gnome, but the functionality should be the same for Aptitude in Gnome. And APT is a great command line tool for installing packages.

 

[Crusty]

synaptic is also a GTK program. aptitude is the ncurses version, and apt- is the cli version.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: ant80

Folks, thanks for all your comments. I have gotten azureus to work now and I understand how to access the hard drives from thanks to Annonymous User's comments.

How do I partition the hard drive? When I do a df -h, as was shown in one of the guides, I get the following.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1 109G 5.3G 98G 6% /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /dev/shm
/dev 109G 5.3G 98G 6% /.dev
none 5.0M 2.8M 2.3M 55% /dev

So I assume only the 120GB hard drive is actually partitioned and formatted. HOw do I partition the 160GB hard drive? I only have a rudimentary understanding of the file system, and I don't know a lot of things. So what commands do I use, how should I partition the HDD, etc.

Next, in windows, there is a program called winrar that allows me to divide large files up into several pieces. Is there a program that would read those divided pieces in linux? How would I install it? The archive manager doesn't seem to be able to recognize the format.

Next, I tried to download Samba, andI downloaded the file called samba-latest.tar.gz. I used the command tar xzvf samba-latest.tar.gz as was shown in the How-to compile programs hosted on www.linux.com. However, though I have read through the entire package, I don't know what the next step is. Could someone please help me with this? Thanks.
- Ananth

Like it has been mentioned, just try fdisk on the partitions if it's not automagically configured. You may want to run a "cat /etc/fstab" to see what has been automagically configured for you disk devices. When you configure through fdisk or whatever utility, and partition the harddrive you can either manually mount the partition to a folder, IE "mount /dev/hdb1 /home/<your user ID>/mystuff"

Or you can make an entry in the /etc/fstab so it will mount at boot time.

There also appears to be a RAR 3.50 beta for Linux, so you may be in luck.


Edit: It is CLI only though, but it should work. I've never used anything to break up files, compressing always does the trick for me.

 

[Carl Uman]

df will not (FAIK) show unmounted partitions. So if you can't find the list storage devices do...
fdisk -l

Now use fdisk to partition them as you want.

I went down a similar path as you. I wanted linux and did an install from Mepis (very easy). Ok so now I have linux what do I do? I broke everything and couldn't figure out how to fix. I switched to Gentoo and beat my head for a few days getting it installed. I got everything setup using guides and help from the forums and now I have a much better understanding. So far I've been able to fix nearly everything I've broke and I'm now working on a web server