gonzo RedHat 7.1 Network Installation and Setup

Things You Should Know Before The Install Starts

1. My comments in the install section will be listed in italics .
2. The type of graphics card and the amount of video RAM your PC has. The rest of the hardware should be auto detected if you followed the MFCF Linux Support guidelines.
3. <Hostname> (that was registered with "hostmaster@ist.uwaterloo.ca") along with its IP address (129.97.NNN.XXX).
4. Router (Gateway) IP if it's not 129.97.NNN.1, where NNN designates the subnet your host will be attached to.

Operating System Install

Initial booting of HP Omnibook 500 (no docking station).

• Use a program like PQ Partition Magic to layout the disk partitions. (I think PQ Partition Magic is UW Site licensed, see IST help desk?) HP ships some hidden files at the start of the disk (the first 546 MB) so don't touch that area. Resize the Windows partition to next 4 GB of disk, then add a 0.5 GB linux swap partition and lastly partition the rest of the disk as linux native partition. All 4 are primary type partitions.
• Place a "RedHat 7.1 network boot floppy" in the external USB floppy drive.
• During power on, press "esc" to change boot order.
• Select "Removeable Device" and hit "enter".
• At the "Welcome to Red Hat Linux 7.1" screen, hit enter
  "To install or update Red Hat Linux in graphical mode".

Answering the OS Install Questions.

Each of the following list items corresponds to a seperate window whose name is displayed in the top center of the "User Selection" window.

Use the instructions at the bottom of the install screen to navigate around the screen and to move between windows.

The bolded text below itemizes the recommended settings for each of the "User Selection" Windows.

1. Choose a Language

   English

2. Keyboard Type

   Always try to use the default setting first.

   us

3. Installation Method

   NFS image

4. Configure TCP/IP

   Do not select "Use dynamic IP configuration (BOOTP/DHCP)"

   IP Address:	129.97.NNN.XXX
   Netmask:	255.255.255.0
   Default gateway (IP):	129.97.NNN.1
   Primary nameserver:	129.97.128.100

   Where:

   NNN and XXX are the values obtained when you registered your <Hostname> with "hostmaster@ist.uwaterloo.ca".

   <Hostname> is the the fully qualified name. ie The fully qualified hostname of "linux22.math" is "linux22.math.uwaterloo.ca""

5. NFS Setup

   NFS server name:	rha.uwaterloo.ca
   Red Hat directory:	/Distros/7.1/

   Note that the Red Hat directory name is case sensitive.

At this point the graphical user interface install starts and the screen is divided into two windows: the "Online Help" on the left side and "User Selection" on the right. The item names now correspond to the "User Selection" window.

6. Mouse Configuration

   Always try to use the default setting first.

   3 Button Mouse (PS/2)

7. Welcome

   Nothing to enter on this screen.

8. Installation Type

   Custom Setup

9. Disk Partitioning

   Manually partition with Disk Druid

   The real partitioning of the disk was done before the install started with PQ partition magic.

10. Disk Druid

    Edit hda4 to have

    Mount Point:

    /

    Boot Partition Warning Window pops up

    The new hardware has a system BIOS that supports booting above the 1024 cylinder limit. So we can ignore this.

    Select OK.

11. Choose Partitions to Format

    Always format "/", and (only if you haven't done it recently or suppect that your disk is flacky) "check for bad blocks while formatting".

12. LILO Configuration

    As much as we'd like to, we can't "Create boot disk" because the install doesn't know enough to use the USB floppy to write to.

    uncheck

    Create boot disk

    We want to use LILO to handle booting.

    check	Install LILO
    select	/dev/hda Master Boot Record (MBR)

    Since we want to use "lba32" mode of addressing the disk drive,

    uncheck

    Use linear mode (needed for some SCSI drives)

    Select the Device that has the OS installed that you want booted by default and make sure that the "Default boot image" box is checked.

    You can also change the labels of the boot devices as you like by selecting the "Device" and entering the new label in the "Boot label: " box.

13. Network Configuration

    There should be nothing to do here as the information was already provided as part of NFS mounting the install media.

14. Firewall Configuration

    These notes are very preliminary

    We like things to be really secure, so for "Please choose your security level:"

    select	High
    select	Customize

    Allow incoming:	select	SSH
    Other Ports:	imap:tcp

15. Language Selection

    Select the languages first

    check	English (Canada)
    check	English (Great Britain)
    check	English (USA)

    And then

    Choose the default language:

    English (Canada)

16. Time Zone Selection

    Do not select "System clock uses UTC" since we will be dual booting the host where one of the choices is a Microsoft OS.

    Click on map to select time zone or scroll through options and select one of the "Eastern Time" zone choices.

    Location: ... Eastern Time

17. Account Configuration

    Set a "Root Passwd" and "Confirm" it.

    I recommend setting up additional commands after the OS is installed. You can then use the command "adduser". (MFCF should have a web page on account management but we don't yet, 01/05/18.)

18. Authentication Configuration

    Enable MD5 passwords
    Enable shadow passwords

    DO NOT select "Enable NIS", "Enable LDAP", or "Enable Kerberos".

19. Package Group Selection

    These choices were selected:

    "X Window System", "GNOME", "KDE", "Mail/WWW/News Tools", "DOS/Windows Connectivity", "Graphics Manipulation", "Multimedia Support", "Laptop Support", "Networked Workstation", "Dialup Workstation", "Network Management Workstation", "Authoring/Publishing", "Emacs", "Development", "Kernel Development", "Utilities".

    Also checked Select individual packages

20. Individual Package Selection Only changes to the settings created by the previous step are noted bellow.

    From the "Applications -> Communications" group of packages,
    select:

    
    gkermit

    From the "Applications -> Editors" group of packages,
    select:

    
    vim-X11
    vim-enhanced

    From the "Applications -> Engineering" group of packages,
    select:

    
    gnuplot
    octave
    units

    From the "Applications -> File" group of packages,
    select:

    
    tree

    From the "Applications -> Internet" group of packages,
    select:

    
    x3270-text
    xrn
    ytalk

    From the "Applications -> Multimedia" group of packages,
    select:

    
    gimp-data-extras
    transfig
    xfig

    From the "Applications -> Publishing" group of packages,
    select:

    
    enscript
    tetex-doc

    From the "Applications -> System" group of packages,
    select:

    
    macutils
    xcpustate
    xosview
    xsysinfo
    xtoolwait

    
    unselected:

    
    xisdnload

    From the "Development -> Debuggers" group of packages,
    select:

    
    kdbg
    lslk
    sysreport

    From the "Development -> Libraries" group of packages,
    select:

    
    blas
    lapack

    From the "Development -> Tools" group of packages,
    select all in group

    From the "Documentation" group of packages,
    select:

    
    bash-doc

    From the "System Environment -> Base" group of packages,
    unselected:

    
    nss_ldap
    pam_krb5
    rhn_register
    rhn_register_gnome
    up2date
    up2date_gnome
    yptools

    From the "System Environment -> Daemons" group of packages,
    unselected:

    
    finger-server
    printconf
    printconf-gui
    rusers-server
    talk-server
    telnet-server
    ypbind
    ypserv

    From the "System Environment -> Shells" group of packages,
    select:

    
    pdksh
    zsh

21. X Configuration

    ATI Rage Mobility
    

    Video card RAM:

    8 MB

22. Monitor Configuration

    Left it using the DDC Probed Monitor -> Laptop Screen
    Horizontal Sync: 30-110 KHz
    Vertical Sync: 30-110 Hz

23. Customize Graphics Configuration

    Color Depth: True Color (24 Bit)
    Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768

    Default desktop environment GNOME

    Login type Graphical

24. About to Install

    Last chance to "backup" and make changes. Once you're happy...

25. Installing Packages

    Nice GUI shows you how the install is going. When it is done you automatically switch to the next section.

26. Congratulations

    Nothing to do but hit Exit.

Updating the System

We use IST's (Jeff Voskamp's) UWupdates package to keep system up to date, so install it.

rpm -ivh ftp://rha.uwaterloo.ca/linux/UWupdates.i386.rpm

"lynx" config file must be changed to tell it to use passive ftp service.

echo "FTP_PASSIVE:TRUE" >> /etc/lynx.cfg

Update the system.

ListUpdates | ApplyUpdates

Change the default timeout for the OS selector to 10 seconds by changing the "timeout=50" line in /etc/lilo.conf to timeout=10 and then running "lilo"

reboot host to make sure all updates have taken affect.

reboot

Apply MFCF's Post Installation scripts.

After the host has rebooted, logon as root, use a web tool to download the compressed tar file "postinstallation.tar.gz" into the "/root" directory.

Unpack the compressed tar file and run the hostsetup script the MFCF.postinstallation directory.

cd /root; tar zxvf postinstallation.tar.gz
chown -R root.root MFCF.postinstallation
cd MFCF.postinstallation; ./hostsetup -v