Installing GoboLinux

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In the olden days, installing GoboLinux was an adventure. In our first disc images, the whole system was distributed as a huge "tarball" (compressed archive file) that had to be manually unpacked into a newly formatted directory.

Nowadays, you can perform the entire installation graphically. Actually, this is just one of your options: you can use the installer in either graphical or text mode.

[edit] Using the installer

The GoboLinux CD features a complete graphical environment, provided that your video card and mouse were configured, hopefully automatically by the hardware auto-detection feature. To start the graphical mode, type in

startx

In the desktop, you will find the "Install GoboLinux" icon. Just click it and follow the instructions to have the system installed into your hard disk.

As a failsafe, we also provide an interactive text-based frontend for the installer. You can launch it by typing

Installer

Note the capital "i". GoboLinux scripts, except in special cases, use upper-case initials (called by some "CamelCase convention").

Remember that before you install, you need an available partition. You can edit your partition table clicking on "GParted" on the desktop or using "cfdisk" on the console.

[edit] Manual installation

If for some reason the installer does not work for you neither in X or in the console, don't despair. You can still install GoboLinux the manual way, as it was done in previous versions.

Step 1: The partition

Initially, you will need at least two partitions, one for the system and one for swap (you can reuse the swap partition of another Linux distribution).

You'll have to create the partition(s) and format it(them). To create the partition you have two options:

• cfdisk, in the command line
• GParted, inside the graphical environment.

To format it, you can use mkreiserfs or mke2fs.

If you also created a swap partition, use mkswap to format it.

Step 2: Mount your new partition and enable swap

Mount your new partition, using a command such as

mount /dev/{your partition} /Mount/GoboLinux

Enable your swap partition, using command line as

swapon /dev/(your swap partition)

Step 3: Install the system

Now, run the script to copy the system from this CD to the new partition (which is mounted at /Mount/GoboLinux). There are some predefined 'profiles' located at /System/Links/Shared/Installer/Profiles/Typical. A profile is just a set of programs that will be installed if you choose it. Currently, they are: - 'Base': contains only the basic packages for an usable system (350 MB) - 'Typical': ? - 'Full': contains all programs from this Live-CD (1.5 GB)

Go to /System/Links/Shared/Installer/Profiles and run the 'ProfileInstall' script (which is in PATH), passing the chosen profile and the mount point used on Step 2. For example:

ProfileInstall Full /Mount/GoboLinux

Step 4: Perform some basic configuration

Before you can be able to boot your new GoboLinux system, you'll have to change a few of the default settings to reflect your system. The file

/Mount/GoboLinux/System/Settings/fstab

contains the partition list. Configure it as usual. Another file which you will have to edit is

/Mount/GoboLinux/Programs/BootScripts/Settings/BootScripts/Options

This file contains configurations for programs that are called at boot time, such as the system's hostname, mouse configuration and keymap layout.

By default, GoboLinux features three text editors: MCEdit, which you can access using the convenient wrapper 'e', Nano (a clone of Pico) and Vim, for those who don't hate it. Actually, there is a fourth editor: ed, the Standard Text Editor, but, believe me, you don't want to use this.

Step 5: Bootloader

Before reboot the system you will need to install a bootloader and configure it, if you don't have one installed yet. We suggest GRUB. To install it just run

grub
grub> root (hd*,**)
grub> setup --prefix=/System/Kernel/Boot/grub (hd*)
grub>quit

• * your GoboLinux HD number: hda is 0, hdb 1, and so on
• ** your GoboLinux partition number: 0 is 1, 1 is 2, and so on
• another tip is that the <tab> key works to complete this number, so you can see the choices that you have.

Now you can configure it. Go to /Mount/GoboLinux/System/Kernel/Boot/grub and edit the menu.lst file. In this file you will find some examples. Most likely, all you'll need to do is put the same numbers used to install GRUB in the first example.

Step 6: Reboot!

If you have installed the bootloader you can remove the cd before the machine start to boot and boot from the HD. Welcome to your new system! Now that your system is already running, you can fine-tune it to suit your needs. Check out the /System/Settings/BootScripts directory for settings such as network configuration, and usual Linux settings such as /System/Settings/hosts and /System/Settings/resolv.conf.

Ah... the default login is "gobo", and the default password, "gobo". This is the superuser account (equivalent to "root" in other systems). We recommend to you creating a regular user account for normal use, and use the powers of "gobo" only for system administration tasks. For example, to create a new user called "que", type "AddUser que".