DrakX is Mandrake Linux's installation program. With DrakX, it does not matter whether you are a newbie or a Mandrake Linux guru –– DrakX's job is to provide you with a smooth installation and an easy transition into Mandrake Linux's latest version.
DrakX will work best if all of your hardware is connected to the computer and powered on during the installation. Printers, modems, scanners and joysticks are just a few examples of peripherals which DrakX can automatically detect and configure as Mandrake Linux is being installed.
The first screen you will see will present you with some information and give you installation options (Figure 3.1). Letting the installation go on will simply begin the installation in normal or “linux” mode. Next we will go over some options and parameters which you can pass to the installation program if you run into problems.
Pressing F1 will open a help screen (Figure 3.2). Here are some useful options to choose from:
vgalo: if you have tried a default installation and did not see the graphical interface as shown in Figure 3.3, you can try to run the installation in low resolution mode. This happens with certain types of graphics cards. With Mandrake Linux we give you a number of options to work around problems related to older hardware. To try the installation in low resolution mode, type vgalo at the prompt.
text: if your video card is very old and graphical installation does not work at all, you can always choose the text mode installation. Since all video cards can display text, this is the “last resort installation”. However do not worry though: it is not likely that you will need to use the text installation mode.
noauto: in some rare cases, your PC may appear to freeze or lock up during the hardware detection phase. If that happens, adding the word noauto as a parameter will tell the installation program to bypass hardware detection. With that option DrakX will not scan for hardware. Hence you will need to manually specify hardware parameters later in the installation process. The noauto parameter can be added to the previous modes, hence it is possible you may have to specify:
boot: vgalo noauto |
to perform a low resolution graphical installation without DrakX performing a hardware scan.
kernel options: most machines do not require specific kernel options. Due to bugs in the design or in the BIOS, there have been a few cases of motherboards incorrectly reporting the amount of memory installed. If you need to manually specify the amount of DRAM installed in your PC, use the mem= xxxM parameter. For example, to start the installation in normal mode with a computer containing 256 MB of memory, your command line would look like this:
boot: linux mem=256M |
Now that we have gone over what might go wrong, let's move on to the actual installation process. When the installer starts, you will see a nice graphical interface (Figure 3.3). On the left will be the various installation steps. You will notice that installation will occur in two distinct main steps: installation, then configuration. The list on the left shows all the steps. The current step is marked with a highlighted bullet.
Each step may present various screens. Surfing between those screens is made through the and buttons. Additionally an button may be available to show more advanced configuration options.