Starting the Installation Program

To start the installation, you must first boot the installation program. Please make sure you have all the resources you will need for the installation.

Note

Occasionally, some hardware components require a driver diskette during the installation. A driver diskette adds support for hardware that is not otherwise supported by the installation program..

Booting the Installation Program

You can boot the Red Hat Linux installation program using any one of the following media (depending upon what your system can support):

• Bootable CD-ROM — Your machine supports a bootable CD-ROM drive and you want to perform a local CD-ROM installation.

• Local boot diskette — Your machine will not support a bootable CD-ROM and you want to install from a local CD-ROM or a hard drive.

• Network boot diskette — Use a network boot diskette to install via NFS, FTP, or HTTP.

• PCMCIA boot diskettes — Use PCMCIA boot diskettes when you need PCMCIA support, but your machine does not support booting from the CD-ROM drive or you need PCMCIA support in order to make use of the CD-ROM drive on your system. The PCMCIA boot diskettes can be used for all installation methods (CD-ROM, hard drive, NFS, FTP, and HTTP). To create a boot diskette, refer to the “Boot Disk Creation” section of this appendix.

Insert the boot diskette into your computer’s first diskette drive and reboot (or boot using the CD-ROM, if your computer supports booting from it). Your BIOS settings may need to be changed to allow you to boot from the diskette or CD-ROM.

After a short delay, a screen containing the boot: prompt should appear. The screen contains information on a variety of boot options. Each boot option also has one or more help screens associated with it. To access a help screen, press the appropriate function key as listed in the line at the bottom of the screen.

Tip

To change your BIOS settings, watch the instructions provided on your display when your computer first boots. You will see a line of text telling you to press the Del or F1 key to enter the BIOS settings. Once you have entered your BIOS setup program, find the section where you can alter your boot sequence. The default is often C, A or A, C (depending on whether you boot from your hard drive [C] or a diskette drive [A]). Change this sequence so that the CD-ROM is first in your boot order and that C or A (whichever is your typical boot default) is second. This instructs the computer to look first at the CD-ROM drive for bootable media; if it does not find bootable media on the CD-ROM drive, it will then check your hard drive or diskette drive. Save your changes before exiting the BIOS. For more information, refer to the documentation that came with your system.

As you boot the installation program, be aware of two issues:

• Once you see the boot: prompt, the installation program will automatically begin if you take no action within the first minute. To disable this feature, press one of the help screen function keys.

• If you press a help screen function key, there will be a slight delay while the help screen is read from the boot media.

Normally, you need only to press Enter to boot. Watch the boot messages to see if the Linux kernel detects your hardware. If your hardware is properly detected, please continue to the next section. If it does not properly detect your hardware, you may need to restart the installation in expert mode.

Additional Boot Options

While it is easiest for a user to boot from CD-ROM and perform a graphical installation, sometimes there are installation scenarios where booting in a different manner may be needed. This section discusses additional boot options available for Red Hat Linux.

Note

Refer to the “Alternative Boot Loaders” section of this appendix for additional boot options not covered in this section.

• If you do not wish to perform a graphical installation, you can start a text-mode installation using the following boot command:

  boot: linux text

• ISO images now have an md5sum embedded in them. To test the checksum integrity of an ISO image, type the following at the installation boot prompt:

  boot: linux mediacheck

The installation program will prompt you to insert a CD or select an ISO image to test. Select OK to perform the checksum operation. This checksum operation can be performed on any Red Hat Linux CD and does not have to be performed in a specific order (for example, CD #1 does not have to be the first CD you verify). It is strongly recommended that you perform this operation on any Red Hat Linux CD that was created from downloaded ISO images. This procedure works with CD-based installations and hard-drive and NFS installations using ISO images.

If the installation program does not properly detect your hardware, you may need to restart the installation in expert mode. Enter expert mode using the following boot command:

boot: linux noprobe

For text-mode installations, use:

boot: linux text noprobe

Expert mode disables most hardware probing and gives you the option of entering options for the drivers loaded during the installation. The initial boot messages will not contain any references to SCSI or network cards. This is normal; these devices are supported by modules that are loaded during the installation process.

If you need to perform the installation in serial mode, type the following command:

boot: linux console=device 

For text mode installations, use:

boot: linux text console=device 

In the above command, device should be the device you are using (such as ttyS0 or ttyS1). For example, linux text console=ttyS0,115200n8.

Kernel Options

Options can also be passed to the kernel. For example, to instruct the kernel to use all the RAM in a system with 128MB of RAM, enter:

boot: linux mem=128M

For text-mode installations, use:

boot: linux text mem=128M

After entering any options, press Enter to boot using those options.

If you need to specify boot options to identify your hardware, please write them down. The boot options will be needed during the boot loader configuration portion of the installation (please see the “Boot Loader Configuration” section later in this appendix for more information).

Booting without Diskettes

The Red Hat Linux CD-ROM can be booted by computers that support bootable CD-ROMs. Not all computers support this feature, so if your system cannot boot from the CD-ROM, there is one other way to start the installation without using a boot diskette. The following method is specific to x86-based computers only.

If you have MS-DOS installed on your system, you can boot directly from the CD-ROM drive without using a boot diskette. To do this (assuming your CD-ROM is drive D), use the following commands:

C:\ d: D:\ cd \dosutils D:\dosutils  autoboot.bat

This method will not work if run in a DOS window — the autoboot.bat file must be executed with DOS as the only operating system. In other words, Windows cannot be running.

If your computer cannot boot directly from CD-ROM (and you cannot use a DOS-based autoboot.bat), you will have to use a boot diskette to start the installation.