2.4. Preparing for a Hard Drive Installation
To prepare your system for a hard drive installation, you must set the system up in one of the following ways:
Using a set of CD-ROMs — Create CD-ROM ISO image files from each installation CD-ROM. For each CD-ROM, execute the following command on a Linux system:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/file-name.iso
Using ISO images — transfer these images to the system to be installed.
Verifying that ISO images are intact before you attempt an installation, helps to avoid problems. To verify the ISO images are intact prior to performing an installation, use an md5sum program (many md5sum programs are available for various operating systems). An md5sum program should be available on the same Linux machine as the ISO images.
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program has the ability to test the integrity of the installation media. It works with the CD, DVD, hard drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recommends that you test all installation media before starting the installation process, and before reporting any installation-related bugs (many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CDs). To use this test, type the following command at the boot: prompt:
elilo linux mediacheck
Additionally, if a file called RedHat/base/updates.img exists in the directory from which you install, it is used for installation program updates. Refer to the file install-methods.txt in the anaconda RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as how to apply the installation program updates.