Detailed Installation Instructions | Fedora 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible

This section provides more detail on installation. Besides expanding on the installation procedure, this section also provides information on different installation types and on choosing computer hardware.

If anything goes wrong during installation and you get stuck, go to the "Troubleshooting Installation" section at the end of this chapter. It gives suggestions for solving common installation problems.

Caution

If, when installing Windows or Fedora, you find that the other operating system is no longer available on your boot screen, don't panic and don't immediately reinstall. You can usually recover from the problem by booting the live CD that comes with this book, and then using the grub-install command to reinsert the proper master boot record. (You can also enter rescue mode by typing linux rescue from the Fedora DVD boot prompt.) If you are uncomfortable working in emergency mode, seek out an expert to help you.

Installing Fedora Core 6

This chapter details how to install Fedora 6 from the DVD that comes with this book. If you don't have a DVD drive, you can use the Fedora live/install CD that comes with this book to do a network install. If you are installing Fedora from those media, you can simply follow the instructions in this chapter. This procedure will also work if you have obtained the complete Fedora Core CD installation set.

Note

If you do not have a DVD drive, and you want to do a full Fedora install, you can obtain the five-CD Fedora Core 6 installation set by downloading disk images of those CDs from the Internet and burning them to CD yourself. Go to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download for information on downloading those CDs. Refer to Chapter 8 for information on burning disk images to CD.

Choosing an Installation Method

Fedora offers very flexible ways of installing the operating system. This book comes with the following installation media (described in Appendix A):

DVD (complete FC6) - Contains the entire Fedora Core 6 operating system, including all binary packages.
CD #1 (FC6 Live/network install) - If you don't have a DVD drive, you can install from the included unofficial Fedora Core 6 Live/install CD. The CD lets you run a live version of Fedora Core 6 or launch an install process that gathers the packages you select from over the network to install Fedora Core to your hard disk.
CD #2 (Fedora Extras) - Once Fedora Core 6 is installed, you can add hundreds of Fedora Extras software packages to your installed Fedora Core systems using CD #2.

If your computer has a DVD drive, I recommend installing Fedora from the DVD that comes with this book. However, if you don't have a DVD drive, you also have the option of installing Fedora using CD #1 (provided you have an Internet connection) or from any of several different types of media. There are also several special types of installation. The installation types noted here are described fully in the "Special Installation Procedures" section.

Much of the installation procedure described here is the same as you will find when you install a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. However, here are a few issues you should be aware of if you are using the installation procedure in this chapter to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Instead of having a DVD or five-CD installation set, Red Hat Enterprise Linux consists of a different boot CD for AS and WS installs . After starting installation with the appropriate boot CD, both install types use the same set of additional CDs ( marked disc2, disc3, and disc4).
Installation classes for Fedora and Enterprise are different.
The names and logos used for Fedora and Enterprise are different.
Unlike the Fedora installation, which installs all CDs in order, Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires that you insert the boot CD again near the end of the install process.
For Fedora Core, a few of the screens (such as the Firewall screen) are no longer part of the installation process, but have moved to the firstboot procedure that runs the first time you start up your installed Fedora system.

Besides those differences, an installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 should closely match the instructions in this chapter. There are differences in which packages are included with the Fedora and Enterprise distributions, however.

Install or Upgrade?

First you should determine if you are doing a new install or an upgrade. If you are upgrading an existing Red Hat Linux or Fedora system to the latest version, the installation process will try to leave your data files and configuration files intact as much as possible. This type of installation takes longer than a new install. A new install will simply erase all data on the Linux partitions (or entire hard disk) that you choose.

Note

While you can upgrade to Fedora Core 6 from previous Fedora or Red Hat Linux systems (such as Red Hat Linux 8 or 9), you cannot upgrade to Fedora Core 6 from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.

If you choose to upgrade, you can save yourself some time (and disk space) by removing software packages you don't need. An upgrade will just skip packages that are not installed and not try to upgrade them. Here are a few other tips related to upgrades:

Conflicting packages - If you upgrade a system on which you installed packages from sources outside of the Fedora project that conflict with Fedora packages, those features may no longer work. For example, if you replaced GNOME with Ximian GNOME or used a third-party KDE package set, you can't upgrade those packages to FC6. (It's probably best to remove those packages before upgrading, and then apply them again later if you like.)
Kernel requirements - To upgrade, you must have at least a Linux 2.0 kernel installed on the system you are upgrading.
Configuration files - With an upgrade, all of your configuration files are saved as filename .rpmsave (for example, the hosts file is saved as hosts.rpmsave ). The locations of those files, as well as other upgrade information, is written to /root/upgrade.log . The upgrade installs the new kernel, any changed software packages, and any packages that the installed packages depend on being there. Your data files and configuration information should remain intact.
Digital certificates - If you are using digital certificates on your system, you must relocate them to the /etc/pki directory after the upgrade. (See Chapter 14 for information on setting up digital certificates.)
Java - If you used the Java RPM from Sun Microsystems to provide Java support, conflicts with that package provides may cause it to be erased during an upgrade. If that occurs, you can install the Java RPM from jpackage.org or install the Java tarball from Sun Microsystems into your /opt directory.

From DVD, Network, or Hard Disk?

When you install Fedora, the distribution doesn't have to come from the installation DVD or set of CDs. After booting the installation DVD or CD and typing linux askmethod at the boot prompt, you are offered the choice of installing Fedora from the following locations:

Local DVD or CDROM - This is the most common method of installing Fedora and the one you get by simply pressing Enter from the installation boot prompt. All packages needed to complete the installation are on the DVD that comes with this book or the set of five install CDs available from the Fedora project that contain the same software.
HTTP- Lets you install from a Web page address ( http:// ).
FTP - Lets you install from an FTP site ( ftp:// ).
NFS image - Allows you to install from any shared directory on another computer on your network using the Network File System (NFS) facility.
Hard drive - If you can place a copy of the Fedora Core distribution on your hard drive, you can install it from there. (Presumably, the distribution is on a hard drive partition to which you are not installing.)

If your computer doesn't have a DVD drive, you can use the live/install CD that comes with the book to start a network install (HTTP, FTP, or NFS). Just type linux askmethod as described earlier, to begin the installation process.

If you don't have a bootable DVD or CD drive, there are other ways to start the Fedora installation. Unlike some earlier Fedora and Red Hat Linux versions, Fedora Core 6 doesn't support floppy disk boot images (the Linux 2.6 kernel is too large to fit on a floppy disk). Therefore, if you don't have a bootable DVD or CD drive, you need to start the install process from some other medium (such as a USB device, PXE server, or hard drive, as described later in this chapter.)

The following specialty installation types also may be of interest to you:

Boot CD - You can create a boot CD from the boot images contained on the Fedora installation DVD that comes with this book. Copy and burn the file boot.iso from the images directory on the DVD. You can use the CD you create from that image to begin the install process if you have a DVD drive that is not bootable or if you have the Fedora Core 6 software available on any of the media described in the linux askmethod section. (The live CD that comes with this book contains the same software used in boot.iso to start an install process.)
USB or other bootable media - If your computer can be configured to boot from alternate bootable media, such as a USB pen drive, that is larger than a floppy disk, you can copy the diskboot.img file to that medium and install from there. That image is contained in the images directory on the DVD.
Kickstart installation - Lets you create a set of answers to the questions Fedora asks you during installation. This can be a time-saving method if you are installing Fedora on many computers with similar configurations.

A Fedora Core Installation Guide is now available from the Fedora Project, if you find you need further information. You can access the guide here:

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/fedora-install-guide-en

Choosing Computer Hardware

This may not really be a choice. You may just have an old PC lying around that you want to try Fedora on. Or you may have a killer workstation with some extra disk space and want to try out Fedora on a separate partition or whole disk. To install the 32-bit PC version of Fedora successfully (that is, the version on the accompanying DVD), the computer must have the following:

x86 processor - Your computer needs an Intel-compatible CPU. With the latest version, Fedora recommends that you at least have a Pentium-class processor to run Fedora. For a text-only installation, a 200 MHz Pentium is the minimum, while a 400 MHz Pentium II is the minimum for a GUI installation.
DVD or CD-ROM drive - You need to be able to boot up the installation process from a DVD, CD-ROM, or other bootable drive. (Other drives can include a USB flash memory drive that you can use with a diskboot.img image included on the DVD.) Once you have booted from one of the media just described, you can use the Internet, a LAN connection to install Fedora Core software packages from a server on the network or figure out a way to copy the contents of the DVD to a local hard disk to install from there.
Hard disk - The minimum amount of space you need varies depending on the installation type and packages you select. If you are an inexperienced user , you want at least 2.3GB of space so you can get the GUI with a Office and Productivity or 3GB for a Software Development install (if you want to do software development). Although different install types are no longer supported in Fedora, the following items roughly indicate how much disk space you need to install different types of desktop or server systems:
- Office and Productivity - Requires 2.3GB of disk space.
- Software Development - Requires 3.0GB of disk space.
- Web Server - Requires 1.1MB of disk space.
- Everything - Requires about 6.9GB of disk space.
- Minimal - Requires at least 620MB of disk space.

RAM - You should have at least 64MB of RAM to install Fedora Core (text mode only). If you are running in graphical mode, you will want at least 192MB. The recommended RAM for GUI mode is 256MB.

Note

With demanding applications such as the Openoffice.org office suite and automatic features for monitoring your desktop being added, Fedora demands more RAM to use it effectively than it used to. A developer at Red Hat recommends at least 512MB of RAM to get good performance in Fedora.

Keyboard and monitor - Although this seems obvious, the truth is that you need only a keyboard and monitor during installation. You can operate Fedora Core quite well over a LAN using either a shell interface from a network login or an X terminal.

Fedora Core versions, not included with this book, are available for the AMD64 architecture and PowerPC. The minimum PowerPC hardware supported is a PowerPC G3/POWER4. Supported PowerPC products include the Apple Power Macintosh (1999 or later), IBM 32-bit RS/6000, Genesi Pegasos II, as well as 64-bit G5 and POWER processors from IBM eServer pSeries computers. Check a Fedora Project mirror site to download those versions, such as:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/ppc

For other hardware, such as Intel Itanium and IBM mainframe, there are versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux available (which you have to purchase from Red Hat, Inc.). The DVD that comes with this book and the installation procedures presented here, however, are specific to 32-bit PCs. Most of the software described in this book will work the same in any of those hardware environments. (Check out fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html for sites that offer Fedora for different computer hardware architectures.)

Note

The list of hardware supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available on the Internet at http://bugzilla.redhat.com/hwcert .

Because laptops can contain non-standard equipment, before you begin installing on a laptop you should find out about other people's experiences installing Linux on your model. Do that by visiting the Linux on Laptops site ( www.linux-on-laptops.com ).

Most modern laptops contain bootable CD-ROM drives, If yours doesn't, you probably need to install from a device connected to a USB or PCMCIA slot on your laptop. PCMCIA slots let you connect a variety of devices to your laptop using credit card- sized cards (sometimes called PC Cards). Linux supports hundreds of PCMCIA devices. You can use your laptop's PCMCIA slot to install Fedora from several different types of PCMCIA devices, including:

A DVD drive
A CD-ROM drive
A LAN adapter

See Chapter 10 for further information on using Linux on laptops.

Preparing for Installation Using a Live CD

Before you begin installing Fedora Core 6, there are ways to check your computer hardware and prepare your computer to install Linux. By booting a live CD, you can make sure that:

The Linux kernel (the heart of the operating system) will boot.
Device drivers are available for the hardware on your computer.
Your hard disk has enough free space to install Fedora or RHEL (and if there's not enough, you can use tools on the live CD to resize your hard disk partitions to make space).

The first CD that comes with this book includes a bootable image derived from Fedora Core 6. You can try out Fedora using this CD without making any changes to your existing setup. You can identify your hardware drivers and disk partitions. Then, if you need to, you can change your hard disk to prepare it to install Fedora (primarily if you need to retain an existing operating system, such as Windows, to dual boot with Linux).

To use Fedora live, insert the first CD that comes with this book, and then reboot your computer. Then, at the boot prompt (quickly, before the install process starts on its own) press Enter.

After taking a few moments to detect your hardware and start up services, Fedora Live should present you with a graphical (GNOME) desktop. With the live CD running on the PC where you want to install Fedora, there are a lot of ways you can check the hardware on your computer. You can also take additional steps to configure and debug any hardware problems before you begin installing Fedora. The following procedures describe what you can do with the Fedora Live CD to prepare to install Fedora or RHEL.

Display Hardware Information

To display information about your computer's hardware from the Fedora live CD you can start by opening the Hardware Browser from the panel (select System Administration Hardware). From the Hardware Browser, select the following items from the left column to check out your computer:

Hard Drives - Tells you your available disk partitions. Your hard disk partitions will probably appear as /dev/hd ?? (for IDE disks) or /dev/sc ?? (for SCSI disks) where the two question marks are replaced by a letter ( a for the first, b for the second, and so on), then a number (1, 2, 3, and so on).

The file system type listed for each partition might give you some idea of the contents of that partition. For example, NTFS and VFAT file systems are common for Windows systems, while ext3, ext2, and reiserfs are generally for Linux or similar systems. For each disk, you can see the sector each partition starts and ends on, the size of the partition (in MB) and the type of file system (in the "Setting up to dual-boot Linux and Windows" section later in this chapter, I describe how to get more information about your partitions).
Network Devices - Displays device information, drivers, and device name for any wired or wireless Ethernet cards installed on your computer.
Sound Cards - Tells which sound cards are installed on your computer.
System Devices - Shows information about the PCI devices on your computer. This could tell you a lot of good information about your computer's bus and bridges.
Video cards - Describes the type of video card and chipset connected to your computer.

To check out information about your computer's memory, open the System Monitor by selecting System Administration System Monitor. The following information about your computer's available memory is displayed:

User memory - Shows how much RAM is available on your computer.
Used swap - If there is a swap partition (which there won't be if you are starting with a Windows-only PC), you will see the amount of space available on that partition as well.

Writing down the information about your hardware and memory will help you later if something goes wrong. So, for example, if you try to use Google to search for an answer or ask a question at a forum, you will know exactly what hardware is not working.

Test Your Hardware

Although most configuration you do will disappear when you reboot your computer after using the live CD, running through some tests and a bit of setup can help you when you configure the same equipment on the installed Fedora or RHEL. Here are a few ways to test useful hardware devices from the Fedora Live CD:

Sound card - To test your sound card, select System Administration Soundcard Detection to open the Audio Devices window. The window will show you the vendor, model name, and device (module) associated with the sound card. Click the Play button to see if the driver worked.
Network/Internet - To test your network connection, select System Administration Network. From the Network Configuration window that appears, select New. Use the Add new Device Type window to configure your Ethernet, ISDN, modem, token ring, wireless card, or xDSL connection (as described in Chapters 15 and 16).
Video card - Checking your video card is one place where the live CD may not be as helpful as a precursor to installing Fedora or RHEL. However, you can check what video card was detected by typing the following from a Terminal window:
```
 #  grep Chipset /var/log/Xorg.0.log  
```

You can try other hardware devices as well by opening whatever applications you need to access the device (a Web browser, a file manager, and so on). Many USB devices (digital cameras , pen drives, and so on) will be detected and often displayed on the desktop. Running the lsmod and modinfo commands can help you determine which devices were loaded for those modules. Here are a few other quick commands for checking out your computer:

cat /proc/interrupts - Shows what interrupts are in use.
cat /proc/ cpuinfo - Shows CPU information.
cat /proc/bus/usb/devices - Shows attached and detected USB devices.
/sbin/lspci - Shows listing of PCI devices found ( -vv for more verbose info ).
cat /proc/cmdline - See command line options the system booted with.
cat /proc/ioports - Shows ioports in use and the devices using them.
less /var/log/messages -Page through the log of system start-up messages.

For any hardware that is not working properly, write down as much information you can about it (its name, model number, version, driver, and so on). Check Fedora mailing lists or use your favorite search engine to search for that hardware, plus keywords such as Linux or Fedora.

If your computer has an existing Windows operating system installed, you can use a live CD to set up your computer to dual boot Linux and Windows. See the section "Setting up to dual-boot Linux and Windows" later in this chapter for details. Besides describing how to resize your hard disk to fit Linux on it, the section also describes how you can later mount and access Windows (VFAT and NTFS file systems) from Linux.

Beginning the Installation

If you feel you have properly prepared to install Fedora, you can begin the installation procedure. Throughout most of the procedure, you can click Back to make changes to earlier screens. However, once you go forward after being warned that packages are about to be written to hard disk, there's no turning back. Most items that you configure can be changed after Fedora Core is installed.

Caution

If your computer contains any data that you want to keep, be sure to back it up now. Even if you have multiple disk partitions, and don't expect to write over the partitions you want, a backup is a good precaution in case something should go wrong.

Insert the DVD or first CD-ROM. This procedure assumes you are booting installation and installing from either the DVD or CD #1 that come with this book or the CD set that you can download from the Internet. (If you are not able to boot from any of those media, refer to the "Alternatives for Starting Installation" section. If you are booting installation from DVD or CD, but installing the software packages from a network or hard disk, refer to the "Installing from Other Media" section.)

The DVD can be used for any type of install; the CD with this book can only be used for some types of network or hard disk install. (If you can obtain the full Fedora Core 6 set of install CDs, you can use that instead of the DVD or live/install CD.)

Start your computer. If you see the Fedora Core installation screen, continue to the next step.

Tip

If you don't see the installation screen, your DVD or CD-ROM drive may not be bootable. Creating a bootable floppy is no longer an option because the 2.6 kernel doesn't fit on a floppy. However, you may have the choice of making your DVD or CD-ROM drive bootable or copying a boot image to a bootable USB device (such as a pen drive). Here's how: Restart the computer. Immediately, you should see a message telling you how to go into setup, such as by pressing the F1, F2, or Del key. Enter setup and look for an option such as "Boot Options" or "Boot from." If the value is "A: First, Then C:" change it to "CD-ROM First, Then C:" or something similar. Save the changes and try to install again.

If installation succeeds, you may want to restore the boot settings. If your DVD or CD drive still won't boot, you may need to use an alternative method to boot Fedora installation (described in "Alternatives for Starting Installation" later in this chapter).

Start the boot procedure. At the boot prompt, press Enter to start the boot procedure in graphical mode on the DVD, or type linux askmethod on the live/install CD and refer to the "Installing from Other Media" section later in this chapter. If for some reason your computer will not let you install in graphical mode (16-bit color , 800 × 600 resolution, framebuffer ), refer to the "Choosing Different Install Modes" sidebar. Different modes let you start network installs and nongraphical installs (in case, for example, your video card can't be detected). There are also options for turning off certain features that may be causing installation to fail.
Choosing Different Install Modes
Although most computers will enable you to install Fedora in the default mode (graphical), there may be times when your video card does not support that mode. Also, although the install process will detect most computer hardware, there may be times when your hard disk, Ethernet card, or other critical piece of hardware cannot be detected and you'll need to enter special information at boot time.

The following is a list of different installation modes you can use to start the Fedora install process. You would typically try these modes only if the default mode failed (that is, if the screen was garbled or installation failed at some point). For a list of other supported modes, refer to the /usr/share/doc/anaconda*/command-line.txt file (if you have a running Fedora system somewhere with the anaconda package installed) or press F2 to see short descriptions of some of these types.
- linux text: Type linux text to run installation in a text-based mode. Do this if installation doesn't seem to recognize your graphics card. The installation screens aren't as pretty, but they work just as well.
- linux ks: Type linux ks to run a Fedora installation using a kickstart file. A kickstart file provides some or all of the installation options you would otherwise have to select manually. (A section on creating and using kickstart files is contained later in this chapter.)
- linux lowres: Type linux lowres to run installation in 640 x 480 screen resolution for graphics cards that can't support the higher resolution.
- linux nofb: Type linux nofb to turn off frame buffer.
- linux noprobe: Typically, the installation process will try to determine what hardware you have on your computer. In noprobe mode, installation will not probe to determine your hardware; you will be asked to load any special drivers that might be needed to install it.
- linux mediacheck: Type linux mediacheck to check your DVD or CDs before installing. Because media checking is done next in the normal installation process, you should do this only to test the media on a computer you are not installing on.
- linux rescue: The linux rescue mode is not really an installation mode. This mode boots from DVD or CD, mounts your hard disk, and lets you access useful utilities to correct problems preventing your Linux system from operating properly.
- linux vnc vncconnect= hostname vncpassword=******: Run the install in VNC mode to step through the installation process from another system (a VNC client represented by hostname). See the "Starting a VNC Install" section later in this chapter for information on setting up a VNC server to do this type of install.
- linux dd: Type linux dd if you have a driver disk you want to use to install.
- linux expert: Type linux expert if you believe that the installation process is not properly auto-probing your hardware. This mode bypasses probing so you can choose your mouse, video memory, and other values that would otherwise be chosen for you.
- linux askmethod: Type linux askmethod to have the installation process ask where to install from (local DVD/CD, NFS image, FTP, HTTP, or hard disk).
- linux nocddma : Type linux nocddma to turn off DMA. Errors with some CD drives can be overcome by turning off the DMA feature. This is a good option to try if an install CD or DVD you know to be good fails media check. You could also try ide=nodma to turn of DMA for all IDE devices.
- linux updates: Type linux updates to install from an update disk.
You can add other options to the linux boot command to identify particular hardware that is not being detected properly. For example, to specify the number of cylinders , heads, and sectors for your hard disk (if you believe the boot process is not detecting these values properly), you could pass the information to the kernel as follows : linux hd=720,32,64 . In this example, the kernel is told that the hard disk has 720 cylinders, 32 heads, and 64 sectors. You can find this information in the documentation that comes with your hard disk (or stamped on the hard disk itself on a sticker near the serial number).
Media check. At this point, you may be asked to check your installation media. If so, press Enter to check that the DVD or CD is in working order. If a disk is damaged, this step saves you the trouble of getting deep into the install before failing. After the media are checked, select Skip to continue.
Continue. When the welcome screen appears, click Release Notes to see information about this version of Fedora Core. Click Next when you're ready to continue.
Choose a language. When prompted, indicate the language that you would like to use during the installation procedure by moving the arrow keys and selecting Next. (Later, you will be able to add additional languages.) You are asked to choose a keyboard.
Choose a keyboard. Select the correct keyboard layout (U.S. English, with Generic 101-key PC keyboard by default). Some layouts enable dead keys (on by default). Dead keys let you use characters with special markings (such as circumflexes and umlauts).
Choose install type. Select either "Install Fedora Core" for a new install or "Upgrade an existing installation" to upgrade an existing version of Fedora.

Note
If you are doing an upgrade, you can choose which packages to upgrade by clicking the Customize box.

Choose your partitioning strategy. You have the following choices related to how your disk is partitioned for a Fedora installation:

Note

Instead of installing to a local hard disk, you can identify an ISCSI initiator as the storage device by selecting the Advanced Storage Configuration button and entering the IP address and ISCSI Initiator Name of the SCSI device. Once that is identified, you can use that device for installing Fedora.

Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout - This erases the entire contents of the hard disks you select.
Remove Linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout - This erases all Linux partitions, but leaves Windows partitions intact.
Use free space on selected drives and create default layout - This works only if you have enough free space on your hard disk that is not currently assigned to any partition. (You can choose this option if you resized your Windows partition to make space for Linux, as described in the "Setting up to dual-boot Linux and Windows" section later in this chapter.)
Create custom layout - Select this if you want to create your own custom partitioning.

Note

If you selected to create a custom layout, refer to the section on partitioning your hard disk later in this chapter for details on using those tools.

If you have multiple hard disks, you can select which of those disks should be used for your Fedora Core installation. If you want to configure an iSCSI device to use for the install, select Advanced Storage Configuration. Check the Review and Modify Parititoning Layout check box to see how Linux is choosing to partition your hard disk. Click Next to continue.

Review and modify partitioning layout. If you chose to review or customize your partitioning, you will see the Disk Druid tool with your current partitioning layout displayed. You can change any of the partitions you choose, provided that you have at least one root ( / ) partition that can hold the entire installation and one swap partition. A small /boot partition (about 100MB) is also recommended.

Warning

Partitioning your disk improperly can cause you to lose your data. Refer to the Partitioning your disks section later in this chapter for further information on disk partitioning.

The swap partition is often set to twice the size of the amount of RAM on your computer (for example, for 128MB RAM you could use 256MB of swap). Linux uses swap space when active processes have filled up your system's RAM. At that point, an inactive process is moved to swap space. You get a performance hit when the inactive process is moved to swap and another hit when that process restarts (moves back to RAM). For example, you might notice a delay on a busy system when you reopen a window that has been minimized for a long time.

The reason you need to have enough swap space is that when RAM and swap fill up, no other processes can start until something closes . Bottom line: add RAM to get better performance; add swap space if processes are failing to start. Red Hat suggests a minimum of 32MB and maximum of 2GB of swap space.

Click the Next button (review partitions that are being reformatted and select Format if the changes are acceptable) to continue.

Configure boot loader. All bootable partitions and default boot loader options that are detected are displayed. By default, the install process will use the GRUB boot loader, install the boot loader in the master boot record of the computer, and choose Fedora Core as your default operating system to boot.

Note

If you keep the GRUB boot loader, you have the option of adding a GRUB password. The password protects your system from having potentially dangerous kernel options sent to the kernel by someone without that password. This password can be different from the root password you are asked to enter later. The GRUB boot loader is described later in this chapter.

The names shown for each bootable partition will appear on the boot loader screen when the system starts. Change a bootable partition name by clicking it and selecting Edit. To change the location of the boot loader, click "Configure advanced boot loader options" and continue to the next step. If you do not want to install a boot loader (because you don't want to change the current boot loader), click "No boot loader will be installed." (If the defaults are okay, skip the next step.)

Configure advanced boot loader. If you selected to configure advanced boot loader options, you can now choose where to store the boot loader. Select one of the following:
- Master Boot Record (MBR) - This is the preferred place for GRUB. It causes GRUB to control the boot process for all operating systems installed on the hard disk.
- First Sector of Boot Partition - If another boot loader is being used on your computer, you can have GRUB installed on your Linux partition (first sector). This lets you have the other boot loader refer to your GRUB boot loader to boot Fedora Core.
A useful feature if you have multiple, bootable partitions is the Change Drive Order button. Select this button if you want to change the order in which hard drives are used to boot from. If you have a combination of SCSI and IDE drives, this is a way that you could indicate that the master boot record should go on a SCSI drive.

You can choose to add kernel parameters (which may be needed if your computer can't detect certain hardware). If some piece of hardware is improperly detected and preventing your computer from booting, you can add a kernel parameter to disable that hardware (for example, add nousb, noscsi, nopcmcia or noagp ). You can select to use linear mode (which was once required to boot from a partition on the disk that is above cylinder 1024, but is now rarely needed).

Configure networking. At this point, you are asked to configure your networking. This applies only to configuring a local area network. If you will use only dial-up networking, skip this section by clicking Next. If your computer is not yet connected to a LAN, you should skip this section.

Network address information is assigned to your computer in two basic ways: statically (you type it) or dynamically (a DHCP server provides that information from the network at boot time). One Network Device appears for each network card you have installed on your computer. The first Ethernet interface is eth0 , the second is eth1 , and so on. Repeat the setup for each card by selecting each card and clicking Edit.

Cross-Reference

Refer to Chapter 15 for descriptions of IP addresses, netmasks , and other information you need to set up your LAN and to Chapter 16 for information related to domain names.

With the Edit Interface eth0 dialog box displayed, add the following:

Use dynamic IP configuration (DHCP) - If your IP address is assigned automatically from a DHCP server, a checkmark should appear here. With DHCP checked, you don't have to set IPv4 or IPv6 addresses on this page. Remove the checkmark to set your own IP address.
Enable IPv4 support - This is the most common TCP/IP protocol version in use today. It should be enabled in most cases.
Enable IPv6 support -This is the upcoming TCP/IP standard, which features much longer addresses and some built-in security features. You can enable this without conflicting with IPv4 support.
IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses - If you are not using DHCP to get IP addresses for your Fedora system, you can enter an IPv4 or IPv6 address here. In most cases, an IPv4 address is all that you need. If you set your own IP address, this is the four-part, dot-separated number that represents your computer to the network. An example of a private IP address is 192.168.0.1. See Chapter 15 for a more complete description of how IP addresses are formed and how you choose them.

In the second part of each IP address, you enter the netmask. The netmask is used to determine what part of an IP address represents the network and what part represents a particular host computer. An example of a netmask for a Class C network is 255.255.255.0.

Click OK. Then add the following information on the main screen:

Activate on boot - You should indicate whether you want the network to start at boot time (you probably do if you have a LAN).
Set the hostname - This is the name identifying your computer within your domain. For example, if your computer were named " baskets " in the handsonhistory.com domain, your full hostname may be baskets.handsonhistory.com . You can either set the domain name yourself (manually) or have it assigned automatically, if that information is being assigned by a DHCP server (automatically via DHCP).
Gateway - This is the IP number of the computer that acts as a gateway to networks outside your LAN. This typically represents a host computer or router that routes packets between your LAN and the Internet.
Primary DNS - This is the IP address of the host that translates computer names you request into IP addresses. It is referred to as a Domain Name System (DNS) server. You may also have a Secondary name server in case the first one can't be reached. (Most ISPs will give you two DNS server addresses.)

Choose a time zone. Select the time zone. Either click a spot on the map or choose from the drop-down box. Before you click your exact location on the map, click on the area of the map that includes your continent . Then select the specific city. You can click "System clock uses UTC" to have your computer use Coordinated Universal Time (also known as Greenwich Mean Time). With multiple operating systems installed, you might want to uncheck this box, because some operating systems expect the BIOS to be set to local time.
Set root password. You must choose a password for your root user at this point. The root password provides complete control of your Fedora Core system. Without it, and before you add other users, you will have no access to your own system. Enter the Root Password, and then type it again in the Confirm box. (Remember the root user's password and keep it confidential! Don't lose it!) Click Next to continue.

Tip
Use the passwd command to change your password later. See Chapter 14 for suggestions on how to choose a good password. See Chapter 11 for information on setting up user accounts.
Install Classes. For a new install, the installer automatically selects a set of basic software to install. In addition to that set, you can choose one or more of the following groups of software, referred to as tasks. For each of these installation tasks , you have the opportunity to install a set of preset packages or customize that set.
- Office and Productivity - Installs software appropriate for a home or office personal computer or laptop computer. This includes the GNOME desktop (no KDE) and various desktop-related tools (word processors, Internet tools, and so on). Server tools, software development tools, and many system administration tools are not installed.
- Software Development - Similar to a Office and Productivity installation but adds tools for system administration and software development. (Server software is not installed.)
- Web Server - Installs the software packages that you would typically need for a Linux Web server (in particular, Apache Web server and print server). It does not include many other server types by default (FTP, DHCP, mail, DNS, FTP, SQL, or news servers). The default server install also include a GUI (GNOME only).
  
  A new feature in Fedora Core 6 lets you select software repositories outside of Fedora Core, from which you can select packages to install during the initial Fedora installation. Use the check box to be able to install from Fedora Extras repository. Select Add additional software repositories to add other repositories (such as Livna.org or ATRpms repositories, described in Chapter 5). Then, select the Customize Now button if you want to further specifically select which packages in the selected tasks are installed:
- Customize Now - Select the Customize Now button after selecting the task (or tasks) you want to install. This lets you see which categories from each task and which packages within those categories are selected to be installed. It also lets you add or remove package selections. Note that packages from multiple repositories can appear in the same category (for example, you would see games from both Fedora Core and Fedora Extras packages appearing in the Games category).
Unlike previous versions, this version of Fedora Core does not offer an Everything install type or a Minimal install type. Select install classes you want, then choose Customize Now to see the packages to be installed (based on install categories and package groups). Unselecting the major categories can get you a pretty good minimal install, if you like to build from a bare-bones install. In the following step, the procedure will continue as though you had chosen Customize Now.
Customize Categories. If you selected Customize Now, you are presented with categories of software on the left side of the screen and package groups on the right side.

Select a category to see which groups it contains. Select a group and click the Optional packages to see which optional packages are available in that group and which are selected to be installed. Categories include:
- Desktop Environments - The GNOME desktop environment is selected by default. KDE and XFCE are the other available desktop environment. (GNOME and KDE are described in Chapter 3.)
- Applications - This category includes packages of office applications, games, sound and video players, Internet tools, and other applications. (Many of these applications are described in Chapters 5 through 9.)
- Development - General and specialized software development tools are included in packages in this category.
- Servers - Packages in this category are for Web, mail, FTP, database, and a variety of other network server types.
- Base System - Contains basic system administration tools, many common utilities, and support for basic system features (such as X Window System, Java, and Legacy software support).
- Languages - Packages containing support for multiple languages are contained in this category.
After you have chosen the packages you want to install, select Next to continue. The installer will take some time to check for dependencies among the packages you selected.
About to Install. A screen tells you that you are about to begin writing to hard disk. You can still back out now, and your hard disk will not have changed. Click Next to proceed. (To quit without changes, eject the DVD or CD and restart the computer.) Now the file systems are created and the packages are installed. This typically takes from 20 to 60 minutes to complete, although it can take much longer on older computers.

For CD installs (from the five-CD set), you are prompted to insert additional installation CDs as they are needed.
Finish installing. When you see the Congratulations screen, you are done. Eject the DVD or CD and click Reboot.

Your computer will restart. If you installed GRUB, you will see a graphical boot screen that gives you several seconds press a key to view and/or change the bootable partitions. After that, your Fedora Core installation should boot.

The first time your system boots after installation, the Fedora Setup Agent runs to do some initial configuration of your system. The next section explains how Fedora Setup Agent works.

Running Fedora Setup Agent

The first time you boot Fedora Core, after it is installed, the Fedora Setup Agent runs to configure some initial settings for your computer.

Note

The Fedora Setup Agent runs automatically only if you have configured Fedora to boot to a graphical login prompt. To start it from a text login, log in as root and type the following from a Terminal window:

 #  rm /etc/sysconfig/firstboot  # /  usr  /  sbin  /  firstboot

The first screen you see is the Welcome screen. Click the Next button to step through each procedure as follows:

License Agreement - Read and agree to the Fedora License Agreement to be able to continue.

Firewall configuration. The use of a firewall has significant impact on the security of your computer. If you are connected to the Internet or to another public network, a firewall can limit the ways an intruder may break into your Linux system. Here are your choices for configuring a firewall during installation:

Disabled - Select this security level if you are not connected to a public network and do not want to deny requests for services from any computer on your local network. Of course, you can still restrict access to services by starting up only the services you want to offer and by using configuration files to restrict access to individual services.
Enabled - Select this security level if you are connecting your Linux system to the Internet for Web browsing and file downloading (FTP). By default, only services needed to allow Web browsing and basic network setup, DNS replies, and DHCP (to serve addresses) are allowed in at this level.
Trusted Services - If you enable the firewall and you know you want to allow access to particular services, you can click the appropriate check boxes and allow incoming requests for the following services: SSH (secure shell to allow remote login), NFS4 (network file system file sharing) Telnet (an insecure method of remote login), WWW HTTP (standard Web server) Secure WWW HTTPS (act as a Web server), Mail SMTP (act as a mail server), or FTP (act as an FTP server).
Other Ports - To allow incoming requests on other ports, click the down arrow and select Add. Enter the port number for the services you want to open access to on your computer and select the protocol (TCP or UDP).

Tip

Adding firewall rules here results in rules being added to the /etc/sysconfig/iptables file. The rules are run from the /etc/init.d/iptables start-up script when you boot your system. To make permanent changes to your firewall rules and to SELinux features, you can use the Security Level Configuration window, as described in Chapter 14.

SELinux - On the SELinux screen you can select to Enable SELinux (Enforcing), have it disabled but warn you when requests would be denied (Permissive), or have it turned off (Disabled). SELinux has improved enough to leave it enabled in most cases.

Most of the restrictions SELinux puts on your system, by default, apply if you are turning on network services such as CUPS, Samba, NFS or HTTP. Therefore, if you are setting up a server, you should look carefully at the limitations SELinux puts on your server before enabling it. (See Chapter 10 for information about SELinux.)

Date and Time Configuration - You can manually enter the date (click the calendar) and time (select hour , minutes, and seconds) or use the Network Time Protocol tab to have your date and time set automatically from a known time server. Click Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) to start the ntpd daemon. Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a service that allows computers to synchronize their date and time clocks with reliable time servers. Fedora offers several servers from the virtual clusters available from the pool.ntp.org site (0.fedora.pool.ntp.org, 1.fedora.ntp.org , etc.).

Tip

Fedora offers three time servers you can use (you can select the one you want). Or you can type in your own time server. It is better to type an IP address than a name for your time server, if you decide to add your own time server, so there are no issues of lag time related to looking up DNS information.

Setting NTP in this way adds your chosen NTP server to the /etc/ntp.conf file (see the server option). To check that time has been synchronized, type the ntptrace command. You should not have to change your firewall for NTP to work, because NTP attempts to punch a hole through your firewall to synchronize your time.

User Account - For your daily use of Fedora Core, you should have your own user account. You should typically log in with this user name (of your choosing) and use only the root user to perform administrative tasks. In the first of the four text boxes on the screen, type a user name (something like jparker or alanb ). Next, type your full name (like John W. Parker or Alan Bourne). Then type your password in the Password text box and again in the Confirm Password text box. Click Next.

If some form of network authentication is used, such as LDAP, Kerberos, or SMB authentication, you can click the Use Network Login button. See the "Enabling Authentication" sidebar for information on choosing different authentication types.
Enabling Authentication
In most situations, you will enable shadow passwords and MD5 passwords (as selected by default) to authenticate users who log in to your computer from local passwd and shadow password files. To change that behavior, you can select the Use Network Login button during the User Account setup during Fedora Setup Agent ( firstboot ).

The shadow password file prevents access to encrypted passwords. MD5 is an algorithm used to encrypt passwords in Linux and other UNIX systems. It replaces an algorithm called crypt, which was used with early UNIX systems. When you enable MD5 passwords, your users can have longer passwords that are harder to break than those encrypted with crypt.

If you are on a network that supports one of several different forms of network-wide authentication, you may choose one of the following features (on the Authentication tab):
- Enable Kerberos Support. Tick this check box to enable network authentication services available through Kerberos. After enabling Kerberos, you can add information about a Kerberos Realm (a group of Kerberos servers and clients ), KDC (a computer that issues Kerberos tickets), and Admin server (a server running the Kerberos kadmind daemon).
- Enable LDAP Support. If your organization gathers information about users, you can tick this check box to search for authentication information in an LDAP server. You can enter the LDAP Server name and optionally an LDAP distinguished name to look up the user information your system needs.
- Enable Smart Card Support. Tick this check box to allow users to log in using a certificate and key associated with a smart card.
- Enable SMB Support. Tick this check box to configure your computer to use Samba for file and print sharing with Windows systems. If you enable SMB authentication, you can enter the name of the SMB server for your LAN and indicate the Workgroup you want your computer to belong to.
- Enable Winbind Support. Tick this check box to configure your computer to authenticate users from information retrieved from NTDOM or ADS servers.
Besides those services just mentioned, you can also select from various ways of gathering distributed user information, if any of these methods are supported on your Network.
- Configure Hesiod. If your organization uses Hesiod for holding user and group information in DNS, you can add the LHS (domain prefix) and RHS (Hesiod default domain) to use for doing Hesiod queries.
- Configure NIS. Select this button and type the NIS Domain name and NIS server location if your network is configured to use the Network Information System (NIS). Instead of selecting an NIS Server, you can click the check box to broadcast to find the server on your network. For more information on NIS, see Chapter 23.
Sound Card - Select the play arrow to play a test sound. If you can hear the sound at all, click Yes when prompted. You may need to turn up the volume to hear it, using the slider provided on this page.

The Fedora Setup Agent is complete. Click Finish to continue. You may need to reboot. See Chapter 3 for a description of how to log in to Fedora and start learning how to use Linux.

When Fedora starts up the next time, it will boot up normally to a login prompt. A graphical boot screen is displayed (instead of a scrolling list of services starting up).

Going Forward After Installation

If your Fedora Core system installed successfully, you are ready to start using it. Before you head off in your chosen direction, however, there are a few things that I strongly recommend that you do:

Get updates - As bugs and security vulnerabilities are discovered in Fedora or RHEL, updates to your software packages are made available. If you have an Internet connection, either run the Package Updater utility (select Applications System Tools Software Updater) or (as root user) run yum update from a Terminal window to get available updates downloaded and installed on your computer. (See Chapter 5 for further information on getting software updates.)
Check your security - There is a security checklist in Chapter 14. It steps you through different levels of security that are built into your Linux system. I suggest you go through that checklist. Sometimes a feature won't work because of the way permissions, firewalls, SELinux, and other security facilities are set on your system.
Learn the desktop and the shell - Go through Chapter 3 to learn your way around the GNOME and KDE desktops that are available with Fedora and RHEL. After that, learn about the shell in Chapter 4. If something goes wrong with your system, the help you will get from forums and mailing lists will almost always include commands to run from the shell.
Check non-working hardware - If a printer, network card, or other hardware component isn't working immediately, try tools for configuring those items under the System Administration menu (described throughout this book). If that doesn't work, there are a few standard places to look for information. Review the Fedora Release Notes (it appears when you first open your Web browser from an icon on the desktop). From the Release Notes page, look for a link to Help and Support. Visit the Bugzilla page ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com ) and search for the name or model number of hardware that is giving you trouble.

After you have examined these topics, you can go anywhere else in the book that interests and excites you.

The rest of this chapter is devoted to special topics relating to installing Fedora and RHEL.