2. Installation-Related Notes

This section includes information specific to Anaconda and the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.

Red Hat Network can install the new and changed packages and upgrade an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system. Alternatively, Anaconda can upgrade an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system or perform a fresh installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.

Note: upgrading from beta releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 to this GA release is not supported.

Further, although Anaconda provides an option for upgrading from earlier major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Red Hat does not currently support this. More generally, Red Hat does not support in-place upgrades between any major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (A major version is denoted by a whole number version change. For example, Red Hat Enteprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are both major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.)

In-place upgrades across major releases do not preserve all system settings, services or custom configurations. Consequently, Red Hat strongly recommends fresh installations when upgrading from one major version to another.

2.1. All Architectures

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The Text Mode installation of Anaconda now offers the option of switching to Virtual Network Computing (VNC) to complete the installation.
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Creating or using encrypted software RAID member disks (i.e. software RAID partitions) is not supported. However, creating encrypted software RAID arrays (e.g. /dev/md0) is supported.
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The NFS default for RHEL5 is "locking". Therefore, to mount nfs shares from the %post section of anaconda, use the mount -o nolock,udp command to start the locking daemon before using nfs to mount shares.
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When installing from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM on a system with an iBFT-configured network device, Anaconda will not include any iBFT-configured storage devices unless networking is configured. To enable networking for the installation, use the command linux updates=http://[any] at the installation boot prompt. Note that [any] can be replaced with any URL.
If your system requires a static IP configuration, use the command linux updates=http://[any] ip=[IP address] netmask=[netmask] dns=[dns].
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When installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 on a fully virtualized guest, do not use the kernel-xen kernel. Using this kernel on fully virtualized guests can cause your system to hang.
If you are using an Installation Number when installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 on a fully virtualized guest, be sure to deselect the Virtualization package group during the installation. The Virtualization package group option installs the kernel-xen kernel.
Note that paravirtualized guests are not affected by this issue. Paravirtualized guests always use the kernel-xen kernel.
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If you are using the Virtualized kernel when upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to 5.2, you must reboot after completing the upgrade. You should then boot the system using the updated Virtualized kernel.
The hypervisors of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 5.2 are not ABI-compatible. If you do not boot the system after upgrading using the updated Virtualized kernel, the upgraded Virtualization RPMs will not match the running kernel.
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When upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 or later from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6, gcc4 may cause the upgrade to fail. As such, you should manually remove the gcc4 package before upgrading.
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The firstboot language plugin has been removed, as it does not properly and completely reconfigure the system when a new language is selected.
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The use of Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) during installation is not supported. As such, CHAP should only be enabled after installation.
If your system boots through an iBFT device, configure CHAP in the iBFT BIOS/firmware setup screen. Your CHAP settings will then be used in the next boot.
If your system boots through PXE iSCSI, configure CHAP through iscsiadm. After configuring, use mkinitrd to ensure that your CHAP settings are used in the next boot.
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When provisioning guests during installation, the RHN tools for guests option will not be available. When this occurs, the system will require an additional entitlement, separate from the entitlement used by dom0.
To prevent the consumption of additional entitlements for guests, install the rhn-virtualization-common package manually before attempting to register the system to Red Hat Network.
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Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 on a system with multiple network interfaces and manually specified IPv6 addresses may result in a partially incorrect networking setup. When this occurs, your IPv6 settings will not be visible on the installed system.
To work around this, set NETWORKING_IPV6 to yes in /etc/sysconfig/network. Then, restart your network connection using the command service network restart.
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If your system has yum-rhn-plugin-0.5.2-5.el5_1.2 (or an earlier version) installed, you will be unable to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 through yum update. To work around this, upgrade your yum-rhn-plugin to the latest version (using yum update yum-rhn-plugin) before running yum update.
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Anaconda cannot access more than 8 SmartArray controllers. If your system has more than 8 such controllers equipped, you will only be able to use storage on the first 8 controllers detected. Anaconda will fail when it attempts to open all other controllers (i.e. the 9th controller and above).
Note, however, that these devices will still function properly after installation.
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A driver disk, supplied by an OEM, is a single image file (*.img), containing potentially multiple driver packages and kernel modules. These drivers are used during installation to support hardware that otherwise would not be recognized by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Once the driver packages and kernel modules are installed on the system, they are placed in the initial RAM disk (initrd) so that they are loaded when the system boots.
With this release, installation can automatically detect a driver disk (based on its file system label), thereby using the content of that disk during installation. This behavior is controlled by the installation command line option dlabel=on, which enables the automatic search. dlabel=on is the default setting for this release.
All block devices with the file system label OEMDRV are examined and drivers are loaded from these devices in the order by which they are detected.
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Existing encrypted block devices that contain vfat file systems will appear as type foreign in the partitioning interface; as such, these devices will not be mounted automatically during system boot. To ensure that such devices are mounted automatically, add an appropriate entry for them to /etc/fstab. For details on how to do so, refer to man fstab.

2.2. PowerPC Architectures

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(ppc) The minimum RAM required to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 is 1GB; the recommended RAM is 2GB. If a machine has less than 1GB RAM, the installation process may hang.
Further, PowerPC-based machines that have only 1GB of RAM experience significant performance issues under certain RAM-intensive workloads. For a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 system to perform RAM-intensive processes optimally, 4GB of RAM is recommended. This ensures the system has the same number of physical pages as was available on PowerPC machines with 512MB of RAM running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 or earlier.

2.3. s390x Architectures

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anaconda now supports both ports on CHPID for OSA Express3 cards. The installer will prompt for the port number in the initial stage of the installation. The value provided for the port also affects installed network interface startup script. When port 1 is selected, the value portno=1 is added to OPTIONS parameter of ifcfg-eth* file.
Note
When installing under z/VM, you can add either PORTNO=0 (to use port 0) or PORTNO=1 (to use port 1) to the CMS configuration file to avoid being prompted for the mode.
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Installation on a machine with existing Linux or non-Linux filesystems on DASD block devices may cause the installer to halt. If this happens, it is necessary to clear out all existing partitions on the DASD devices you want to use and restart the installer.

2.4. ia64 Architecture

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(ia64) If your system only has 512MB of RAM, attempting to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 may fail. To prevent this, perform a base installation first and install all other packages after the installation finishes.
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(ia64) Using yum to install packages from the 32-bit Compatibility Layer disc may fail. If it does, it is because the Red Hat package signing key was not imported into the RPM database. This happens if you have not yet connected to Red Hat Network and obtained updates. To import the key manually, run the following command as root:
```
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
```
Once the Red Hat GPG key is imported, you may now use yum to install packages from the 32-bit Compatibility Layer disc.
Note that when installing from this disc, it is advisable to use yum instead of rpm to ensure that base OS dependencies are addressed during installation.