Some Basic Questions Re: RedHat 8.0

[Dan]

After working with RedHat 8.0 for a couple of days I have some questions:

1. I have a dual boot, RedHat and WinXP. How do I select which OS is the "default?" It was a farirly straight-forward process in Mandrake 8.2 but I haven't figured out how to do it in RH8.

2. How do I mount the FAT32 partitions on my hard drive so that Linux can access my Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, mp3's, etc? Again, I figured it out in Mandrake but I can't seem to get a handle on it in RH8.

3. Any recommendations on a book or two that will help me get up to speed with Linux and/or RH? I looked at Amazon.com and my local Fry's and there's quite an assortment to choose from. However, I'm not sure if I should get a book about Linux in general or something specific to RH. Ordinarily I'd do the latter to start but everything I saw covers things like RH7.3. I've got a sense that the latest version of RH is sufficiently different from earlier versions to make that an unwise purchase.

One final thought about any books someone cares to recommend: I'm a "bottom line" guy. In other words, I lean more towards wanting to know what time it is rather than how to make a watch.

 

[mcveigh]

if i remeber right in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst the first entry is the default I think, if not the language is pretty clear about it.

edit:
the default= X option where X== the chainloader option for XP ( I think)

to mount windows fat32 drives you need to edit /etc/fstab

example line from my laptop
/dev/hda4......../data..............vfat...............defaults....................0 0

as for books tray running linux by Oreilly, the best but it is more indepth. I think my first linux book was one of those "linux for dummies" books.

Good luck!

 

[manly]

Red Hat Linux Manuals

 

[n0cmonkey]

Mounting fat32 drives should be something like "mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/crap"

 

[Dan]

Thanks for the replies. I'm off to see what sort of havoc I can create. 😀

 

[Dan]

Havoc I did wreck. 😱

I managed set it up so that I get to the graphical boot menu and can go no further. Anyway, after a few stabs at repairing the damage I booted up with my WinXP CD and resorted to "fixmbr." So, if nothing else, I can get into Windows.

I guess now I'll re-install RH. However, this time I'll make an emergency boot disk.

 

[SteelCityFan]

Thanks.. I was just about to do a google search on mounting fat partitions...

No need now..

 

[Dan]

Hey SteelCityFan: how did you make out using "linux rescue?" I figured I'd give that a shot before I do a reinstall. I'm at the command line:

-/bin/sh-2.05b#

I don't know where to go from there. Obviously, I'd rather do a repair rather than an install.