Preparing for a Network Installation

If you are performing a network installation and have booted from a boot disk with the bootnet.img image, the Configure TCP/IP dialog appears.

Setting Up the Server

Because the Red Hat Linux 8.0 installation program is capable of installing Red Hat Linux from multiple CD-ROMs, if you intend to support NFS, FTP, or HTTP installations you can copy the RedHat directory from each CD-ROM comprising Red Hat Linux 8.0 onto a disk drive (in other words, you must create an installation tree).

Tip

An installation tree is the location for all files needed to run and install the Red Hat Linux operating system. An ISO image is a file containing an exact copy of a CD-ROM disk image. Because Red Hat Linux has so many packages included with its distribution, there are several ISO images available. An installation tree differs from an ISO image in that ISO images are broken down into smaller subsets of files that the installation program then calls per ISO image, while an installation tree contains all the necessary files in one complete file structure. Individual ISO images can be combined to create an installation tree.

• For each binary CD-ROM, execute the following commands:

  mount /mnt/cdrom cp -var /mnt/cdrom/RedHat /location/of/disk/space (where  /location/of/disk/spaceis a directory you create, such as /export/8.0/) umount /mnt/cdrom

• Please note that the Release Notes are not included in the RedHat directory. Unless they are specifically copied over, the Release Notes will not be available during your installation of Red Hat Linux. The Release Notes are also available online at http://www.redhat.com/docs.

• Next, make /location/of/disk/space accessible to the installation program (for example, exporting it for NFS installations) by editing the /etc/exports file and adding the line:

   /location/of/disk/space *(ro)

• Finally, run the following command to make /location/of/disk/space available as read-only to each system to mount:

  /sbin/service nfs reload

Using ISO Images for NFS Installs

NFS installations can use ISO (or CD-ROM) images rather than have to copy an entire installation tree. After placing the required ISO images (the binary Red Hat Linux CD-ROMs) in a directory, choose to install via NFS. You will then point the installation program at that directory to perform the installation.

Verifying that the ISO images are intact before you attempt an installation will help to avoid problems that are often encountered during an NFS installation. To verify that the ISO images are intact prior to performing an installation, use an md5sum program (many md5sum programs are available for various operating systems). An md5sum program should be available on the same server as the ISO images.

Note

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

Additionally, if a file called updates.img exists in the directory from which you install, it will be used for installation program updates. Refer to the file install-methods.txt in the anaconda RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Linux, as well as how to apply the installation program updates.

Note

You can have the ISO images for only one release of Red Hat Linux in the directory.