2.2 Installation Methods

 

Depending upon your choice of installation method you will use either one or two 3.5 inch diskettes. If you are installing from CD-ROM or via NFS you will only need the boot disk. Installation from a hard drive partition, an FTP server, or a PCMCIA device requires the use of the supplemental disk as well.    

CD-ROM

  If you have a Red Hat Linux CD and a boot disk you will need either a 3.5 inch floppy drive or DOS installed on your machine, as well as a supported CD-ROM drive, to run the installation utility. If you do not have the boot disk then you will need access to a computer running either Linux or DOS to make a boot disk from the CD.

NFS

  If you wish to install over a network, you will need to mount the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM on a machine that supports ISO-9660 file systems with Rock Ridge extensions. The machine must also support NFS. Export the CD-ROM file system via NFS. You will need to have nameservices configured, or know the NFS server's IP address, and the path to the exported CD-ROM.

FTP

  For an FTP install, you must have a boot disk and supplemental disk. You will need to have a valid nameserver configured or the IP address of the FTP server you will be using. You will also need the path to the root of the Red Hat directory on the FTP site.

Hard Drive

  To install Red Hat from a hard drive you will need the same boot and supplemental disks used by the FTP install. You must first create a RedHat directory at the top level of your directory tree. Everything you will install should be placed in that directory. First copy the base subdirectory, then copy the packages you want to install to another subdirectory called RPMS. You can use available space on an existing DOS partition or a Linux partition that is not required in the install procedure (for example, a partition that would be used for data storage on the installed system).

If you are using a DOS filesystem you will not be able to use the full Linux filenames for the rpm packages. The RPM utility does not care what the filenames look like, but it is a good idea that you keep track of them so you will know what you are installing.