Red Hat 9 Installation Guide

Preparation & Requirements:

You will require at least 6 GB of free space or an empty 6 GB of partition. If you are using Windows and have a partition which is around 6 GB then all you need is to empty that partition by moving its data to other drive or else leave it as it is if data is not important. Although you can choose any of the windows partition to install Linux but I suggest you to choose the last for easier and hassle free install. In the case you don't have separate partition ie. one big partition then I suggest you to use utility like partition magic to resize your current partition and then create a new partition for Linux. If you are planning to install Linux on separate hard drive then no need to read about partitions.

Installation:

1. Get Red Hat 9 CDs.

2. Now make sure that your computer is set to boot from CDROM (If it is not then you can do it from the BIOS options). Insert your Red Hat 9 CD-1 and boot off of your computer from it.

3. Now it will show screen showing few options... and REDHAT logo. Press Enter to through graphical installation.

4. In this step it will ask you to have a Media check to make sure that medium of your installation is safe. To test CDs navigate using tab and select "OK" by pressing Enter then it will show a screen asking you to start test using "TEST" button or change cd using "EJECT CD" Button. So test the current cd press "TEST" and to test another select "EJECT CD" then change cd and put another cd to check. The checking process is little longer takes around 5 min to 15 min , if your cds are fine then it will show test results as "PASS" and you can continue otherwise "FAILED" you can continue but you should never continue b'coz it will cause trouble later in installation. Try to clean your cd in the case of "FAILED" and do the test again, if again failed then don't install, get another media (New CDs). If result is "PASS" then select "CONTINUE" to install the Linux.

5. Welcome Note: After this it will load the Red Hat Graphical installer. Then it will show a "Welcome Screen". It has basically 2 parts

A] Left: Showing online help,

B] Middle + Right part: The actually action place. Now press "Next" to continue either by mouse or using Tab + enter for navigation from keyboard.

6. Language Selection: In this step it will ask you for the your preferred language ( Mostly english ) So select your language and press "NEXT" to move to next part.

7. Keyboard Configuration: Here it will which type of keyboard you use (Mostly U.S. English) then press "NEXT" to move to next step.

8. Mouse Configuration: This step is to configure your mouse. Most of the time it automatically detects the right mouse but if it has not just see if your mouse manufacturer name is there, if yes then select appropriate model by expanding the list and you are unable to find manufacturer or model then from generic select the mouse which suits you mouse best. If you have serial mouse then select your device to which it is connected. (/dev/ttyS0 if COM port 1 of windows, ttyS1 if COM port 2 of windows and so on). If you have 2 button mouse then select Emulate 3 buttons option which will make your mouse three button when you press your both button at same time. Now press "NEXT" to continue.

9. Installation Type: In this step first it will search for previous Linux (Red Hat Linux) installation. If you have one then it will ask you either upgrade or fresh install. Now after searching when it don't find any previous installation then it will show you 4 choices all consist of different sets of package of software as the name of choice suggest (Also well describe there)
a. Personal Desktop
b. Workstation
c. Server
d. Custom
Choose the type of installation you want and then press "NEXT" (type of installation you need depends upon your requirements I choose "PERSONAL DESKTOP")

10. Disk Partitioning Setup: Here it will ask that “Do you need manual or automatic partition” to be done. Select "Automatically Partition" for automatic partition or Select "Manually Partition with Disk Druid" for manual partition. Now here because it will get bigger and complicated so I suggest you to choose "Manually partition using Disk druid" b'coz it will be easier in all the cases. Now press "NEXT" to move to next step.

11. Partitioning: It is the most important step for Newbie. Be careful and read every thing with patience. Go for either part a. or part b. as per your conditions.
Now you are with a graphical utility which shows all the current partition on your hardisk or hardisks (if you have more than one hd). Please don't bother for LVM and RAID thing over here those are advance stuff.
a. Installing on separate physical drive: If you are installation Linux on second hardrive (primary slave) then it is called hdb in Linux and first primary master is called hda so others are call hdc, hdd. Say you are installing on drive hdb then select it. Now press "NEW" from Menu bar above the table. It will show a dialog box with lots of option, just select mount point and give size then press Ok. So Create a partition with mount point "/boot" around 100 MB press "OK" if it shows any error then just Press "CONTINUE", create root partition with mount point "/" of at least 6 GB as suggested. Make a Swap partition of around 300-500 MB by choosing file system type as SWAP then mount point will not be required. Also you can create other partition like "/home" whose size depends on the number of users who are going to use the computer. Bigger size more flexibility. Press "NEXT" to continue.

b. Installing on Different partition same drive : When you are going to install Linux on different partition on same drive then follow the following steps. (You should have either free space around 6 GB or a partition of 6 GB or more). I assume that you have 10 GB of Windows partition (FAT32) which was the drive F: under windows.
NOTE: Partitions in Linux are denoted by hda1, hda2 ie. hda1 means fist drive's first partition , hda2 means first drive's second partition, hdb1 means second drive's first partition.
Now locate your windows partition or free space you want to use for Linux. To do so I have windows last partition for Linux ie. F: so I looked for the last partition in the table which I found to be hda7. (If you choose a partition which is not last, then find it by its size. And if all your partitions are of same size the always choose last partition to install Linux.) Now I found hda7 for Linux then select and press "DELETE" in the Menu to delete that now it will become free space. (If you have free space already then you should start partitioning from here ) . Now press "NEW" from Menu bar above the table. It will show a dialog box with lots of option, just select mount point and give size then press "OK" you can also change file system but just keep it "ext3" only. So we are now going to create only 4 partitions.. root ("/") 6 GB (6144 MB), boot ("/boot") 75 MB, ("/home") 3759 MB and SWAP (300 MB). To do so just press "NEW" select size and "OK". Make a Swap partition of around 300-500 MB ( I suggest 300 MB) by choosing file system type as SWAP then mount point will not be required. You can also make different partition table but I have suggested above for ease of understanding. Now when you have done your partition make sure who have done work over right partition because after this step you can't undo that. Now press "NEXT" to continue.

12. Boot Loader Configuration: This is another important step in our installation. Mostly you don't need to do anything here just press "Enter" and continue as it always detect your windows. This section first allows you to choose boot loader to be GRUB or Lilo. I chose Grub over here. Next option shows that how many OS it will boot to ( here two as Windows and Linux). You can also set that which OS should boot by default (automatically without your intervention) by giving tick on the box in front of the OS name. You can also change the Display name of the OS over here by selection and the pressing "EDIT". Also you can set boot loader password.
Here make sure your boot loader is getting installed on "/dev/hda" because we are going to use Linux boot loader as the default boot loader. Now press "Next" to move to Network configuration.

13. Network Configuration: This is important for network users, people on LAN etc. But also equally important for general user. It shows you first option with List of all network devices in your computer. I have a Single LAN card as eth0 (if more than one LAN card then eth0, eth1, eth2 and so on.) which will be need to configure via DHCP. So I chose to configure via DHCP. In the case if you want your machine as server or it is connected to a LAN or ISP which needs static ip address then you have to select your network device and then press "EDIT" to set its option ie.. configure via dhcp or static IP address then PREss "OK" to close the dialog box. Now other option is to set Hostname of your computer. Again if you are on DHCP then just select Automatically via DHCP. Under Miscellaneous Section if you are on DHCP then don’t' touch but if you need to connect to a ISP providing static IP Connection then you have to give all details provided by your ISP or your LAN admin. If not sure leave them they can be configured after installation. Now Press "NEXT" to move further.

14. Firewall Configuration: Here you can choose what level of security you need. High, medium or nothing. Medium is good. Secondly chose the device which is local net etc. ie. if you are on LAN and your LAN device is eth0 then eth0 is trusted device. Thirdly choose incoming request you want to allow ie. If you want to run a web server then you should tick the www (http) to allow incoming and then same for other options. Lastly if you run special services which needs specific port then you have to give its port no. in other ports section. Now press "NEXT" to continue.

15. Additional Language Support: If you want to install additional language other than what we choose in beginning you can select here. If you chose three languages in total then you have to define that what will the default for your system. This section is quite simple so press "NEXT" when you get it configured.

16. Time Zone Selection: Just select the time zone in which your region falls by moving mouse over the Map and make that it has selected the right one by checking the list below the map. Now press "NEXT" to another step.

17. Set Root Password: This option is important. It ask you to set up your root password which will be required to do system maintenance, installation as well as to log first time. After setting the password press "NEXT"

18. Package Default options: Here depending upon what installation you chose it will show you little details with two options:

a. Accept the current package list,

b. Customize the set of packages to be installed.

If you choose a. it will on pressing "NEXT" will tell you that now it is ready to install then again pressing the "NEXT" will begin the actually copying (installation). IF you chose b. then after pressing "NEXT" you will be give opportunity to select individually what software (packages) you want. Just give this place a good time and explore all the packages if it is your first time and then decide which you want to evaluate, select those. It will also display the size of install on the lower right corner as No. of package you add or remove. If you choose "Select Individual packages" then you will further get a choice to select at more deep level the package you want then Press "NEXT" and it will tell you that it is ready to install , only pressing "NEXT" again it will start actual installation.

19. Now you will see the Progress installation. It will take some time. In between it might ask you to provide cd 2 and then cd 3 just put the cds in drive and then press OK.

20. Boot Floppy Creation: Now your Installation is almost over, It will now ask you to create boot floppy, You should create floppy for the case if anything goes wrong.. just put in the floppy and press "Create boot disk" ! If every thing goes fine then after making boot floppy remove it. Now press "NEXT"

21. Graphical Interface (X) Configuration: Here we will configure the Video card of our system. It shows the list of various cards manufacturer. It mostly auto probes.. ie. automatically find the right driver for your card , if not so then just find out your card manufacturer and the card model from the list. Then select how much video RAM your card has like 8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB or so on. If your card is not listed in the list then you have rather bad time. Try to select a card which matches your chipset or either find driver for your card and then configure that after installation. But best is if you don't find your card manufacturer then set it to generic or default.

22. Monitor Configuration: It shows list of monitors. If your monitor is probed right ie. it shows the right make and model for your monitor the press "NEXT". If it is unable to probe write make then search it is in list. If it is there then OK, otherwise find Manual for your monitor and enter the correct Horizontal Sync and Vertical Sync rate. If you are not sure about it then just press "Restore Original Values". Now press "NEXT".

23. Customize Graphic Configuration: Here we will set resolution, login mode etc. Here it will ask you the color depth. Leave it as it is unless you want it change, also don't change resolution. Now it will ask you that what type of login you want -- Text or Graphical. In text it will lead you to command line on startup then you have to give username and password then if you want you can start X system by typing "startx". It is recommended here to use graphical login (like windows). Press "NEXT"

24. Now the Installation is fully complete. It will now ask you to prepare for boot and will remove installation media ie CD, so take out cd from cd drive and reboot. It will now show Choices of the OS to be loaded. If you choose Linux it will start Linux and if you choose Windows it will start Windows. Select Linux and press enter to boot into the Linux environment. Enjoy !!!