Starting the Installation Program

Now it's time to start installing Red Hat Linux. To start the installation, it is first necessary to boot the installation program. Before we start, please make sure you have all the resources you'll need for the installation. If you've already read through Chapter 2 , and followed the instructions, you should be ready.

Alpha: If you haven't created your diskettes yet, please refer to the first chapter of the Official Red Hat Linux Alpha/SPARC Installation Addendum , and create them now. After you've created the necessary diskettes, please finish reading the first chapter for information on starting the installation.

SPARC: If you haven't prepared for the installation yet, please read the Official Red Hat Linux Alpha/SPARC Installation Addendum to determine how you will boot the installation program, and issue the boot command that will start the installation.

Booting the Installation Program

To start installing Red Hat Linux, insert the boot disk into your computer's first diskette drive and reboot (or boot using the CD-ROM, if your computer supports this). Your BIOS settings may need to be changed to allow you to boot from the diskette or CD-ROM.

Please Note: To change your BIOS settings, you will need to take note of the instructions given when your computer first begins to boot. Often you will see a line of text telling you to press the Del key to enter the BIOS settings. Once you have done whatever process is needed to enter your computer's BIOS, you can then change the boot order to allow your computer to boot from the CD-ROM drive or hard drive first when bootable software is detected. For more information please see the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide for more information.

There are four possible boot methods:

local boot disk -- use in cases where your machine will not support a bootable CD-ROM and you want to install from a local CD-ROM or a hard drive.
network boot disk -- use to install from NFS, FTP and HTTP installation methods.
PCMCIA boot disk -- use in cases where you need PCMCIA support, but your machines does not support booting from the CD-ROM drive or if you need PCMCIA support in order to make use of the CD-ROM drive on your system. This boot disk offers you all intallation methods (CD-ROM, hard drive, NFS, FTP, and HTTP).
bootable CD-ROM -- to be used in cases where your machine supports a bootable CD-ROM drive and you want to perform a local CD-ROM installation.

After a short delay, a screen containing the boot: prompt should appear. The screen contains information on a variety of boot options. Each boot option also has one or more help screens associated with it. To access a given help screen, press the appropriate function key as listed in the line at the bottom of the screen.

You should keep two things in mind:

The initial screen will automatically start the installation program if you take no action within the first minute. To disable this feature, press one of the help screen function keys.
If you press a help screen function key, there will be a slight delay while the help screen is read from diskette.

Normally, you'll only need to press Enter to boot. Watch the boot messages to see whether the Linux kernel detects your hardware. If it does not properly detect your hardware, you may need to restart the installation in "expert" mode. If your hardware is properly detected, please continue to the next section.

Expert mode can be entered using the following boot command:


boot:
 

linux expert

Please Note: The initial boot messages will not contain any references to SCSI or network cards. This is normal as these devices are supported by modules that are loaded during the installation process.

Options can also be passed to the kernel.

For example, to instruct the kernel to use all the RAM in a 128 MB system, enter:

	  
boot:
 

linux mem=128M

After entering any options, press Enter to boot using those options.

If you do need to specify boot options to identify your hardware, please make note of them -- they will be needed during the LILO configuration portion of the installation (please see the section called Installing LILO in Chapter 4 for more information).

Intel: The Red Hat Linux/Intel CD-ROM can also be booted by computers that support bootable CD-ROMs. Not all computers support this feature, so if yours can't boot from the CD-ROM, there is one other way to start the installation without using a boot disk. The following method is specific to Intel-based computers only.

If you have MS-DOS installed on your system, you can boot directly from the CD-ROM drive without using a boot disk.

To do this (assuming your CD-ROM is drive d: ), use the following commands:

	  
C:\> 


d:


	  
D:\> 


cd \dosutils


	  
D:\dosutils> 


autoboot.bat

This method will not work if run in a DOS window -- the autoboot.bat file must be executed with DOS as the only operating system. In other words, Windows cannot be running.

If your computer can't boot directly from CD-ROM (and you can't use a DOS-based autoboot), you'll have to use a boot diskette to get things started.