Many Questions....

Okay, so here's the deal. Right now I am running M$ ME on a HP computer. I wanna put LInux on here but also keep everything I have. Way to much stuff to save then reload. Can I buy a new hardrive and install it, then put Red Hat on it and just able/disable the hardrives as I want to boot up on is there a better way? I wanna be able to access the info on the M$ drive while under Linux (mounting right?) this is my first attempt and *nix systems and need some help to make sure I don't mess anything up too bad (emphasis on too bad). I would really appreciate any help anyone could give me.


Hjack

Also how do I find out if there are any hardware problems with what I have? Also I have cable. Will I still be able to access that under a different OS? I know this is all way newbie but everyone starts somewhere right?

hjack

Um, yeah, installing a new hard drive is the easiest way to go IMO, you shouldn't have to change jumper settings on the drives each time you want to boot up though, just set the new drive as slave. Have windows already installed and then install linux on the added hard drive, use whatever boot manager your distro comes with and you should be all set.

For the cable, you should be able to use it with your linux OS. As for the hardware problems, do you mean problems with Linux?? For that you'll have to check your distro's website for compatible hardware against a list of the hardware in your comp.

After you move to the other OS, you will be able to mount your old hard drive.
I have had problems with the linux ext2 FS reading FAT32 long names. I have only been able to get the short names.

To get around this, I had to mount the hard drive in another PC and configure samba and do my file transfers over the network.

This was like 2 years ago. I was and still am a newbie with linux, so there might be another way to do it.
I solved my problem so I didn't look too much more into it.

As for connecting to cable from your linux box. Are you going through a router?
If so, then you will have no problem.

If you are going right to the modem, make sure you talk to the ISP about all the connection specifics. There are several linux apps that will let you get online.

For example... For DSL, I had to use PPPoE with dynamically assigned ips. I had to find a linux app that would do that. There is no shortage of these. Just make sure that you know ALL the info before you go making your changes.

If at all possible... backup all your data!!

So i got everything up and running! So far so good. Had a little trouble mounting the M$ harddrive but figured everything out in the long run. Still working on figuring out how to connect. Thank god for my lucky Red Hat Bible!! Thanks everyone for your help.


hjack

As far as your cable part goes linux should have an option in there to set up the type of connection you need. I use linux on one of my computers with a PPPoE connection and all i have to do is select that I want that type of connection, give it my username and pass the bingo, I'm connected.

If I'm right since your on cable then you would use DHCP, there should be an option in linux for that type of connection. Once you get to the connection part it should be pretty easy from there.


good luck.

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I have had problems with the linux ext2 FS reading FAT32 long names. I have only been able to get the short names.

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What command were you using to mount the drives? If you mount with 'mount -t msdos' you will get truncated names, but if you mount with 'mount -t vfat' all should be gold.