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Minimum requirements for an installation

BeatrIX/BeaFanatIX (both equally referred to as Bea* in this document) have been successfully installed on a vast variety of hardware, even ancient and minimal; however, there are some prerequisites your target box should fulfill in order to give you a satisfying experience:

CPU: Any Pentium or compatible CPU should do (provided you have enough RAM); we recommend a Pentium MMX with at least 200 MHz or greater, Bea* works best on Pentium II or newer.
RAM: 64 MB is sufficient, but 128 MB or more will make your Bea* experience much more convincing! Starting from 256 MB, you can even boot to RAM (putting the whole system into a RAM disk!), enhancing system response and speed by magnitudes.
HD: You'll need at the very least 600 MB for the file system and 128 MB for swap, so a harddisk (or dedicated primary partition) of 1GB will suffice; if you can dedicate something like 2.5 GB to Bea*, you won't ever run into troubles even when you seriously start expanding the system.

Partitioning and preparing the hard drive

If you want to install Bea* to a hard disk, you'll have to make room for it first. This step is called "partitioning". If you're familiar with the concept, you'll find partitioning with and for Bea* rather straightforward.

There are three situation you'll find yourself in:

You have a whole hard disk to dedicate to Bea* - this is ideal, things will be very easy from here on.
You have a spare partition to put Bea* on - this is only a little more complicated than having a whole hard disk (you'll have to be a bit more careful when partitioning, that's all).
You'll have to make room for Bea* on your hard disk. This can prove a bit tricky, especially if you're using Windows 2000 or XP and have a single partition using the NTFS file system. If that is the case, we recommend using other tools to do that than the ones that come with Bea*. Look for them in the last section of this document.

Using the tools that come with Bea*

In the first two of the cases described above, you can start with using the installer's partitioning step. The Bea* installer uses a popular Linux program called cfdisk), but since there have been some reports of problems with using that program from within the installer, we'll cover its use and then recommend some additional steps that might be necessary to secure success.

cfdisk is a console application, that means that it doesn't come with a nice GUI. This may put some people off, but using it really isn't difficult at all.

Note: The usage of cfdisk from within the installer is exactly the same as directly from the console - but the results may be different. That's why everything I explain here may have to be done again from outside the installer in order to make things really work. However, this only applies in case of problems.

What you have to do:

Choose 3. Partition on the installer's menu.
Choose the hard disk you want to install Bea* to. Note: You don't get to choose partitions right now, you'll have to choose the whole disk here. Since nothing will be done without your consent or "automagically", this step is absolutely safe!
A console window will pop up; you'll see a list of existing partitions and their properties:

(Your actual view will vary a little, of course.)

What you see:
- Name is the actual Linux name of the device - you needn't bother about that, it'll be set automatically following your choices.
- Flags tells you the basic property of being bootable or not. Your Bea* partition will have to be bootable.
- Part Type tells you the type of partition you're handling. There are primary, extended and logical partitions. You can only have four primary partitions; within a primary partition, you can have a couple of logical partitions (a primary partition with several logical partitions is called extended). The image shows a multi-boot system, so it uses only primary partitions - you won't need to do that in case of problems, setting up logical partitions for Bea* is fine.
- FS Type shows you the type of file system you're dealing with. The image only shows Linux partitions, yours may be a lot different in that respect. You'll have to set up a Linux swap and a Linux partition; the Bea* installer - or a separate step, if needed - will add ext3 (the actual file system) later.
- You needn't worry about [Labels] with Bea* - you'll only be using a single partition for the whole system (safe swap).
- Size tells you exactly that: the size of the partitions in MB.
- Navigation is done with the arrow (cursor) keys: left/right steps through options, up/down highlights the partition to handle. Pressing "Enter" executes an option.
If you want to use an existing partition, you'll have to delete it now. Select [ Delete ] (navigate to [ Delete ] and press "Enter"). Note: Before you actually select [ Write ], nothing will be done! You can always back out with [ Quit ]! Just don't write anything you don't want!
Now you'll have "Free space". Do the following (Note: If you know what you're doing, you may proceed differently, of course!):
- Make two new partitions:
  1. by setting up an extended partition:
    - Select [ New ].
    - Select [ Logical ] (Note: This way, you'll create an extended partition.)
    - Add space for a swap partition; as a short rule, you can use a swap partition at least twice the size of your RAM; it's not necessary to go beyond 512 MB. Enter the size, select [ Beginning ].
    - There'll be a new partition and "Free Space". Move to "Free Space".
    - Select [ Logical ].
    - Add space for your root (system) partition. You can use the whole space for that partition but since you don't need more than 2,5 GB, you can of course repeat that step and add other partitions of your choice.)
  2. by setting up two primary partitions:
    - Select [ New ].
    - Select [ Primary ]. Note: Remember, you can't have more than four of those on your system!
    - Add space for a swap partition. Enter the size, select [ Beginning ].
    - Move to "Free Space".
    - Select [ Primary ].
    - Add space for your root (system) partition.
- Set up the swap partition first:
  - Navigate to your swap space.
  - Select [ Type ]. You'll be presented with a huge list - don't worry, just press "Enter"; then (if not already chosen) enter "82" as partition type and press "Enter" again.
- Set up the root (system) partition next:
  - Navigate to your system space.
  - Select [ Type ]. Go to the end of the list and (if not already chosen) enter "83" as partition type.
Now you're finished - the next step is writing the parition table to disk. Beware - this'll delete all content on the new partitions! If you don't want to do that, quit now!. If you're sure everything is like it should be, select [ Write ], wait for the writing process to finish, select [ Quit ] and you're done.
After that, you'll be taken back to the installer's menu. Ready for prime time!

Formatting the system partition manually

Note: This step will only be needed if the installer fails to partition your root (system) and swap partitions correctly, thus terminating prematurely because it can't find a suitable partition to install the system to. In that case:

Open a terminal (Applications -> System Tools -> Terminal)
Do: sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdaX - "X" being the number of the partition you'd like to install Bea* to (if in doubt, look it up with sudo cfdisk), while "ext3" signifies the file system type it should be formatted with.
Do: sudo mkswap /dev/hdaY - "Y" being the number of your swap partition.

This should make those two partitions ready for use.

Using other live CDs to partition your hard disk

Note I: Normally, you shouldn't need to do this! But if you can't get the desired results with the on-board tools Bea* offers, these tools might be worth a try!

Note II: Most of these tools are quite straightforward to use. However, we can't provide you with in-depth documentation about them here - please refer to the products' websites and manuals!

There are serveral great live CDs to help you with system administration, installation and rescue; we'll focus on those that give you a good means to format and partition your hard disk in case of emergency and are either even more handy than Bea* for the task or a lot more comfortable (remember, though: almost everything can be done with Bea* herself!).

Here's the list:

Gparted LiveCD offers a minimal live system solely running Gparted, a feature-rich and GUI-based partitioning tool. Gparted can handle NTFS (the Windows NT file system) partitions, so if you need to shrink an NTFS partition to win the 1GB (minimum) to put Bea on, Gparted Live CD is for you!
INSERT is a system rescue and network analysis live CD. It's very handy, and it comes with Gparted. If you want a system that offers substantially more functionality than Gparted LiveCD while still not being a whole lot bigger, we'd recommend using INSERT.
Ultimate Boot CD comes with a busload of tools for any basic system task you might want to accomplish; however, you'll have to read a lot of documentation if you want to make full use of all those tools, and some of them are so potent that using them without thorough knowledge of their handling may well result in a totally wrecked system! But if you act carefully, you'll have all the tools you'll ever need at hand. Ultimate Boot CD (Full Version) also offers to boot into INSERT at boot time!
Note: Ultimate Boot CD hasn't been updated for a while now, so the version of INSERT you'll find on that disk is out of date, as is the version Gparted that comes with it. However, it should work for most issues - but if you plan to resize NTFS partitions, choose the most recent Gparted LiveCD!
SystemRescueCD is another fine collection of system tools; but in contrast to Ultimate Boot CD, it's all done with Linux tools; SystemRescueCD offers a complete Linux working environment with lots of useful applications. If you know your way around Linux, this might be your best choice.
TOMSRTBT ("Tom's floppy which has a root filesystem and is also bootable.") is a floppy based Linux distribution compiled by Tom Oehser; it's a bit dated and only recommended for experts and experimentalists. However, if you can only boot from floppy or hard disk, TOMSRTBT may be your best choice to solve any system problems you might encounter. TOMSRTBT also offers basic disc partitioning and formatting.

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