Im trying to install a fresh version of Fedora 17. I keep getting formating errors when trying to reformat the hard drive. I recieve errors as well I I try to use the entire disk for the install instead of creat new partitions from scratch. I even tried fromatting the disk using PartedMagic and that fails as well. Ran the diagnostics using PMagic and tells me that the HD is heathly with no errors. I have a 120gb HD and tried formatting 10gb mounting it to root and creating a 2gb swap partition. Can someone please describe the process of formatting a hard drive for Unix style OS's. Recommended partition sizes, how to determine swap sizes,
what is the purpose of the swap. What is mounting? Obviously new to Unix and appreciate any help provided. Thank You.
If you get errors writing to a disk, it's toast. Either that, or your disk controller or drivers for it are having trouble (generally unlikely). Reality trumps diagnostics.
Swap is overflow space when you're low on memory. Linux does not require as much swap space as RAM, but some kinds of UNIX demand that there be enough swap to save all RAM if need be.
Mounting is the process which converts a disk device into a folder you can use. The device and the folder are actually managed separately. Windows doesn't really give you access to the device and mounts everything itself unasked onto a generic drive letter, UNIX is both stricter and more flexible. There's no drive letters, partitions are mounted inside folders, whichever folders you want. /home will often be its own separate partition, for example.
Ok so Swap is the equivalant to Cache for Windows? Very well explained about the mounting makes much better sense now. Ok as far as the hard drive. I finally was able to get rid of all the partition and now the whole disk is unallocated. Im ready to try another install. Just want to clarify a few things. Book says to create a partition for the / one for the swap and an optional one for /boot. Being the LiveMedia cd is 650mb would a 2gb partition be enough. I know with windows I would create a OS partition with plenty of extra room for upgrades and updates and then install all other non-OS programs on a seperate partition. The book recommends 500mb for the /boot partition. Does this partition contain the bootloader and default system settings and is 500mb large enough to handle any changes. Lastly / partition, is this partition automatically where the UNIX OS installs. I have looked alot of this up on the net and seem to get alot of mixed testimonies. Thanks again
Not really. Swap in UNIX is equivalent to the pagefile in Windows.
My own root partition is one gigabyte, and 34% used. But my /usr/ partition is 10 gigabytes, 50% used.
How much you need depends on how much you use. So it's hard to say.
That's why UNIX is organized as it is with /usr/, /lib/, and the like. You dont' have to throw everything into /. Just the most basic system stuff the system needs to start itself belongs in there, the rest can go in other partitions mounted on those base folders.
It also lets you expand things without having to replace and reformat, because you can put partitions wherever you please without worrying about changing drive letters.
500 megs should be lavish for a bootloader. You can get by with a tenth of that but there's no point making it tiny either if you've got room to spare.
How much you need depends on how much you use and how you organize it. If you make /usr/, /lib/, etc partitions, you don't need a huge root. If you're just jamming everything into / however, you need a big root.
I appreciate all the info great stuff. Gonna give this install a whirl now. Thanks so much for the time.
---------- Post updated at 04:09 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:08 PM ----------
Ok final synopsis: Fedora 16 and 17 suck 
All day wasted on this, kinda sorta, learned a few things about Unix and the filesystem but turns out it a bug causing the filechecking error, which seemed to start with Fedora 16. Currently typing this on my newly installed Fedora12 system Set everything up the way I wanted /, /boot, swap and added a partition for /home all using ext4 type.
Now for tomorrows waste of time trying to upgrade from 12 to 17 Want to keep this ticket going cause I found many posts reguarding this issue but havent found one yet that resolved the issue to completion.
Perhaps a problem with your hard drive controller drivers, like I mentioned way back in my first reply.
This does not mean they "suck". It means there's problems with their disk controller drivers, for your specific hardware.
What is your system? Laptops especially are liable to have problems, since their hardware is often bizarre and had corners cut in manufacture, which they fix by patching custom Windows drivers. The rest of the world just has to suffer until they reverse-engineer what problems got wired into it...
Try 'lspci' to see what your hardware actually is. That may help explain why you were having problems.
Well I installed Fedora 12 on the same disk that was giving me errors when trying to install Fedora 17. I have never had to dig so deep to install an OS as to getting into actually drivers and such. This is what I have.
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS645DX Host & Memory & AGP Controller
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 04)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91)
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0b.0 SCSI storage controller: Artop Electronic Corp AEC6712U SCSI (rev 08)
00:0e.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 50)
00:0e.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 50)
00:0e.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 51)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV25 [GeForce4 Ti 4200] (rev a3)
$ lshw
*-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: WDC WD1200BB-00C
vendor: Western Digital
physical id: 0
bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 17.0
serial: WD-WMA8C2759689
size: 111GiB (120GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=d38ed38e
Further I now have tried using the pregrade with no avail. Each time its goes throu the whole process of downloading ect sucessfuly to the point of rebooting. Reboot and still in Version 12. Checked the grub file and kernal does not get updated. First tried 12 - 17, then 12 -16, and finally tried 12 -13, none have worked yet. After the fresh 12 install I have done
yum update yum
yum update -- installed 1200 updates
yum install preupgrade
preupgrade
Considering the disk controller problem that was causing it to flip out before is probably part of a newer kernel, I'm not sure you'd really want the kernel upgraded here.