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Chapter261GATHERING PREINSTALLATION INFORMATION FIGURE 2-4The Windows Display applet FIGURE 2-5System POSTAfter the POST has completed,the BIOS looks for an operating system on a floppy,CD-ROM, or hard disk.Most settings used by the BIOS are configurable as they are stored on the CMOSchip,and after the POST has completed,most BIOSs allow you to choose these settings bypressing the Delete key,as shown in Figure 2-5.If you enter the BIOS setup utility,a screensimilar to Figure 2-6 appears where you can configure devices and observe hardware settings. The system BIOS setup utility looks very different from manufacturer to manufacturer; however, each utility roughly contains the same general types of information and con- figurations. NOTE
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Another Windows utility useful for gaining hardware information regarding your video cardand monitor is the Display applet of the Windows Control Panel,as shown in Figure 2-4.60Chapter 2PREPARING FOR LINUX INSTALLATION FIGURE 2-3The Windows Device ManagerTo access the Windows 95/98/Me Device Manager, simply navigate to the Startmenu, Settings, Control Panel, System, Device Manager.To access the Windows2000/XP/2003 Device Manager, simply navigate to the Start menu, Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager. NOTETo access the Windows Display applet information regarding your video card andmonitor, simply navigate to the Start menu, Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced. NOTEAlthough system manuals and the Windows Control Panel can be used to find informationabout your computer,recall that each computer stores configuration information in a CMOSchip on the computer mainboard.This information in the CMOS chip is read by the BIOSROM chip when the computer is first turned on to initialize peripherals and perform a power- on self test (POST).The POST displays output similar to Figure 2-5 when you first poweron the computer.
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Gathering Hardware InformationYou can use several tools and resources to fill in the hardware information sections of the pre- installation checklist.The computer manuals that are shipped with the computer system areone such resource;most computer manuals have the specifications of each computer compo- nent listed in a table at the rear of the book or inside the front cover.Also,you might alreadyhave the Windows operating system installed on the computer prior to installing Linux;inthis case,you can use common Windows utilities to view hardware information.The most com- prehensive of these utilities is the System Information tool,shown in Figure 2-2. The Windows Device Manager (in the System Applet of the Windows Control Panel) isanother utility that can display most of the required hardware information,as shown in Fig- ure 2-3. Chapter259GATHERING PREINSTALLATION INFORMATIONTo access the Windows System Information tool, simply navigate to the Start menu, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information. NOTE FIGURE 2-2The Windows System Information tool
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the computer s host name,Internet or network configuration parameters,and the softwarepackages that need to be installed to satisfy a certain use.Each of these are discussed in Chap- ter 3. Because there are many pieces of hardware and software information to document,it is goodform to complete a preinstallation checklist that contains all important installation informa- tion.At minimum,a preinstallation checklist should look something like Table 2-5. Table 2-5 Sample preinstallation checklistCPU (Type and MHz)Intel Pentium III 800Mhz RAM (MB)256MBKeyboard model and layout101-key keyboard connected to PS/2 portMouse model and deviceTwo-button Microsoft Intellimouse con- nected to COM 1 portHard disk type (Primary Master,and so on)Primary MasterHard disk size (MB)40GBHost namelocalhost.localdomainNetwork Card Internet Protocol Configuration DHCP:not used(IP address,Netmask,Gateway,DNS servers,IP address:192.168.6.188DHCP)Netmask:255.255.255.0Gateway:192.168.6.1DNS servers:200.10.2.1,200.10.82.79Packages to installGNOME desktopSambaSquidApacheGIMPEmacsVideo card make and modelATI Rage 128Video card RAM (MB)16MBMonitor make and modelSamsung Syncmaster 551sMonitor VSync and HSync RangesHSync:30 55KHzVSync:50 120Hz58Chapter 2PREPARING FOR LINUX INSTALLATION
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sufficient to run the Linux operating system,it is nonetheless important to ensure that a com- puter meets the minimum hardware requirements before performing an installation. These minimum installation requirements can be obtained from several sources.If the operat- ing system was obtained on CD-ROM,a printed manual or file on the CD-ROM mightspecify these requirements,but you can also find the minimum hardware requirements for mostoperating systems on the vendor s Web site.For the Red Hat Linux Fedora operating system, you can find the minimum hardware requirements at http://www.redhat.comor in Table 2-4. Table 2-4 Red Hat Fedora hardware requirementsCentral Processing Unit (CPU)Minimum:Pentium ClassRecommended:Pentium II 400MHzPhysical Memory Random Access Minimum for text-mode:128MBMemory (RAM)Minimum for graphical:256MBRecommended for graphical:512MB Disk Space Free (Hard Disk Drive)Minimum:900MB free spaceRecommended:3.4GB free spaceFull installation:7.5GB free space*Additional free space is required for any file storage or theinstallation of other software programs. Additional DrivesCD-ROM drive3.5-inch floppy disk drivePeripheral DevicesAll peripheral devices (for example,video cards,sound cards, network cards) must be Red Hat-compliant. Furthermore,each operating system supports only particular types of hardware components. Although some operating systems such as Linux support a wider variety of hardware compo- nents than other operating systems,each individual hardware component in your computershould be checked against the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)readily found on thevendor s Web site. Chapter257GATHERING PREINSTALLATION INFORMATIONFor Red Hat Linux, the HCL can be found on the Internet at http://www.redhat.com. NOTEIn addition to identifying hardware components to ensure that they are supported by theLinux operating system and meet minimum requirements,you should also identify the soft- ware components that will be used in the Linux operating system.These components include
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The screen image is refreshed several times per second to allow for changes or animation onthe screen;a higher refresh ratereduces the chances of images flickering on the screen.It isimportant to note that a refresh rate that is set too high can damage the monitor itself;it isimportant to ensure that the monitor can support the refresh rate configured on the videocard.Two types of refresh rates are available:HSync (horizontal refresh)andVSync (verticalrefresh),which are measured in Hertz (Hz). Keyboards and MiceVideo cards and monitors provide a method of viewing output,but there must be some meansof providing user input and direction;keyboards and mice are devices that provide this ability. Keyboards are one of the oldest and most common input devices,and consist of a normaltypewriter key set combined with special function keys allowing input to be sent to the com- puter.The number of additional function keys varies,giving keyboards anywhere from 84 toover 104 different keys in total.Most keyboards follow the standard QWERTY typewriter lay- out,but others offer a different key arrangement called Dvorak.Still others offer a split set keyarrangement,one set for each hand,and are termed ergonomic keyboards.Regardless of lay- out or number of keys,keyboards connect to the motherboard in a variety of ways: .A large circular AT five-pin connector .A small circular PS/2 six-pin connector .A USB connection .A wireless infrared or radio connectionA relatively newer device used with most computer systems is the computer mouse developedby Douglas C.Engelbart in the 1960s.Slow to gain popularity,mice are as common today askeyboards,and in many cases,they offer a faster and more versatile interface,which has led tothe phrase point and click. Without a mouse,you would need to communicate to a computervia a keyboard device only;you could only submit tasks for the computer to perform by typ- ing commands into a command-line interface.Mice allow versatility when using programsthat are graphical in nature;moving a mouse across a desk surface moves a cursor on the videoscreen in a similar path,and pressing one of the buttons displays action choices or executestasks.Mice can connect to the motherboard in a variety of ways: .A serial port .A small PS/2 six-pin connector .A USB connection .A wireless infrared or radio connectionGathering Preinstallation InformationAll operating systems require a certain minimum set of computer hardware requirements tofunction properly because an operating system is merely a series of software programs thatinteract with and control the computer hardware.Although most up-to-date hardware is 56Chapter 2PREPARING FOR LINUX INSTALLATION
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share IRQs if they are configured to do so.Each device must also have a small working area ofRAM where the CPU can pass information to and receive information from the device;thisworking area is known as the I/O address and must be unique for each device.I/O addressesare written in hexadecimal notation and indicate the range of memory used;an example of anI/O address is 0×300-31F. On older equipment (usually ISA),you had to manually configure the IRQ and I/O address; however,most peripherals today are Plug-and-Play (PnP)and can automatically assign thecorrect IRQ,I/O address,and DMA channel (if used) without any user intervention.For Plug- and-Play to work properly,the BIOS and operating system must support Plug-and-Play con- figurations.Today,Plug-and-Play support is standard on most computers and operatingsystems such as Linux. Video Adapter Cards and MonitorsVideo adapter cards(commonly referred to as video cards) are one of the most vital periph- eral components in a computer because they provide a graphical display for the user when con- nected to a monitor device.Video cards typically plug into a slot on the motherboard (forexample,ISA,PCI,AGP) but can also be part of the motherboard itself;these are called inte- grated video cards and are common today because they are less expensive to produce. Every display is made up of tiny dots or pixels;the more pixels that can be displayed,the sharperthe image.Typical systems today display a minimum of 800 pixels horizontally and 600 pixelsvertically;this is called the resolutionof the screen and can be simplified to 800 600 in ourexample.Each pixel can also represent a color.The total set of colors that you can display onthe screen is referred to as the color depthand most systems today display a color depth of atleast 16 million colors (also called 24-bit color depth). Both the color depth and resolution depend on how much RAM is on the video card.Mostvideo cards today come with 16MB of RAM on the card itself,which is enough to supportmost resolutions,but some video cards are configured to borrow RAM from the system main- board.Table 2-3 lists the maximum resolutions and color depth available with certain amountsof RAM. Table 2-3 Memory requirements for screen resolutions and color depthsVideo RAMResolutionColor Depth1MB1024 768256 colors (8-bit color) 800 60065,536 colors (16-bit color) 2MB1024 76865,536 colors (16-bit color) 800 60016 million colors (24-bit color) 4MB1024 76816 million colors (24-bit color) Chapter255UNDERSTANDING HARDWARE
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PS/2 portsare small,round connectors with six pins that typically connect keyboards andmice to the computer.Some computers might instead use a larger five-pin port to connect thekeyboard;this port is called an AT port and was used prior to PS/2 ports. COM ports(also called serial ports) are rectangular nine-pin connectors that can be used toconnect a variety of different peripherals to the mainboard,including mice,serial printers,scan- ners,and digital cameras.Today,COM ports are used far less than in the past because their trans- fer speed is quite slow;as a result,of the four COM ports commonly used (COM1,COM2, COM3,and COM4),today only ports for COM1 and COM2 are on most mainboards. In the past,printers have commonly used a rectangular 25-pin LPT port(also called a paral- lel port) for connection to the mainboard.Although there are two commonly used LPT ports(LPT1 and LPT2),most computers typically only have LPT1 available on their mainboards. Most peripheral components,such as keyboards,mice,printers,digital cameras,flash memorydrives,and scanners,now connect to the mainboard by means of a universal serial bus (USB) port rather than a serial or parallel port.USB version 2 allows a transfer speed of up to 480MBper second (most USB supports up to 12MB per second),and can be used with a device calleda USB hub to allow up to 127 different devices to connect to one USB port on the mainboard. Most computers come with two USB ports on the mainboard,and almost all USB devices canbe attached to the computer for the operating system to detect and use while the computer ispowered on.This feature is called hot-swapping and any device that can be attached to themainboard of a running computer is referred to as a hot-swappabledevice. Another hot-swappable variant of USB is IEEE 1394 (FireWire),which was developed byApple Computer Inc.,in 1995.FireWire version 2 supports a transfer speed of up to 800MBper second.As a result of supporting such high transfer speeds,FireWire is commonly used toconnect SCSI hard disks,scanners,flash memory drives,digital cameras,and CD-RW drivesto the computer. When considering laptop portable computers,a large number of connectors or ports mightincrease the physical size of the computer and decrease its portability.For these computers,Per- sonal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA)ports allow a smallcard to be inserted into the computer (usually less than 10.5mm thick) with the electronics nec- essary to provide a certain function.PCMCIA slots do not require much electricity,are hot- swappable,and are commonly used for network interface cards,modems,and expansionmemory.Another feature of laptop portable computers is Advanced Power Management(APM),which shuts off power to components such as PCMCIA devices if they are not beingused to save electricity. You can connect peripheral components to a computer via slots or ports on the mainboard ina wide variety of ways;however,each peripheral device must be maintained separately fromother devices on the system so that information does not cross paths when calculated by theCPU.This separation is obtained by two features of each peripheral component:the IRQ(Interrupt Request)and the Input/Output (I/O) address.The IRQ specifies a unique chan- nel to the CPU itself and these channels are labeled using the numbers 0 to 15.If two devicestry to use the same IRQ,a conflict occurs and neither device works;however,some devices can54Chapter 2PREPARING FOR LINUX INSTALLATION
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Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)slots only allow peripheral components an intercon- nect that transfers information at a speed of 8MHz and are much less common than otherslots because they are used to connect older components.Peripheral Component Intercon- nect (PCI)is a much newer bus connection that was introduced in 1995 and is the most com- mon type of slot found in computers today;it can transfer information at a speed of 33MHzand can use direct memory access (DMA).DMA allows a peripheral the ability to bypass theCPU and talk directly with other peripheral components to enhance performance;you can con- figure eight DMA channels to allow this ability.Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)is designedfor video card peripherals and allows a transfer speed of over 66MHz.It was not designed toreplace PCI,but to enhance video card operations and allow for faster access to system mem- ory for graphical functions.Figure 2-1 shows a mainboard with these slots. Chapter253UNDERSTANDING HARDWARE FIGURE 2-1Mainboard componentsOther peripherals might not have slots for peripherals on the mainboard;instead,they mightconnect via a cable to a port on the edge of the mainboard that is visible from the exterior ofthe computer (and,hence,difficult to see in Figure 2-1).These ports include the following: .PS/2 .COM (Serial) .LPT .USB .IEEE 1394 (FireWire) .PCMCIACMOSChipIDEcontroller slotsSIMMslotDIMMslotISAslotAGPslotProcessorslotPCIslot
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typical DVDs can read data over 16 times (16X) the speed of an audio CD.Most DVD andCD-ROM drives are connected to the main circuit boards in a computer via an AdvancedTechnology Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) that allows them to act like an IDE HDD. Typically,one of the four possible IDE devices in a computer is a DVD or CD-ROM driveand this drive must be configured using jumper switches on the DVD or CD-ROM driveitself in the same fashion as IDE hard disk drives. 52Chapter 2PREPARING FOR LINUX INSTALLATIONAlthough the data transfer rate of a DVD or CD-ROM drive is faster than that of afloppy or Zip drive, it is still slower than that of a HDD.If a DVD or CD-ROM drive isplaced on the same IDE channel as a HDD, it impacts and slows down the effectivedata transfer rate of the HDD;because of this, it is wise to place DVD and CD-ROMdrives on an IDE controller separate from any IDE HDDs. Many DVD and CD-ROM drives at the time of this writing can also write informationto DVD and CD-ROM discs respectively.These devices are called DVD-rewritable(DVD-RW) and compact disc-rewritable (CD-RW) drives. NOTEFlash memory drivesare a recent media type that use EEPROM chips to store information. They typically store more information than floppy disks and Zip disks,and some flash mem- ory drives can store more information than a CD-ROM.In addition,flash memory drives canbe plugged into the computer while the computer is on and can be removed in the same way; as a result,flash memory drives are quickly becoming a common medium for users who needto transfer files between computers. Mainboards and Peripheral ComponentsPrograms are loaded into physical memory and executed by the processor;however,some devicemust exist,that provides the interconnect between these hardware devices.This interconnect(also called a bus) is provided by a circuit board called the mainboardormotherboard.Thebus serves to connect common hardware components,such as the processor,physical memory, and disk drives,but also connects peripheral components,such as video cards,sound cards, andnetwork interface cards (NICs).Peripheral components commonly connect to the rest ofthe system by means of an Input-Output bus (also known as an I/O bus or expansion bus) thatis represented by different slots or ports on the mainboard itself;the three most common slotsfor peripheral devices include the following: .ISA .PCI .AGP
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