Lab 2: Installation of a Red Hat Enterprize Distribution

Last modified: Sep 11, 2011

Procedure

1. Use disk partitioning tools (Disk Druid, fdisk) to create the desired partition structure, and
2. To control where the GRUB boot loader is installed to allow for a dual boot scenario.

Part I

1. Use the virtual machine called Dual in your personal folder under CISVLAB
2. You want to force your virtual machine to boot from the rhel-4.iso that is in nfsstore1 under the ISO directory on the ESXi server.
   How are you going to do this? (Hint: Press the ESC key during the BIOS screen, and you will be able to choose the boot device.
   Notice the small size of the rhel-4.iso when you connect it.
3. Once you get your VM to boot to the Red Hat Enterprize boot screen, choose the graphic install.
4. Accept the default language and keyboard type.
5. For Installation Method, choose NFS image
6. Choose dynamic IP configuration for Configure TCP/IP.
7. For NFS Setup choose:
   • 172.30.5.20 for the NFS server name
   • /install/rhel for the directory name
8. You will now go into graphics mode. When you get to the Disk Partitioning Setup page, choose Manually partition with Disk Druid.
9. Use the Disk Druid dialog to prepare the following partitions/filesystems:
   1. Leave the Primary partition allocated to DOS (vfat) alone. You must preserve this partition, (sda1).
   2. Primary partition of 4 GB formatted with ext3 and mounted to /
   3. Primary partition of 1 GB formatted with ext3 and mounted to /var
   4. An Extended partiton covering the remainder of the disk with:
          a logical partition of 512 MB for swap space
          a logical partition using the rest of the disk, ext3 mounted to /home
10. Once you've finished preparing the hard disk, you will specify the GRUB boot loader.
11. You must install the GRUB boot loader on partition 2 (sda2) where the Linux root file system is located, so check the
    "Configure advanced boot loader options" checkbox before clicking Next. You may also want to change the "Other" OS name to FreeDOS.
12. You must specify the hostname to be rhel4 and the domain to be localdomain.
13. On the Firewall Configuration page, allow SSH access to your system, and select Warn to enable SELinux.
14. Choose Pacific Standard time for the timezone
15. Choose funny Cabrillo for the root password.
16. Customize the software packages to be installed by choosing only the following package groups:
    • X Windows System
    • Desktop Environemnt, either GNOME or KDE
    • Editors
    • Graphical Internet
    • Development Tools
    • Administration Tools
17. When the installation is completed and you reboot the system, it will come up in FreeDOS.
    Why? What can you do about this?

Part II

1. Verify that the rhel.iso file is still attached to the CD-ROM device, and boot off the CD-ROM.
2. At the boot prompt enter: linux rescue
3. Follow the same procedure that you used for installing the system, but keep an eye out for a dialog box titled "Rescue" that will appear right after you specify the NFS Server information.
4. The Rescue dialog box will give you three choices:
   • Continue
   • Read-Only
   • Skip
   Choose Skip
5. At the command line, use the fdisk command to change the active partition.
   fdisk /dev/sda
6. Bring the system down by right-clicking your VM in the Inventory pane and clicking on Power->Reset.

Part III

1. Once yo get your system to boot into Red Hat Linux, you will go through a one-time configuration of such items as:
   • License Agreement - accept the license agreement
   • Date and Time - verify that it is correct
   • Display - Select the defaults
   • Red Hat Login - select "Tell me why I need to register ..." Click Next, and then select "I cannot complete registration at this time...
   • System User - create a regular user account for yourself or guest.
2. Complete each of the above steps, and log into your system as root on tty1.

Turn in

Grading Rubric

2 points -

for each of the filesystems requested above. (10 pts. total)

1 point -

for each software package requested above. (6 pts. total)

4 points -

for installing GRUB in the boot sector of /dev/sda2 and not clobbering the DOS boot loader, and for naming the computer correctly.