Installing Red Hat Linux 7.2

Installing Red Hat Linux Version 7.2

Reader Please Note: To the best of my knowledge the information in this document is accurate. If you find any errors, have any comments, additions, or just have questions, please feel free to contact me at billetter@networktechnologist.com

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to document the steps required to perform a default installation of RedHat Linux Version 7.2. This is designed as a step by step procedure for installing a basic Linux installation. It is not meant to thoroughly explain all of the installation options or to even deviate from the default selections. However, since some of the choices that need to be made during the installation can be confusing, this article provides a complete set of answers that will result in a highly useable system.

Starting the Installation Process

The easiest way to start the installation process is to simply boot off of the cd. Put the first cd into the computer and boot. If things are working properly, the cd should boot into the installation process. To start the installation process, hit <Enter> at the boot prompt. This will cause the Linux installation to load to an installation graphical user interface (gui).

If the cd does not boot, it may be that your computer is not set up to boot from a cd. This can be configured by entering the CMOS setup for your computer. Usually during the initial boot process you are given the option for entering the CMOS setup by pressing a key such as <Delete> for <F1>. The actual process may be different for you computer. When in the CMOS setup, check the boot sequence. You should select to boot from CDROM before trying to boot from the hard disk or floppy disk drives.

If your computer does not support booting from a cdrom then you must create a linux boot floppy. This can easily be created from the installation cd on another computer that is running dos or windows. Change to the images directory on the cdrom:

C:\> d:
D:\> cd images
D:\images>

The run the rawrite.exe program to copy the image of the boot disk to the floppy disk (a: drive).

D:\images>rawrite

Once you have created the installation boot floppy, you can start the installation process by rebooting the pc with the floppy disk in the drive and the cdrom in the drive. This should start the installation process. When you are at the boot: prompt, hit the <Enter> key to start the gui installation.

NOTE: If is possible to download a copy of this image from many sites on the Internet as well. Just go to www.google.com and search for "Redhat Linux installation floppy".

The GUI Installation

During this phase of the installation you will need to make many decisions. The items that you will be required to choose are:

Language Selection
Keyboard type
Mouse type
Installation type
Disk Partitioning
Boot Label Configuration
Network Configuration
Firewall Configuration
Additional Language Support
Time Zone
Account Configuration
Authentication

Some of these will be fairly obvious and easy, some of the decisions will have undesired results if configured improperly. In the next few paragraphs, I will explain the decision and recommend the configuration option to choose.

Language selection is easy - english (or your natural language as applicable). Keyboard type is also straight forward. The default is a 105 - key keyboard. This is fine, the normal keyboard is 101 key, however many keyboards have a few extra keys for the windows operating system. Enabling the dead keys is fine - that allows special characters to be represented using the keyboard (not used much by most people).

The mouse defaults to a 3 button mouse (linux and unix prefer a 3 button mouse). However most mice are the 2 button windows compatible mice. As a result, you must select 2 button mouse. Normally this will be a ps/2 style mouse, but if you are using a different connection type, select it here. Note that if you choose a 2 button mouse that the option to emulate a 3 button mouse is selected. This is good, if you need to emulate a 3 button mouse then you just hit the left and right mouse buttons at the same time.

After this you should see a welcome screen, at that point read the screen and hit <Next>. This should go to an Installation Screen where you get to choose the type of installation. For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume that we want to install everything. So the installation type that we want to use is Custom. Choose custom and hit next.

The next step in the process is Disk Paritioning. This is a complicated process, but the Redhat installation offers us an option to automatically create our partitions. This is what we will do. Choose the option to allow the installer to automatically partition for us.

Note: if you have a new disk, it will say the the disk needs to be initialized to create the partition table. This is fine, just choose yes.

Automatic partitioning gives you the option of removing all linux partitions or removing all partitions. If you are choosing a dual boot system (for instance having both Windows 2000 and Linux on the same system) then choose remove all linux partitions - this will leave the existing Windows 2000 paritition in tact. If nothing is on the disk, then you can choose to remove all partitions. After you make your selection, there will be a warning message about losing the data on the partitions. This is normal and you should choose yes.

Linux will attempt to make 3 partitions: /, /boot and swap. This will be type ext3 or type swap. This is normal and should be approved. The default is for linux to create a swap partition that is twice the size of your physical ram, to create a boot partitions of about 50 MB and to use the rest of the space for the root file system, shown as "/". The installer will show you this information. You can continue past this.

After the partitions are created the installer will want you to choose a Boot Loader Configuration. This will consist of choosing between Grub and Lilo. Choose Grub and allow the system to be setup using the defaults. It will ask you for a Grub password, just leave this blank.

The next part of the installation will be setting up your networking. If you have a network card it will be detected. Normally the first network card is called eth0. You need to configure the network card to operate properly. The default assumes that you are using DHCP. You also want to make sure that your network card will be active on boot, so make sure that box is checked. If you do not have DHCP, then you must configure the network settings for the card. This will require that you have the following information:

IP Address
Subnet Mask
Network Broadcast Address
Default Gateway
DNS Address (Primary, Secondary and Tertiary)

In addition to this, you will be able to give your computer it's hostname. This is important and should be completed. A short name with no spaces and all lower case works best. For security reaons it is best not to identify the function of the computer it it's name. For example "alpha" is a good hostname, "firewall" is probably not.

The next screen in the networking area will be the firewall configuration. Linux will automatically setup a personal fireall on your computer to protect you. The best choice at this point is default.

Next you get to choose additional language support - on mine I chose English (USA). You may choose differently if language support is needed in your situation.

Time zone selection is also fairly easy. Just choose your time zone and hit next.

Account Configuration is important. Linux uses a default user called "root". This user is very important because it can do anything on your computer. As well as being important, it is also very dangerous. As a result, it is important to create another user that has less power, and as a result will be less dangerous. At this screen you must first give the root user a password. It will tell you when the password is long enough, and also require you to confirm the password. When you are done with this click the additional user button and create an normal user. This account will also require a password. Your strategy will be to always use the normal user account, and whenever root access is require the system will either prompt you for a password or you can user the Linux "su -" command to temporarily become the root or superuser.

The final screen of this part of the installation gives you options for MD5 passwords and shadow password. The defaults are fine for our installation. Once you have pressed next, the package selection/installation phase begins.

Package Selection/Installation

During this phase of the installation 3 items will occur:

Package Selection
Video Configuration
Installation Progress Bar

This phase of the installation starts by offering you a list of packages to be installed. For our installation we will select "Everything". Next the Video Configuration screen identifies your video card. This is normally automatically selected. However, I have had installations where Linux was unable to correctly identify my video card. In that situation it is necessary to choose the correct video configuration from the list that is presented.

This phase completes with the installation of the packages on your system. First the installation program will format the disk, then it will load the install image and finally the individual packages will be copied to the hard disk. The copying of the packages is fairly time consuming and usually requires multiple cds. For Redhat Linux 7.2 it uses 2 cds which must be changed about 1/2 way through the process (Version 7.3 uses 3 cds).

Finishing the Installation

After the packages have been successfully copied to the hard disk the installation program will complete the installation with the following steps:

Boot Disk Creation
Monitor Selection
Customize the Graphics Configuration
Congratulations Linux is Installed

The boot disk is required for troubleshooting. Each boot disk reflects the choices made during the installation on a particular machine, so they are not generally interchangeable with other computers. When prompted, place a floppy disk in the drive and make this diskette. After it is complete, carefully label the disk and make a backup copy of it after the installation finishes.

The next screen allows you to select your monitor. Again, it is usually automatically detected, but if not you can choose the proper selection from a list. Once you have selected the monitor the next screen will allow you to configure the resolution and color depth of your graphics desktop. It will also allow you to choose whether you want to use Gnome or KDE for your X-windows desktop. For this installation choose KDE. Finally you can choose whether to have a text or a graphics login. For our purposes choose text. This will allow you to login using text not graphics. This is often easier to use when doing low level system work that requires repetitive loging in and out. When logging in using the text login, you can easily get the graphics desktop by typing "startx" at the command prompt.

The next and final screen is the congratulations screen that indicates you have successfully completed the installation of Linux. To start the new system requires that you reboot the system. To successfully reboot, you will need to remove the floppy diskette and the cd from the drives. Congratuations, the installation is finished. When you reboot you may login and use the system.

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