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Chapter 3. Installing Red Hat Linux

The installation program will prompt you to insert a CD or select an ISO image to test, and select

OK to perform the checksum operation. This checksum operation can be performed on any Red

Hat Linux CD and does not have to be performed in a specific order (for example, CD #1 does

not have the be the first CD you verify). It is strongly recommended to perform this operation on

any Red Hat Linux CD that was created from downloaded ISO images. This procedure works with

CD based installations and hard drive and NFS installations using ISO images.

If the installation program does not properly detect your hardware, you may need to restart the

installation in expert mode. Enter expert mode using the following boot command:

boot: linux noprobe

For text mode installations, use:

boot: linux text noprobe

Expert mode disables most hardware probing, and gives you the option of entering options for the

drivers loaded during the installation. The initial boot messages will not contain any references to

SCSI or network cards. This is normal; these devices are supported by modules that are loaded

during the installation process.

If you need to perform the installation in serial mode, type the following command:

boot: linux console= device

For text mode installations, use:

boot: linux text console= device

In the above command,

device

should be the device you are using (such as ttyS0 or ttyS1).

For example,

linux text console=ttyS0,115200n8

.

3.3.1.2. Kernel Options

Options can also be passed to the kernel. For example, to instruct the kernel to use all the RAM in a

system with 128 MB of RAM, enter:

boot:

linux mem=128M

For text mode installations, use:

boot: linux text mem=128M

After entering any options, press [Enter] to boot using those options.

If you need to specify boot options to identify your hardware, please write them down. The boot

options will be needed during the boot loader configuration portion of the installation (please see

Section 3.20 for more information).

3.3.1.3. Booting Without Diskettes

The Red Hat Linux CD ROM can be booted by computers that support bootable CD ROMs. Not

all computers support this feature, so if your system cannot boot from the CD ROM, there is one

other way to start the installation without using a boot diskette. The following method is specific to

x86 based computers only.

If you have MS DOS installed on your system, you can boot directly from the CD ROM drive without

using a boot diskette. To do this (assuming your CD ROM is drive

d:

), use the following commands:

C:\

d:

D:\

cd \dosutils

D:\dosutils

autoboot.bat