Here we will go through the installation procedure of Red Hat Linux via NFS, CDROM, and FTP. We will be blatantly skipping the SMB and hardrive installations. For the most part they are very similar, but there can be a couple of gotcha's which we will try to cover in detail.

The Fermi Red Hat Linux 5.0.2 is based on Red Hat 5.0 with some very important differences: it actually uses the Red Hat 5.1 boot and supplemental installation diskettes. The reason is that Red Hat inadvertantly changed some of their packages so dramatically that the 5.0 boot diskette's fails at a very critical moment during the installation. This was overcome by using the 5.1 boot diskette with some modifications that people doing NFS and CDROM installs will not see, but those installing via FTP will have to be aware of.
 

I. Things they don't tell you in school: tricks of the trade.
 
A. During the installation there are ways to get information about how things are going to help diagnose problems. This is via the Console Installation Screens:

1. Ctrl-Alt-F1 - The Newt Menu screen
 

a. This is the default interaction screen, where all choices are made, installation progress is noted, etc.

2. Ctrl-Alt-F2 - The interactive shell screen
 

a. This is a screen that gives you an interactive shell prompt. You can mount and unmount file systems, inspect files, run programs, etc. from this shell. This only is activated during the second stage install, i.e., after the NFS server has been mounted, the CD has been read, or the supplemental disk has been loaded.

3. Ctrl-Alt-F3 - The report screen
 

a. This the "stdout" screen that the installation program writes information to.

4. Ctrl-Alt-F4 - The kernel screen
 

a. In this screen you can see modules being loaded into the kernel, network connections/failures, etc.

5. Ctrl-Alt-F5 - The device screen
 

a. In this screen you can see the progress of the creation the filesystem on the system disk, probing for charater devices, ethernet cards, etc.

II. Determining the best installation procedure for the situtation

A. Preferred On Site: NFS
 

1. Print out the installation instructions from the Linux at Fermilab Web page: www.fnal.gov/cd/unix/linux and read the pre-installation checklist.

2. Obtain a floppy from Yolanda or PREP.

3. Proceed with the instructions.

4. Ta Da! You should have a happy, bouncing baby Linux box.

B. 5.0.2 CDROM dated August 31, 1998 or before:
 

1. Get the installation instructions as above.

2. Obtain a floppy from Yolanda or PREP or make your own:
 

a. On a Windows machine: insert the CD and double click on this path: My Computer -> CDROM -> dosutils -> rawrite

b. A DOS window will appear that will ask where the boot image is. This depends on where the CDROM drive is located, but it is usually at "d:\images\boot.img"

c. The next prompt is to locate the floppy. Again this depends where the floppy drive actually is but this is generally "a:"

d. After it's done writing to the floppy, reboot the machine and procede

3. At step 5, Install Type, will select CDROM install and it will skip ahead to step 10. This just skips the ethernet setup section for the time being. You will be given the option to set this up later on in the installation. Proceed as in the instructions

C. 5.0.2 CDROM dated after August 31, 1998 (i.e., the one included with this class):

1. Reboot the system and enter the BIOS setup; hit F2 during the boot sequence.

2. Modify the boot order of the devices so that the order is "Removable Media," "CDROM," "HDA" (if this is an IDE system).

3. Place the CD in the drive, save the changes and exit the BIOS setup (usually F10 on Intel motherboards).

4. The system will re-boot from the CD and start the installation.

D. The tricky one: FTP
 

1. To perform an FTP install, you will need a second floppy called the supplemental floppy, aka supp.img.

2. From a Windows machine anonymous ftp to linux.fnal.gov (Start -> Run -> ftp).

3. cd to /linux/current/i386/dosutils, change the download type to binary and get rawrite.exe

4. cd ../images and get boot.img and supp.img

5. rawrite.exe should be written directly to your desktop. Double click on it and enter the info that it prompts you for (same as above), but this time you'll have to have 2 floppy disks to create boot and supp.

6. Stick the boot.img in the floppy drive and re-boot the machine. (The three finger salute is sufficient)

7. Proceed with the install until step 5, then select FTP. It will prompt you to insert the supplemental disk and hit return.

8. After the installation has completed and you have rebootted the machine, you will need to run /sbin/setup to configure the timezone and select the services to run. These steps are skipped during the installation.

 
III. Post-installation notes
 
A. An installation log of all the packages that have been installed on the system is located in /tmp/install.log. This is a simple file with one line per package, and simplistic error recording. A common, though trivial, error that is encountered may be encountered during the installation of bc, "a text based calculator of sorts." This will appear because you didn't choose to format an existing system partition.