Hello,

I am new to Linux but very excited about getting into it. I did some checking and I am interested in Mandriva. I have done some initial file downloads but I am worried that I might be on the wrong track, and also I am unsure about the install.

My system is a P4 desktop running at 2 Ghz, with W2K.

I first created a 'Mandrake Linux' folder on my hard drive and then I went to a Mandriva download site and downloaded 4 CD-type files. After the download I have 4 sub-folders (CD1, CD2, CD3, CD4). The subfolder CD1 contains a file called mandriva-free-2007-CD1.i586.iso, CD2 contains mandriva-free-2007-CD2.i586.iso, and so on.

I guess my next step should be to burn these 4 files as 'image' files. Can I burn them as 4 separate image files onto one DVD which I might use for the install of Mandriva?

I am still new to this, so I appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Joe

Mandriva is a good first distro to install. It was the first distro I had a lot of success with, and I still use it.

Those files are the correct files to install with. I have never tried to combine the .iso file on a single DVD, I suspect that will not work. There is likley a DVD iso file you could download.

The normal thing is to burn the four .iso files each to their own CD, and then install from the first CD. The install process prompts you to change the CD's at the correct time. I would suggest you get 4 blank CD's and burn the iso's each to one CD or find the DVD iso and burn it to one DVD.

Note this board has instructions on how to verify ( using md5sum ) your images are good before you burn coasters. It also has instructions on what software you can burn the images with.

camorri is correct about the DVD iso. Here is a link to one such mirror

ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mand...so/2007.0/DVD/

But...since you have the CD iso's they will be just as easy to use.

Enjoy the experience. I have. I started with Mandrake 7.0 (now Mandriva) and now use Gentoo. They all have their own little flair, but are all fun to learn and use.

camorri and buggabill,

Thank you both very much for your fast answers and advice. I get the impression this forum really is helpful, responsive, and friendly.

The suggestions both of you have made seem very relevant, however, I still have some issues, so I hope you will bear with me. I am seeing 2 problems:

(1) About the CD's -- In Win Explorer I see that the sizes of those 4 iso files are 708 MB, 716 MB, 716 MB, and 709 MB. All of my blank CD's only allow burning up to 700 MB. I haven't checked, but is it possible to get larger capacity blank CD's, say 750 MB or 800 MB?

(2) I checked the mirror suggested by buggabill, in other words, this one:
ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mand...ial/iso/2007.0. When I pull up the ftp I see the iso file mandriva-free-2007-DVD.iso, which lists as a 3.99 GB file. However, it downloads as a 349 MB file. In fact, I downloaded from 2 other mirrors and the same thing happens. How can this 349 MB DVD file be equivalent to the roughly 3 GB covered by the 4 CD files?

Hope you guys will clear up the mess in my brain over the 2 issues above.

Again, many thanks!

Joe

"They" normally configure their iso files like that - so I'd guess that your burner app should also be able to be set to "burnfree" or "overburn" (depends on what the manufacturers call that facility).

Equally, you could also look at PCLinuxOS. Which is based on mandriva (which is what mandrake is now called since they bought out Connectiva). I understand that it's very user friendly, but also has the option of running as a "Live" CD i.e. you can boot the CD and it will run entirely from the CD drive, without putting anything onto your hard drive this link will take you to their page for a look if you wanted too.

Of course, with the DVD iso you already have, although it shows as only 349 megs, they may have used certain compression techniques to facilitate quicker downloading (the Knoppix Live CD is about the 700 megs mark, but when booted uncompresses to nearly 2 gigs). You may feel that it's worth trying to burn the DVD iso to see what happens (unless that might prove expensive for you).

Alternatively, burn one of the CD iso's (#1 being logical). If you app tells you that it's burned OK, you should be able to explore it without any problem. Then if you can see the files/directories/packages etc you should be OK to burn the rest of them.

regards

John

I use K3B for burning CD images, and it uses burnfree. The images will fit on the standard CD's.

As for the DVD file size, I have never used DVD images, so I have no experience. You could try downloading from the official Mandriva site. It downloads a Bittorrent file, so you need bittorrent to get the image.

Outside of the CD suffle during install, the CD's will work just fine. Once you are installed, and set up URPMI, you don't need the CD's. I guess you have to decide if you want 1 DVD or the four CD's.

I doubt you will have a problem burning them.

Example:

Right now, I happen to have a large iso file on the hard drive here. Explorer says it is 715,130KB.
You'd think that is 715MB and too large to burn to one CD, right?

If I look at the properties of the file though,
it is reported as 732,293,120 bytes. But it also says 698MB.

What do you get when you look at the properties of your big files?


Want a quick and easy way to convert?
Use Google.
Try it. Type 732,293,120 bytes in MB in the search bar and click on search.
Google returns: 732 293 120 bytes = 698.369141 megabytes
It is a handy tool for lots of quick conversions, etc.

I hope this helps.

bigjohn, camorri, and Willyw,

Thanks for the feedback! I followed Willyw's advice and yes(!), in fact my largest iso file would be just over 683 MB, so I'm hoping my 700 MB blank CD's will suffice.

I will try to burn the iso CD images as you have all suggested. A few questions remain in my head as I prepare for that:

(1) As I burn each iso file as an image, do I actually just burn the file (not the folders called CD1, CD2, etc.)? I know this seems like a dumb question but I feel I ought to be as specific as possible.

(2) Where can I download the latest stable version / release of k3b?

(3) What is my procedure for validating the 4 CD files I downloaded? In other words, is there some executable file (I think it relates to 'md5') I need to use? Clicking on the iso files in any mirror starts the download, but clicking on the md5 file doesn't.

Thanks again,

Joe

The answers to questions 1 and 3 can be found here :

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO

There are instructions on burning the ISO files with windoze as well as linux. There are instructions on getting a program for checking md5sums. The only other advice I can give here is burn the images at a slow speed, while your system is doing nothing else. I have a 52 32 52 speed drive, and I burn at 8x when I do ISO images. It is worth the small investment in time.

They are much better written then I could hope to do. That leaves question 2, where to get the latest stable version of K3B. I would suggest you install K3B after you install Mandriva. Set up URPMI, and then open up the package manager, install software, search for K3B and install it. That may not get you the latest bleeding edge version, but I'm sure you will be able to burn CD's and DVD's with it. You will also have a version supported by the Mandriva packaging system. So updates are easy to install when they come available.

Hope this helps.

I really liked Mandriva(then Mandrake) 10.0 Official, one of the first distros I got to almost work 100% Mandriva 07 really let a bad taste in my mouth, I hope it goes much better for you.

I guess the beauty of it is, if one distro doesn't work for whatever reason and you get sick of trying to configure it, you can move on to another. Then eventually, you'll end up at Ubuntu.

Hope your install/setup is as smooth as possible.

IGF

Hi camorri,

Thanks for your recent advice. I did not post again in this thread because I needed to follow all the steps. Also, I have no CD burner in my regular desktop (I have one in my alt desktop but somehow I couldn't get the 'burns' working there). So, I went out and bought a really nice external DVD writer (got a good price), installed it, and followed your recent advice.

I verified the checksum's on all 4 files, and then I created 4 CD's (burnt as iso images). Now, I'm almost ready to go. One problem, though: I want to install Mandriva 2007 by booting my Win2K machine so that it 'sees' the install CD's in the CD-ROM drive (this is not the problem) and have Mandriva 2007 installed as a dual-boot option, in other words, I would then be able to choose Win2K or Linux in the future whenever I boot the machine.

(1) Does the Mandriva 2007 install process walk me thru setting up dual boot as an option ?

(2) I did some reading of Mandriva 2007 installs by searching the Web, and one install tutorial said that I would be asked to choose an option for the hard drive partitioning part. If I choose the first option "Use free space" and hit the next button, the installer will automatically erase all the data on the hard drive, format it and create the partitions it needs for the system installation. THIS SOUNDS VERY SCARY!!! What is your advice?

Currently, I have 2 hard drives, C and D. Win2K is installed on the C drive. The D drive is pretty much empty. I would like to install Mandriva 2007 on D (or perhaps a part of D).

Your advice is very much appreciated.

Many thanks!

Joe

When you boot the first CD, just make sure that you read the options, so as to follow what's going on. The installer should detect both hard drives and then offer you what "it" thinks are appropriate choices for the location of the linux install. If you prep the second hard drive (which I'm guessing will be seen as hdb (first EIDE drive being /hda, second hdb etc etc - if the drives are either SCSI or SATA then they may be labelled as sda, sdb etc etc - anyway....) by making sure it's clear of stuff then it doesn't really matter if you mess up some. Personally I'd suggest that you either check out what the correct command would be to repair a windows (2K????) bootloader or have your windows disc handy. It's unlikely to be an issue but you seem to be getting ready in a sensible way so why not.

Ok, so you know that you want the install to go to the second hard drive, so tell the installer (tell? type in/select - you know what I mean !), it may ask some Q's about file systems etc, well ext3 is a safe bet.

Then you can just follow it through selecting the defaults, which for me, when I was using mandriva regularly, worked fine.

The issue of being asked which system you want to boot i.e. linux or win, is down to where you install the bootloader. Again, from memory it asks you. If you want the choice everytime you boot the system, then it must be the first part of the MBR (Major Boot Record) on the first (yes first) hard drive. The principle being that it can then see whats available and offer everything. If you put it on the second hard drive, you'll have to change the boot order in the BIOS everytime you want to boot the other OS or start faffing about with boot discs/floppies etc - a PITA. This sounds weird because it will overwrite the windows bootloader, it's not, it's a normal regular occurrence for many many new users/dual booters.


As for your specific Q's, well I can't say about "walk through", because my idea of that might be different from yours. It sets up the install in stages, I recall there being a help option on the various screens as they progress - I also don't ever recall being offered an option that my system wasn't capable of - it's a very competent installer (well it was last time I installed it).

Your second Q, installing via "searching the web" can only happen if thats what you tell it to do, because you only need the first CD, then you need to install a minimal amount of packages and set up the networking so that "it" can then go off to locate packages for the rest of the install. It's actually quite a good way of doing things as you only then install what you want, rather than what the distro maker thinks you should have - though you'd probably need to do a little more reading.

If you do have a disk/partition management app available, then it may be more straight forward for the installer if you "clear" the second/intended hdd so that it's seen as "unallocated" space and it will probably select that as the default location for the install.

I'm also gonna "plant the seed" of partitioning questions in your mind. Yes, if you just have the second hdd as unallocated then you will end up with an entirely usable install (bootloader to first section of _FIRST_ hard drive) that gives you the choice of which OS too boot when you switch the system on. This creates a system where everything is basically in one partition. The issue that this can raise, is that if you start doing stuff straight away i.e. emailing all your mates, telling them that you're just testing your nice shiny new linux install. Well if you "get into it" some and then screw up and go for the "windows approach" of curing the problem by re-installing, then you loose any customisations, preferences, addressbooks, etc etc that you've gone to the effort of setting up. It's worth while looking into multiple partitions i.e. I use 4 (though could just as easily get away with 3) /boot, /swap, / (aka root - where the actual system goes) and /home. When, and if, I want to re-install I just tell the new distro (irrespective of whether it's the same as before or a new one) that it only formats and installs the /boot and / - it usually doesn't bother with /swap if it detects one and I make sure that it absolutely doesn't touch my /home - which means that once the new system is in, as long as I installed the same packages/apps, then when I boot into it, the whole thing "just works" same as before.

As I say, I haven't included that to confuse, but to get you to think about things that might prevent major hassle later (and can be avoided).


What I would suggest, is that you have a look at the first CD under windows, theres usually (or used to be) a nice slide show type presentation and you also get to see whats on the first disc. Then clear any files you might want to keep, off the second hdd that you say you intend installing to, then fire up the first CD and follow it through. You can abort/cancel most of the way through until you actually tell it to "install" (not the initial "install" but the one that comes after the screen that gives you a precis of what selections you've made - I think it still works like that).

Worse case scenario is that you have to boot your windows disc to repair the windows bootloader so that you can ask more questions (or if you know how, you can fix the mbr from console login if windows won't graphically restart).

regards

John

John, great post, said much better than I could have. I don't think I can add much at this point, other than to add a little to this comment.

Free space means space not currently in a partition, not space unused in an existing partition. So if you accept this option, it will not destroy your windows partitions or any of the data.

When I have installed dual boot systems, I have used Partition Magic to create free space, by shrinking windows partitions. It is possible to do this now with the partitioning tools in Mandriva.

The default partitioning scheme Mandriva creates is three partitions. A root known as /, a swap and a home. For a first install this is safe enough. It is always user choice, you can easily add a /boot partition.

Have fun, and don't hesitate to ask questions.

Also camorri I seem to recall that if it only finds a very small amount of free space or you select a location too small then it usually (well OK it used to so I have to presume it still does) tells you "that it can't install there because........."

But you say that they now use a default of 3 partitions ? if so, excellent. That way, as long as the new user tells future installs not too touch the /home then bingo. No personal data loss. Hence my pointing that out, cos when I started it would make you the root and swap but the home was just a directory with normal user access (and yes I did loose stuff a couple of times).

.... and the only reason that I actually still use a /boot is because ages ago I had to make one to install gentoo - whos' default was /boot, /swap and / - I also did the /home thing and it worked a treat.

Hopefully now kwinana has enough info to install without worrying too much. The only other way is the way I first did it - i.e. complete ignorance, it was just a CD that my brother (IT Professional and family linux bore) left lying around. I just put it in the drive one day, forgot it was there and rebooted the system and kept clicking away.

It must have sent strange "space waves" or something from the PC, cos I'm still here - and don't have a windows install at all

regards

John