hardware

Thomas Krichel
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
 introduction
 This is a basic introduction to computer
hardware.
 I wrote it from memory.
 It contains the things I know about without
having to look them up.
 That's about how much you need to know.
 basic components
 basic components are
 processor
 memory
 motherboard
 input/output devices
 disks
 network interfaces
 The first three, plus the bus speed, are essential
to the understanding of the performance of the
computer.
 processors
 The processor does all the calculations on a
computer.
 The performance indicator of the processor is
the frequency of operations.
 There are various types of processors, by
different manufactures.
 Intel
 AMD
 architecture
 The Debian operating system offers a complete
range of software that can be run with a range
of processors by a certain manifactures. Such a
range of software packages is called an
architecture.
 We use the i386 architecture for Intel
processors.
 AMD processors may be more open source
friendly
 memory
 The memory is where all data that the computer
works with is stored.
 If the memory is small the computer has to
perform more operations to read and write data
to the disk.
 As a consequence, it will appear to be slower.
 motherboard
 This is a green sheet of plastic that all
components inside the computer attach to.
 We don't need to know more about it, just the
plane concept will do.
 devices
 These are things that the computer uses for
input and output of data.
 Examples include
 keyboard
 screen
 network card
 disks
 We only need to study disks and network cards.
 disks
 There are three architectures of disks

IDE, aka PATA, an old system
 SCSI, a bit more modern
 SATA, used in most modern systems
 We need to be aware of them because the way
that Linux refers to them.
 IDE
 When a computer can use IDE, you see two
forty-pin connectors on the motherboard.
 These are the primary and the secondary IDE
channnels. They are usually labelled.
 To each channel, you can attach two disks.
 One is called the master.
 The other is called the slave.
 master and slave
 One method to select master and slave is to set
jumpers on the disk. The position of the
jumpers is often written on the disk. Otherwise
 The other method is called “cable select”. There
you place the master at the end of the 40 pin
IDE cable.
 device names
 Linux needs to give the devices names in other
to talk to them.
 The device names for IDE are
 /dev/hda for the primary master
 /dev/hdb for the primary slave
 /dev/hdc for the secondary master
 /dev/hdd for the secondary slave
 SCSI and SATA
 SCSI and SATA drives are named

/dev/sda
 /dev/sdb
 etc.
 Usually it is a bit of guesswork to know which
drive is give what name. There may be a better
way than guesswork, but I don't know about it.
 file systems
 A file system is a way to set up files on a disk.
 Common file systems are

Microsoft FAT
 ext2 or ext3, used in Linux

Reiserfs, used on Linux
 Linux kernels support various file systems
natively, including Microsoft file systems.
 several file systems
 If you have several file systems on a disk, each
system needs to occupy a separate physical
area on the disk.
 Such an aera is called a partition.
 An empty disk will have no partitions.
 You will have to set up partitions before working
with a disk.
 Chaning the partitions at a later stage will,
generally, make the data on the disk
inaccssible.
 partition table
 Any disk has a special place for the partition
table.
 The partition tables says
 what partitions are on the disk,
 where each partition starts and end
 Changing the partition table makes all data on
the disk unusable.
 default partitions
 On a Linux system, if you only have one disk on
a computer, it is customary to have two
partitions on it.
 the main data partition
 the swap partition
 Deciding on the size of both is a bit of black
magic. There is no hard rule.
 We let the Debian installer do it for us.
 device names with partitions
 If you have a device that linux calls foo, the first
partion will be foo1, the second partition will be
foo2 etc.
 Thus you can have /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb3 etc.
 The command “df” will list all devies and all
partition.
 the main data partition
 This is where you have all the data on the hard
disk.
 This is usually formatted with the ext3 file
system.
 There other file systems one could use, but this
is the default, one and we will use that one.
 the swap partition
 The swap partition is used to reserve space for
swapping.
 Swapping is a way for a computer to work with
large memory requirements by writing parts of
the memory on the disk.
 When this happens the computer appears to be
very slow.
 initial setup
 When the debian installer sets up your machine,
by default it will take the first disk.
 Then it will calculate a partition table
 swap partition
 data partition
 it will present you with the suggestions.

When you accept them, it will write the partition
table. All data on the disk will be lost.
 This is the only time you should not accept the
default option.
 booting
 When you switch on a computer, you see some
messages.
 They usually refer to particular pieces of
hardware that just tell you “hi, I am here in this
computer.
 Then the operating system starts.
 But before it starts, there is one interesting
stage.
 more on initial setup
 When we start the computer, it reads an
internal, essentially read only piece of data
known as the BIOS.
 The BIOS has a number of settings. You can
make changes to them.
 How to do that depends on the BIOS
manufacturer but there are some generic
features.
 getting into the BIOS
 When the machine starts, you see, maybe for a
second a message “press foo to enter setup”.
 foo is usually the name of a key.
 When you see this message, press the key very
quickly several times.
 (yes, this presumes you have a working
keyboard attached).
 You arrive in a menu-driven system.
 the BIOS menu system
 The menu system is usually in English.
 It usually relies on keyboard strokes.
 What keys do what depends on the BIOS
manufacturer.
 What entries there are depends on the
manufacuturer.
 We only need to know one BIOS setting, and it
is useful to know about another.
 BIOS setting: boot sequence
 When the machine boots, it looks for an
operating system on a sequence of devices.
 That sequence is called the boot sequence.
 When we install Debian, we need to make sure
that the medium that contains Debian is in the
boot sequences.
 We also need to make sure that this medium
appears before any other medium that contains
an operating system.
 BIOS setting: boot on power
 When you are running a server machine, you
want the machine to be on all the time.
 After a power cut, you want the machine to boot
as soon as power is restored.
 There usually is a BIOS setting for that.
 making a Debian medium
 Go to the debian installer http://www.debian.org
/devel/debian-installer/
 I made a copy of the current CD for you at
http://wotan.liu.edu/opt
 Get software to burn the CD
 http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecord
er.htm
 http://www.cdburnerxp.se/downloadsetup.ph
p
 Use it to burn.
 working with the installer
 The only rule is: don't panic.
 Any decision you are making when working with
the installer can be reversed quite easily later.
 The only exeption is the disk partitioning,
reversing that would be cumbersome.
 overall steps
 boot
 set up user interface of installer
 setting up network (the crucial part)
 setting up a disk
 setting the time
 setting up users
 downloading basic software from the network
 making system bootable
 obvious sequence
 At the start, select the normal (not the graphical
installer) and press enter.
 Select the language of installation (English)
 Select your country (United States)
 Select your keyboard layout (US)
 the hostname
 This is a short name for the machine.
 Here any name can be used. The name can't
contains a space. You need to let me know
about the name.
 Don't use the name debian because I want
everybody to have a different machine name for
ease of administration of the course.
 network configuration
 The installer will configure the network with the
help of a protocol called dhcp.
 This should work in the class situation.
 I will discuss networks later, so I skip over
details for now.
 If the dhcp we have a serious problem.
 the domain name
 Here you should enter a domain that you own
and control.
 If you don't have one, or don't know what this is
please enter the domain of a friend who will run
the domain for you.
 Since Thomas is your friend, enter his domain
here: “openlib.org”.
 disk partitioning
 Here chose of guided partitioning, using the
built-in partitioner.
 Select the disk to partition, usually there is only
one.
 Choose the default of all files in one partition.
 Accept the partition that is proposed.
 Then you get the screen where you are warned
you will loose all data, here don't accept the
default to tell the partitioner to go ahead.
 setting up time
 The time can be set in the BIOS. They BIOS
calls a battery that keeps running. But that is
not reliable.
 Modern linux machines get the time from the
network from time servers. The time servers
know what time it is.
 Then all you have to do is to set the time zone
you are in. Since you have said you are in the
US, you will be shown a list of US time zones.
 setting up the root user
 There is one superuser who has the right to do
anything on the machine.
 The name of this user is “root”.
 There is a sequence screen that invites you to
set the password for that user.
 Since it is not echoed, you need to type it twice
to try to make sure that it was entered properly.
 ordinary user
 Although this is not strictly necessary, the
installer also requires the setup of an ordinary
user.
 Here you first enter your full name, then your
user name (login name, no spaces, no
uppercase) and then your password.
 network download
 On the network, there are mirrors of Debian that
contain newer versions of the Debian
packages. It is a good idea to use the closest
mirror available. Say yes to use a network
mirror.
 The mirrors are organized by country. Select
country and then select a mirror that appears to
be close. For class select any because we may
have a problem if all select the same.
 http proxy
 To download packages from mirrors, the
installer uses the http protocol.
 This is a well-know protocol used to transfer
files on the web.
 In certain, rare settings, a network administrator
may require you to use the http proxy. We don't
have such a requirement, so we can leave this
screen blank.
 popularity contents
 This is a bit of an oddity.
 There is a contents on which packages are
most popular.
 Machines participating in the contest report
what packages are installed on them.
 You may elect to take part or not.
 the bootloader
 To make the system bootable without the CD,
Linux installs a special command sequence on
the hard disk you are installing linux to.
 This special command sequence calls a
software known as a boot loader. The boot
loader shows you a menu to ask you what
operating system you want to load.
 removing media
 You need to remove the media you booted
from, or change the BIOS not to boot from it
again.
 If you use a CD to install from the installer will
eject the CD for you.
 Then the machine reboots.
 You are done.
 linux boot loaders
 In olden days, people use lilo, the linux loader.
 Nowadays people use the grub, the grand
unified bootloader.
 Here you just have to follow the default to install
the bootloader.
 collection of software
 This is important. There are collections of
software predefined by the installer for certain
tasks a machine should do.
 Here you should ONLY select the “standard
system”.
 Selecting others, you will waste your time
dowloading a ton of software we don't need.

Do not select “desktop environment”. This is
particularly wasteful for what we are trying to
do.