Preparing to Install Linux
**************************

There are several things which you must do before installing MCC
interim Linux besides getting the appropriate files and making a
bootable root disk.  The target machine must have free space which is
not included in already allocated partitions.  In some cases this means
that you must back up your hard disk, create a smaller DOS partition,
using the DOS command `FDISK', and restore your DOS files to the new
DOS partition.

There are procedures which allow you to change the size of a DOS
partition without backing up your files, but we do not recommend such
procedures.  For more information, see README.fdisk.


Disk space required for Linux files
===================================

You may wish to have a small Linux system with only a few of the MCC
interim packages.  The following table gives the approximate size
required for each package.  Remember that each file system also uses up
a few hundred Kb on each partition, depending on the type of file
system.  Extended(2) file systems also reserve a percentage of each
partition for the superuser; the exact percentage can be selected by an
option to `mkfs'.  (The MCC distribution does not allow you to change
the 5% default before installation.)  The package Base must be
installed from the boot floppy before any other packages.

     Package  Size in Kb  Contents

     Base      1841     basic binaries and text (on boot floppy)
     base      1241     basic binaries, texts, and man pages
     bison      100     the GNU yacc-compatible parser generator
     emacs     2040     the emacs editor, without info files
     flex       204     the GNU fast lexical analyser generator
     gawk       141     the GNU version of awk
     gcc       3375     the GNU C compiler (without g++)
     gdb        767     the GNU debugger
     gpp       2222     the GNU C++ compiler g++
     gprof      513     the GNU profiler for use with gcc and g++
     groff     2250     the GNU clone of the nroff/troff text formatter
     info      2646     the GNU utility info, plus selected info files
     kermit     352     the Kermit communications utility
     linux     2385     the kernel source for Linux 0.99 patch level 8
     patches    251     the patches used to compile this release
     tar         72     the GNU version of tar
     tcpip      658     commands and daemons for networking
     -------------------
     Total    21058

The amount of disk space you require depends on what software you
intend to install.  For all MCC packages, you need about 22 Mb.  For the
X window system (which is not included in the MCC distribution), you
need a further 17 Mb.  TeX (which is also not included in the MCC
distribution), requires at least 10 Mb more.  The source files for all
MCC packages (which are also not part of the distribution) require a
further 25 Mb.  Additionally, you must consider the space you need for
work, perhaps an additional 5 or 10 Mb, or 100 Mb or more for large
projects.

On the other hand, you may plan to have a large system.  In that
case, you may wish to distribute your files over several partitions. 
Linux allows you to have up to 16 partitions on a SCSI disk, and up to
64 partitions on an IDE disk.  How you divide your disk is up to you, of
course, but there are some points you may wish to consider.  If you
intend to upgrade Linux at some point, it may be convenient to have
your development files on a separate partition.  In this way, you can
make a new file system for the new distribution, and you will not risk
having large, unnecessary binaries which you no longer need.  I like to
have TeX and X386 on a separate partition, since these are not included
in MCC distributions.  You may like to put the `/usr' subtree on a
partition of its own, or `/usr/src'.  The directories `/home' and
`/tmp' might also have partitions of their own, so that a user
(including you) cannot accidentally fill up the system disk.  See
README.fdisk.


Swap space required for Linux
=============================

The amount of swap space you require depends on how much memory you
have, and on what you intend to do on your system.  What we call
"swapping" in the Linux world is sometimes called "paging" on other
operating systems.  If you use the GNU C compiler, you may need 6 Mb of
memory to compile one file.  If you have only 4 Mb of physical memory,
you will also need at least 2 Mb of swap space for that compilation.
When GCC compiles a very large function with optimisation, it may need
much more memory than this.

If you are using X windows, you may need at least 8 Mb of memory in
addition to your other requirements.  If you have several users (or if
you are running large jobs in several windows or on several consoles),
you must add up all their requirements for swap space.

On the other hand, most people are the sole users of their machines,
and many of them do only one or two things at once.  In such cases, you
might plan on having a total of 8 to 12 Mb if you are not using X
windows, or 16 to 20 Mb if you are using X windows and compiling big
packages at the same time.

Linux can use two kinds of swap areas: swap partitions and swap
files.  Swap partitions can be used only for swapping.  Swap files have
the advantage of being easier to create and destroy, but they are less
efficient than swap partitions.  No swap partition or swap file can
contain more than 16384 Kb of usable swap space, so if you need more
than this, you must use several partitions or files.

MCC interim Linux can create and activate swap partitions during
installation, and normally expects you to have a single swap partition,
which it inserts into `/etc/fstab', so that it is activated
automatically whenever you boot the installed system.  If you wish to
have more than one swap partition, or a swap file in addition to or
instead of a swap partition, you must create them yourself after
installation and put the entries manually into `/etc/fstab'.
