Certification Objective 2.08: Sample Installation Exercises | RCHE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux Study Guide[c] Exam (Rh302)

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The following exercises are meant to provide you with a step-by-step set of progressively more complex installation exercises that cover everything from basic workstations to very specific and advanced server installations.

On The Job

You should do these exercises on test machines only. One possible option is a virtual machine that can simulate a computer inside your operating system. An example of this is VMWare, available from www.vmware.com.

Introduction to Installation Exercises

All these exercises assume you have a basic PC available at your disposal to work with as a learning station. You do not want any important data on that PC. You do not need a network connection, nor do you need to know how to configure X for these exercises-you can simply select the default answers, in most cases.

These exercises are designed to provide progressive development to help further your knowledge about installing Linux. If you're studying for the RHCT, you may not be able to go through all of the steps, especially with respect to server software that is not included on the RHEL 3 Workstation.

If you're using Fedora Linux or Red Hat Linux 9 to run these exercises, the Workstation option is fine for the first exercise in this section; the Custom option is best for the final two exercises in this section.

In these exercises, you will be asked to configure the installation for a specific usage and customize the disk partition table to meet the needs of the intended usage. This will require that you do a Custom installation in all but one of the exercises.

These exercises also assume your machine boots from the floppy during a normal reboot, that there is no pertinent information on these test machines, and that you realize all data will be overwritten on these machines.

Exercise 2-5: Advanced Workstation Installation

In this exercise, you will distribute your filesystem over more than just one partition. You will need to create the partitions on a 20GB or larger IDE hard disk (see Table 2-4).

Table 2-4: Custom Installation as a Workstation (No Other OS), 1.2 GHz Pentium, 20GB Single Disk, 256MB of Memory
Partition	Size	Use	Comment
hda1	100MB	/boot	Maintains boot files
hda2	512MB	swap	Plenty of space
hda3	5.5GB	/	The root directory
hda4	14GB	Extended partition	Solely a container for logical partitions
hda5	4GB	/var	For print spool files
hda6	5GB	/home	User files-RAID 1
hda7	5GB	/home	User files-RAID 1

Create a Linux installation floppy from the bootdisk.img image file, then reboot the system.
Select manual partitioning at the appropriate step.
Use Disk Druid to reconfigure the partition table.
Delete all partitions.
Create the first partition with 100MB of disk space, ext3, and assign to /boot.
Create the next primary partition, hda2, as Linux Swap, and assign to ID 83.
Create a third partition with about 5500MB of disk space, ext3, and assign it to the root directory, /.
Create an extended partition containing all the rest of the disk space. Make it growable.
Create the first logical partition, hda5, with about 4GB, and assign it to /var.
Create two more logical partitions, hda6 and hda7. Split the remaining space between these two partitions (about 5GB each). Set it up with a software RAID filesystem.

Make a RAID 1 device from the two new software RAID partitions, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /home.

On The Job

In the real world, you should never configure different parts of a RAID array on the same hard drive. If you do, the failure of any single hard drive can lead to the loss of all of your data on that array. However, it may be necessary if the computer on your exam has only one physical hard drive.

Continue with the installation process, using your best judgment.
When asked to select packages, make sure that the OpenOffice.org suite as well as the Graphics, Graphical Internet, and Games packages are selected.
Finish the Workstation installation normally.
Reboot the computer and log in as the root user.

Exercise 2-6: Disk Partitioning a Server Installation

In this exercise, you will install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 to create a basic server. You can create a very similar installation using Red Hat Linux 9's custom installation option. You will need to create the partitions on a 10GB or larger hard disk (see Table 2-5).

Table 2-5: Custom Installation as a Server, 2 GHz Pentium, 10GB Single Disk, 256MB Memory
Partition	Size	Use	Comment
hda1	100MB	/boot	Maintains boot files
hda2	500MB	swap	Probably plenty of space
hda3	5GB	/	The root directory
hda4	4500MB	Extended partition	Solely a container for logical partitions
hda5	500MB	/var	For print spool files
hda6	1000MB	/var/www	Web services
hda7	2000MB	/home	No interactive users
hda8	1000MB	/usr	Additional network services

Create a Linux installation floppy from the bootdisk.img image file, then reboot the system.
Select manual partitioning at the appropriate step.
When prompted, select Disk Druid to edit partitions.
Delete all partitions.
Create the first partition with 100MB of disk space, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /boot.
Create the next primary partition, hda2, with about 500MB of disk space, as Linux Swap.
Create third partition with about 5GB disk space, Linux Native, and assign to the root directory, /.
Create an extended partition containing all the rest of the disk space, 4500MB.
Create the first logical partition, hda5, with about 500MB, formatted to ext3, and assign to /var.
Create the next logical partition, hda6, with about 1000MB, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /var/www.
Create the next logical partition, hda7, with about 2000MB, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /home.
Create the next logical partition, hda8, with about 1000MB, formatted to ext3, and assign to /usr.
Continue with the installation process, using your best judgment.
Choose to customize the package groups to be installed. On an exam, you may see a requirement to install a number of different services such as a Web server, communication with Windows PCs, an FTP server, as well as servers for DNS and DHCP.
Finish the installation normally.
Reboot when prompted and log in as the root user.

Exercise 2-7: Disk Partitioning Strategy for Database Server Installation

In this exercise, you will install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 to configure the partitions for an imaginary database server. You can create a very similar installation using Red Hat Linux 9's custom installation option. In this exercise, you will need to create the partitions on a 25GB or larger hard disk (see Table 2-6). The main use for such a system is as a database, file, and print server, with few interactive users.

Table 2-6: Custom Installation as a Server (No Other OS), 2.4 GHz Pentium II, 25GB Single Disk, 512MB Memory
Partition	Size	Use	Comment
hda1	100MB	/boot	Maintains boot files
hda2	1000MB	swap	Probably plenty of space
hda3	10GB	/	The root directory
hda4	14GB	Extended partition	Solely a container for logical partitions
hda5	3GB	/var	For print spool files
hda6	3.5GB	/opt	Database system using RAID 1
hda7	3.5GB	/opt	Database system using RAID 1
hda8	2GB	/usr	File services using RAID 0
hda9	2GB	/usr	File services using RAID 0

Create a Linux installation floppy from the bootdisk.img image file, then reboot the system.
Select manual partitioning at the appropriate step.
When prompted, select Disk Druid to edit partitions.
Delete all partitions.
Create the first partition with 100MB of disk space, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /boot.
Create the next primary partition, hda2, with about 1000MB of disk space, as Linux Swap.
Create third partition with about 10GB disk space, Linux Native, and assign to / (root).
Create an extended partition containing all the rest of the disk space, about 14GB.
Create the first logical partition, hda5, with about 3GB, formatted to ext3, and assign it to /var.

Create the next two logical partitions, hda6 and hda7 with about 3.5GB each. Format each to the software RAID filesystem.

On The Job

Use the Make RAID option to set up a RAID 1 array from these two partitions. Format it to ext3 and assign it to /opt.
Create the next two logical partitions, hda8 and hda9, with about 2GB each. Format each to the software RAID filesystem.
Use the Make RAID option to set up a RAID 0 array from these two partitions. Format it to ext3 and assign it to /usr.
Continue with the installation process, using your best judgment.
When asked to select packages, make sure to include the MySQL Database Server package group.
Finish the installation normally.
Reboot and log in as the root user.

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