These are notes about installing Red Hat Linux from scratch. Reading these notes is no substitute for (a) reading the documentation, or (b) knowing what you're doing :-)

Before you install RHLinux...

Perhaps review our list of things to save before an OS reinstall...

FYI: mounting an ISO image

As often as not, Linux distributions fly around in ISO image form (to be burned onto CDs). An alternative to burning is to mount the image itself, and use that:

sudo mkdir /mnt/linuxcd1
sudo mount -t iso9660 -r -o loop /._disc1/enigma-i386-disc1.iso /mnt/linuxcd1

If you need to copy the stuff off a set of CDs (so that it can be used as a whole), you might, after 'mount'ing as above:

for i in 1 2 3 ; do
    cd /mnt/linuxcd$i
    sudo tar cf - . | ( cd /._disc2/whole-copy && sudo tar xfv - )
done

Making a boot floppy

(If you need one.)

NB: it is wise to check Red Hat's updates page, as floppy images are sometimes updated after a release.

Using a low-level formatted floppy, do something like:

% cd /d/vendor-stuff/redhat/redhat-9/images
% dd if=bootdisk.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 # picking the appropriate one

# or, on a Solaris box, something like...:
% dd if=bootdisk.img of=/vol/dev/diskette0/unlabeled bs=512

Note, if you have old/weird hardware (e.g. a pre-PCI PC), you'll probably need a `driver disk', too.

Booting into a RHLinux install

A useful thing to remember with a Red Hat install: you can use Control-Alt-F<n> to get at other virtual consoles, which sometimes show useful info of what's happening `behind the scenes'.

Installation Type: I tend to pick `Custom', especially with old/weird hardware. You can always add other RPMs later.
Disk Partitioning Setup: I did 'Manually partition with Disk Druid'.
Security level: 'No firewall' in our intranet world.
MD5 passwords: We don't. Shadow passwords -- yes.
Package groups: (Really varies, depending on the machine...) Added KDE. Removed Sound and Multimedia. Removed Dialup Support. Added NFS File Server. Added Emacs. Added Software Development.

Basic RHLinux install

ToDo

For a 7.1 'laptop' install, stuff I had to add after the fact:

rsync
openssh-server
xinetd-*
ntp-*

If naughtily using rsh/rlogin: You will also need the rsh-server package; and then you will need to edit /etc/xinetd.conf/rsh (and rlogin?) to turn disable off. Then need to edit /etc/pam.d/rsh

In many contexts, you want to make sure that power management (apmd) doesn't run... [Just 'rpm -e' the apmd RPM...]

If you're going to generate `sendmail' files (e.g. sendmail.cf), you will need to be sure you have the sendmail-cf package installed.

If you've got a SCSI tape drive, you'll need the mt-st package, which doesn't get installed by default.

If you're going to use ClearCase on the machine, it will want to see the relevant kernel source under /usr/src/linux, which means installing the relevant kernel-source-<n>*rpm, and making sure that /usr/src/linux points to exactly the right thing.

Patching up a RHLinux install

ToDo

Adding a disk

(NB: no substitute for reading the documentation, etc.!)

If you pop in a new raw disk that turns out to be /dev/sdb, then partition it with sudo fdisk /dev/sdb. The twenty-five clever things you might want to achieve with partitioning are not listed here...

Remember the number of blocks in the just-created partition(s). You need it in the next step.

Create a filesystem: sudo mke2fs /dev/sdb1 <number-of-blocks>

Check it: sudo fsck -f /dev/sdb1

Add it to /etc/fstab, and mount it.

Initial site friendliness

See this doc.