Red Hat Installation

Hi, I am stuck.

I am installing Red Hat 7.1 on a 66MHz 486DX2 on a Maxtor 407MB drive and a 407MB slave. I can only fit the basic text mode with absolutely no frills. I partitioned the drive and formatted it and started to copy the files. I didn't cut out enough files so I filled the drive and had to start over. Now when I try to reinstall, I get an error message and promptly killed. I tried removing the partitions with a dos boot disk, because the redhat bootdisk has no helpful options I know how to use, but can't remove them all. Basically I just need to know how I can clean up my disk so I can start over.

I also have mandrake 8, do you think I should try something with that?

I assume due to your resources that the setup is the text mode install, it has been a while since I have installed Red Hat, but very early in the install you should get a chance to run `disk druid'. It is Red Hat's cfdisk for the install. It should give you a chance to delete/re-assign your partion table. From there the install will usually continue to the end provided you don't fill the disk. Be sure and de-select anything you don't absolutely have to have. You can always install packages later on what free disk space you have left. As with any OS, it is easier to add software than remove it. If this does not help out, please say so. I will give you a few more things to try.

P.S. I have been using Linux for about 6 years, and if it makes you feel any better, my first 3 or 4 months it seemed like all I did was fix/re-install botched installations. It has gotten much better but it in no cake walk.

I can't even get to disk druid. I get killed right after I'm asked if I have a driver disk. That's why I'm having trouble doing anything. Any other ideas?

How do you feel about doing a low level format of your disk and starting over?

This is a link to get maxllf.exe, it is a low level formatting utility from Maxtor for IDE HDD's less than 500MB. There are step by step instructions on doing the format there too.

http://www.maxtor.co.jp/technology/technotes/20005.html

Will check back on this post in about 6 hours, need some sleepy.

Good idea. But the maxllf.exe keeps freezing at format initilization. Any other ideas?

is there a virus i could possibly use to destroy my partitions and erase the information so i could reformat?

Probably, I don't know of any specific ones, but the virus would still reside even after you'd erased your partition info, so that's not exactly a solution, just a quick way round it.

Have you tried a DOS boot disk with FDISK on?

That usually sorts me out when I get partitioning problems.

Failing that, there are loads of Linux distros on the net that will fit on one floppy and have powerful disk tools on (partitioning, formatting etc)...

http://crashrecovery.org/

^^
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Linux on a floppy disk, as far as I can tell, with partitioning, network support, full hardware support (all hardware with built in kernel support) what's mroe is its based on RedHat anyway, so it should be able to sort out your partitions for you... maybe.

Try slackware 8 if your low on disk space. I've got it taking up only 350 megs on 600 meg harddrive. If you absolutely need to use Red Hat, use one of those previously mentioned floppy-distros. or if that doesn't work, reverse the two drives and install to the other. From there, you can format the first, botched one.

Good Luck :)

There is utility called GDISK which comes with Ghost which can kill every partition, no matter what kind it is...

I've posted this a couple of times on AO...
but rather than continue wasting JP's resources by repeatedly posting it, I'm going to put it up on my website...

Get GDisk