Linux Experience: None.

Situation: I bought a dual PIII server via eBay. Runs wonderfully. It's running Redhat 7.3 - well was running Redhat 7.3. I was locked out of it, having no idea what the root pw was. Contacted the seller and he had no idea, b/c he buys these older servers in bulk and resells them. I was told to install Fedora Core 2, get a shell and break in that way. I did all the above, except successfully break in.

There were two failures during boot, one I am unsure of and the other I know for certain (pardon my crude verbage, and omission of information) was telling me that the file system was not recognized.

I would like to do the following:
1. Reformat the drives from scratch (two, both SCSI)
2. Do a totally new install of Fedora - NOT AN UPGRADE FROM REDHAT 7.3.
3. Mess it up learning it, rinse, repeat.

Can anyone refer me to a by-the-numbers read on this subject. with respect to Unix experts, I need it dumbed down as much as you can until I begin to conceptualize this completely new environment. I am a Windows user formerly and eager to screw up all of my machines installing Linux. But, I need someone to begin and the -- ah -- beginning or point me towarda book that does.

With regard for your time invested in my hassles,

Scott

Welcome to LQ.

Just stick the first CD in the drive and follow the on screen instructions. When you get to the section for setting up the partitions just elect to format them all.

Thank you for the quick reply. I will do as I'm told.

Who was the seller? Haha goodluck ::smile::!

I don't suppose you or your collegues know of a Linux book that I should get that talks to me in terms of "A-B-C, 1-2-3" type vernacular?

I really like "The Red Hat Linux Bible" by Christopher Negus as a start point. It's well written, new editions come out to keep up with the latest software, and it manages to address almost all of the topics a newbie might be interested in.

Red Hat have a set of Guides written for their Enterprise line which also provide a reasonable overview of things for new system administrators. These are free downloads.

Once you have got the big picture you should look at documentation relating to the specific software you are interested in. These days most of the big name open source projects have professional-grade documentation on their Web sites.

Gotcha. Just grab'd it via eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...e=STRK:MEWN:IT

Thanks for the prompt replies gents. I look forward to leeching somemore going forward.

ok that almost sounded like a singles ad, sorry. I am new, (of course) an cant seem to get a cd to install. Any new program. And I cant seem to find how to burn music to a library. Please help. Hmmm and by the way, is there a Linux for Dummies book?

Tabbikat:

It's better (and recommended) to post each question as a new thread because more people will see it, rather than adding new queries to an existing one.

It's also worth specifying the distribution that you use (you'll notice there's a field in your profile for this). There are a lot of books around for new users, each of which tends to use a particular Linux distribution, and I don't know which distro you've got

IIRC, the "Linux for Dummies" book is written for Fedora Core, and I didn't find it particularly valuable. I haven't looked at the "Fedora Bible", but if it's as good as the Red Hat Bible I pointed parttimenerd to it's well worth the investment. If you are using Ubuntu you will find PDFs of their Desktop Guide on help.ubuntu.com, and paper copies can be purchased via lulu.com.