Chapter 2: Hardware and Installation

Overview

Installation is one of the two parts of both the RHCE and the RHCT exams. To pass this part of each exam, you'll need to know a lot more than just the basic GUI installation process for a single computer! Once you've studied the installation chapters (Chapters 2 and 5), you'll be able to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in a number of ways: over a network, directly from the CD, using boot disks, and with automated kickstart-based tools.

While this chapter covers the "basics," they are important. Naturally, you need compatible hardware, as well as sufficient processing power and RAM. The latest Linux tools help detect portable and network devices.

Generally, unless you've copied the installation DVD or CDs to the local system, network installations are fastest. To help you learn all installation methods, we'll show you how to configure a network installation server.

On the Job 

While Red Hat does not provide an installation DVD, it is available for some of the "rebuild" distributions such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.

Then you'll learn how to install RHEL on your system, step by step. The installation program is known as Anaconda. You'll see how you can create regular (software) RAID and Logical Volume Management (LVM)-based partitions. Then you'll be guided through the First Boot process to see how to continue the RHEL configuration process after installation is complete.

You may be asked to install and configure some or all of the services described on the Red Hat Exam Prep guide (www.redhat.com/training/rhce/examprep.html). This chapter will help you understand the services that you can install with RHEL. The fastest way to install RHEL is in text mode.

However, you may wish to install RHEL via the regular graphical screen as you can't customize LVM partitions in text mode. If the test system and network is up to date (for example, Fast Ethernet is probably sufficient), the time penalty associated with GUI installations may be trivial.