1. What You Will Need

We will install a Linux distribution like Red Hat in one partition, and use that to build a new Linux system in another partition. I will call the system we are building the ``target'' and the system we are using to build it with, the ``source'' (not to be confused with source code which we will also be using.)

So you are going to need a machine with two spare partitions on it. If you can, use a machine with nothing important on it. You could use an existing Linux installation as the source system, but I wouldn't recommend that. If you leave a parameter out of one of the commands we will issue, you could accidentally install stuff to this system. This could lead to incompatibilites and strife.

Older PC hardware, mostly 486's and earlier, have an annoying limitation in their bios. They can not read from a hard disk past the first 512M. This is not too much of a problem for Linux, because once it is up, it does its own disk io, bypassing the bios. But for Linux to get loaded by these old machines, the kernel has to reside somewhere below 512M. If you have one of these machines you will need to have a separate partition completely below the 512M mark, to mount as /boot for any partitions that are over that 512M mark. ........