CHAPTER 2

Installation of Your Red Hat System

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Be Prepared, Be Very Prepared! 12
• Installing Red Hat Linux 13
• Step-by-Step Installation 15
• The Red Hat Package Manager 25

One of the obvious differences between Red Hat Linux and other versions of Linux is the ease in which Red Hat can be installed. The process is quite straightforward and automated by the Red Hat installation program. The installation program can handle many different system configurations and problems nicely; so most problems are taken care of for you.

Before looking at the different methods used to install the operating system, you should understand the hardware system on which the operating system will be installed. After examining the hardware, the rest of this chapter guides you, step-by-step, through the installation process. This process is broken down, showing some of the differences between the four basic methods of installation. This chapter briefly presents the installation of LILO (Linux Loader), but leaves many of the details to Chapter 3, "LILO."

Be Prepared, Be Very Prepared!

Understanding the hardware is essential for a successful installation of Red Hat Linux. Therefore, you should take a moment now and familiarize yourself with your hardware. Be prepared to answer the following questions:

1. How many hard drives do you have?
2. What size is each hard drive (2.2GB)?
3. If you have more than one hard drive, which is the primary one?
4. How much RAM do you have?
5. If you have a CD-ROM, what type of interface do you have? If it is not a SCSI or an IDE CD-ROM, who made it and what model is it?
6. Do you have a SCSI adapter? If so, who made it and what model is it?
7. What type of mouse do you have?
8. How many buttons?
9. If you have a serial mouse, what COM port is it connected to?
10. What is the make and model of your video card? How much video RAM do you have?
11. What kind of monitor do you have (make and model)?
12. What is the allowable range of horizontal and vertical refresh rates for your monitor?
13. Will you be connecting to a network? If so, what will be the following:

a. Your IP address?
b. Your netmask?
c. Your gateway address?
d. Your Domain Name Server's IP address?
e. Your domain name?

f. Your hostname? (I would suggest a hostname even if you were not connected to a network, because it helps give your computer some personality.)
g. Your type of network card?

1. Will you be running other operating systems on the same machine?
2. If so, which ones? OS/2? Windows 95? Windows NT?

16. Will you be using LILO?

After you have answered these questions, the rest of the installation is fairly easy. The entire process is menu-driven, which means you don't have to remember all the configuration information you have to remember for other Linuxes you might want to install.

Installing Red Hat Linux

The installation or upgrade of Red Hat Linux can be done through any of several methods. Depending on which method you use, you need either one or two formatted high-density (1.44MB) 3.5-inch disks.

Installing from CD-ROM or via NFS requires only a boot disk. Installing from a hard drive, via FTP, from an SMB volume, or from a PCM-CIA device (which includes PCM-CIA
CD-ROMs) requires both a boot disk and a supplemental disk.

Creating the Boot and Supplemental Disks

Before you make the boot and supplemental disks, label the disks so that you will know which is which. The process for making the disks is the same, except for one difference. When the program asks for the filename, you enter boot.img for the boot disk, and supp.img for the supplemental disk. To make the floppies under MS-DOS, you need to use these commands (assuming your CD-ROM is drive D):

d:

cd \images

\dosutils\rawrite.exe

rawrite asks for the filename of the disk image. Enter boot.img. Insert a floppy into drive A. It will then ask for a disk to write to. Enter a:. Label the disk Red Hat boot disk. Run rawrite

again, enter supp.img, insert another disk, and type a:. Label the disk Red Hat supplemental disk.

To create the disks under Linux, you can use the dd utility. Mount the Red Hat Linux
CD-ROM, insert a floppy in the drive (do not mount it), and change directories (cd) to the images directory on the CD-ROM. Use this command to create the boot disk:

dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k

To make the supplemental disk, use the following command:

dd if=supp.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k

Installing Without Using a Boot Floppy

If you have MS-DOS on your computer, you can install without using a boot floppy. The Red Hat installation program can be started by using these commands:

d:

cd \dosutils

autoboot.bat

Virtual Consoles

Red Hat's installation goes beyond just a simple sequence of dialog boxes. In fact, while installing, you can look at different diagnostic messages during the installation process. There are actually five different virtual consoles that you can switch between, which can be helpful if problems are encountered during installation. Table 2.1 shows the five consoles, the key sequence to switch to each console, and the purpose of that particular console.

Table 2.1. Virtual console information.

Most of the installation time will be spent in console 1 working through the dialog boxes.

Dialog Boxes

The dialog boxes consist of a simple question or statement. From this information, you choose one or more responses. To choose these responses, it is necessary to navigate the boxes. In most