312 Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Starting the Installation Usually, you will start the installation by downloading a copy of Fedora Linux and burning it onto a CD-ROM. Here are the steps for installing that copy: 1. To start the installation process, boot off the CD-ROM. This will boot Fedora Linux in its live mode, in which a fully operating system will start on the system, as shown in Figure 20-1. (If you like, you can explore Fedora’s menus and basic applications at this point, before continuing with the installation.) 2. Double-click the Install to Hard Drive icon on the desktop. This launches the Fedora installation program. 3. You are prompted for the language to use when installing. By default, U.S. English is selected. Click Next to continue. Figure 20-1. Fedora Linux started in live mode 313 Chapter 20: Installing Linux 4. You are prompted to name the computer, in the format computer_name.domain, as shown in Figure 20-2. Enter an appropriate name for your computer, and then click Next to continue. 5. Choose the time zone in which you are located, as shown in Figure 20-3. You can click the map until a city in the same time zone as you is located, or you can choose from the available options in the drop-down menu. Once you have selected the time zone, click Next to continue. 6. You are prompted to enter a password for the system’s root account, which is a user named root that has full and complete access to change anything about the system. It is similar to the administrator password on a Windows server. Figure 20-2. Naming the computer 314 Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Accordingly, you should choose a good, strong password for the root account. Enter your password where prompted, and also in the confirmation field. Click Next to continue. 7. You now need to partition the hard disk for the computer. This example assumes that you are installing Fedora on a system with a blank hard disk. You will be asked to confirm that anything existing on the hard disk will be erased by the partitioning process. When you continue, the default option is “Remove Linux Partitions on selected drives and create default layout.” I recommend this option. If you would like to see what the default partitioning scheme looks like, select the Review and Modify Partitioning Layout checkbox before clicking Next to continue. Figure 20-4 shows an example of a default partitioning scheme on a 10GB disk. Figure 20-3. Choosing a time zone 315 Chapter 20: Installing Linux NOTE While the Fedora installer lets you customize the partitioning scheme in a variety of ways, for most uses, the default choices will work best. If you decide to install Linux for production use, you will want to explore other options in the partitioning, such as setting up RAID disk arrays. 8. After confirming the creation of the partitioning scheme you have selected, you will see the boot loader installation screen, as shown in Figure 20-5. Here, you can customize the boot loader to enable the booting of multiple operating systems from the system, or to set a password that must be entered before the system will boot. For this example, accept the default options and click Next to continue. Figure 20-4. Default partitioning scheme on a 10GB disk 316 Networking: A Beginner’s Guide At this point, Fedora will be installed onto the hard disk. Typically, the process is fairly quick and should take around 5 to 10 minutes. When it’s complete, you are prompted to restart the system. After the system restarts, you will need to do some initial configuration, as described in the next section. Initially Configuring Fedora Linux When your new Fedora Linux system boots for the very first time after the main installation, you are walked through various initial configuration options. Initially, you will see the screen shown in Figure 20-6. The left pane lists the basic configuration areas. Figure 20-5. Configuring the boot loader options . 312 Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Starting the Installation Usually, you will start the installation by downloading a copy of Fedora Linux and burning it onto a CD-ROM. Here are the steps. This example assumes that you are installing Fedora on a system with a blank hard disk. You will be asked to confirm that anything existing on the hard disk will be erased by the partitioning. access to change anything about the system. It is similar to the administrator password on a Windows server. Figure 20-2. Naming the computer 314 Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Accordingly,