Upgrade question

[Don Rieck]

Long time lurker delurking.....


I decided to upgrade my box (new MS Flight Sim thing rocks ya know :) ), and
am wondering what I'll need to do on the Linux end of things to make this
work.

The scenario:

I have a dual boot RH9.0 Windows XSPPro box with an AMD 1ghz Duron and some
generic 32mb NVIDIA video card.
I have one hard drive, with an XP partition and a Linux partition.

I'm keeping the same mobo, but upgrading to a 2ghz Athalon XP chip, and
Nvidia 5200 128mb graphics card, and possibly an additional hard drive.

The questions:

Will changing the processor make Linux go goofy ?

Will changing the video card make Linux go goofy ? I have Nvidia drivers
installed and working to enable 3d on Linux today. The drivers are up to
date.

If I add a 2nd hard drive, can someone point me towards a HOWTO that would
let me dual partition the new one so that I can slice it up between Linux &
XP ? I'm assuming it would just become a new device hdb ? (yes , I'm fairly
new at this).

Thanks in advance !

Don Rieck
***@theriecks.com

[James Bliss]

Post by Don Rieck
Long time lurker delurking.....
I decided to upgrade my box (new MS Flight Sim thing rocks ya know :) ),
and am wondering what I'll need to do on the Linux end of things to make
this work.
I have a dual boot RH9.0 Windows XSPPro box with an AMD 1ghz Duron and some
generic 32mb NVIDIA video card.
I have one hard drive, with an XP partition and a Linux partition.
I'm keeping the same mobo, but upgrading to a 2ghz Athalon XP chip, and
Nvidia 5200 128mb graphics card, and possibly an additional hard drive.
Will changing the processor make Linux go goofy ?

This should be no problem.

Post by Don Rieck
Will changing the video card make Linux go goofy ? I have Nvidia drivers
installed and working to enable 3d on Linux today. The drivers are up to
date.

At most you might have to change some of the parameters for the driver to get
optimum performance from your new card. These are documented in the Nvidia
documents which come with the Nvidia drivers. (I am assuming that you are
running the Nvidia drivers from Nvidia and not the drivers which came with
Redhat wince you mention 3d). Been a while, but I thought Nvidia had a
parameter which indicated the amount of video memory available.

Post by Don Rieck
If I add a 2nd hard drive, can someone point me towards a HOWTO that would
let me dual partition the new one so that I can slice it up between Linux &
XP ? I'm assuming it would just become a new device hdb ? (yes , I'm
fairly new at this).

Look at:
http://kb.redhat.com/view.php?eid=372
this describes how to repartition a new drive. You should have no problem
partitioning part for Windows and part for Linux. Just watch the partition
types and do not delete the Windows partition when you are creating the Linux
partition. The drive will be named based upon the ribbon and position you
attach it to (a,b,c,d - first ribbon master and slave and second ribbon
master and slave).

Post by Don Rieck
Thanks in advance !
Don Rieck
______________________________________________________________________
Linux Users Of Northern Illinois - Technical Discussion
http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni

[Martin Maney]

Post by Don Rieck
Long time lurker delurking.....
I decided to upgrade my box (new MS Flight Sim thing rocks ya know :) ), and
am wondering what I'll need to do on the Linux end of things to make this
work.
I have a dual boot RH9.0 Windows XSPPro box with an AMD 1ghz Duron and some
generic 32mb NVIDIA video card.
I have one hard drive, with an XP partition and a Linux partition.
I'm keeping the same mobo, but upgrading to a 2ghz Athalon XP chip, and
Nvidia 5200 128mb graphics card, and possibly an additional hard drive.
Will changing the processor make Linux go goofy ?

No. Well, I suppose it might be possible if you're running a really
old version, but I would expect the Duron to give it gas in that case.
In general, you can change components at will with Linux in a way that
Windows power users just won't believe. Sure, you have to fidget the X
stuff when you change the video setup, but you have a complete, stable
OS platform to work with - just one that isn't GUI. :-)

Post by Don Rieck
Will changing the video card make Linux go goofy ? I have Nvidia drivers
installed and working to enable 3d on Linux today. The drivers are up to
date.

X will not work, but it probably won't crash the system or anything.
What you do want to do is make sure you don't buy some card/chip that
isn't supported yet.

Post by Don Rieck
If I add a 2nd hard drive, can someone point me towards a HOWTO that would
let me dual partition the new one so that I can slice it up between Linux &
XP ? I'm assuming it would just become a new device hdb ? (yes , I'm fairly
new at this).

HOWTOs, get your HOWTOs here:

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/index.html

You'll probably find section 4.3.11 the most immediately useful, but
look over the titles in 4.1.8 as well.

Short answer: yes, the new drive will become hdX, X depending on where
it's installed.

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

Post by Don Rieck
Will changing the processor make Linux go goofy ?

In general, this depends on what arch your kernel was optimized for.
Since you're moving up (from i686 Duron to athlon Athlon), you're fine.
This would break if you moved down, since a kernel built and optimized
for athlon only runs Athlons or better. You can check your kernel arch
with this command:

rpm -q --qf "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}\t%{ARCH}\n" kernel

Post by Don Rieck
Will changing the video card make Linux go goofy ? I have Nvidia drivers
installed and working to enable 3d on Linux today. The drivers are up to
date.

One has to give credit to Nvidia, with the exception of their mobile
video cards (in laptops), their driver is universal. You should be able
to swap between Nvidia cards all day and have the nvidia driver work.
Now, you probably want to be booting into runlevel 3 before you do this,
the driver may work, but you might need to change resolution. This
setting is in /etc/inittab, make sure the line reads:

id:3:initdefault:

You can change it back later, when X is happy. Running
redhat-config-xfree86 should do the right thing, although you may have
to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config afterwards to s/nv/nvidia/.

Post by Don Rieck
If I add a 2nd hard drive, can someone point me towards a HOWTO that would
let me dual partition the new one so that I can slice it up between Linux &
XP ? I'm assuming it would just become a new device hdb ? (yes , I'm fairly
new at this).

In general, its a lot easier to install Windows first, then Linux on the
remaining space. Windows has a nasty habit of stomping all over the
bootloader, whereas RHL will let you select Windows to boot.

But there is a pretty good howto for this:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+Win9x+Grub-HOWTO/index.html

hth,

~spot

[Norbert W]

Post by Martin Maney

Post by Don Rieck
Will changing the video card make Linux go goofy ? I have Nvidia drivers
installed and working to enable 3d on Linux today. The drivers are up to
date.

X will not work, but it probably won't crash the system or anything.
What you do want to do is make sure you don't buy some card/chip that
isn't supported yet.

Why do you say that?
As mentioned before, Nvidia's pretty good with universal drivers. I switch between a Diamond Viper (770 ultra) and a geforce 2 all the time. (Don't ask why). Linux does not hiccup at all.

Just my two cents
Norbert.

[Martin Maney]

Post by Norbert W
Why do you say that?

Meant to say that X may not work, but the qualifier seems to have
gotten lost in the typing.

Post by Norbert W
As mentioned before, Nvidia's pretty good with universal drivers. I
switch between a Diamond Viper (770 ultra) and a geforce 2 all the
time. (Don't ask why). Linux does not hiccup at all.

But he might not be getting another Nvidia card. Or if he is, maybe
the very latest chip isn't yet supported, or isn't in the older version
of the driver he may have installed. Lots of ways it can not work
without a little adjustment.