Page 13 - DCAP106_OPERATING_SYSTEM_TOOLS

Operating System Tools

Notes command to create boot disks for Linux is different than for MS-DOS. If you bought a new
computer with a bootable CD-ROM, some distributions allow you to boot in this manner. But
we’ll go through the process of creating a boot disk for the rest of us.
The first step in getting Red Hat’s distribution of Linux onto a system, you need to find a way of
starting the installation program. The usual method of doing so is to create an installation disk,
although if you are installing from CD-ROM, and your system’s BIOS supports it, you should be
able to boot directly into the installation program from the CD.
Otherwise, to create an installation diskette, you’ll need to copy the “boot.img” (which is simply
an image of an ext2-formatted Linux boot diskette with an additional installation program) onto
a floppy diskette. The “boot.img” file can be obtained from the /images directory of the Red
Hat CD-ROM disk, or downloaded via FTP from ftp://ftp.redhat.com in the /pub/redhat/
redhat-6.1/i386/images directory (assuming you are installing Linux on an Intel box).
You can create the boot diskette either from a DOS or Windows system, or from an existing
Linux or Unix system. For your destination diskette, you can use either an unformatted or a pre-
formatted (for DOS) diskette – it makes no difference.
Under DOS: Assuming your CD-ROM is accessible as drive D:, you can type:
d:
cd \images
..\dosutils\rawrite
For the source file, enter “boot.img”. For the destination file, enter “a:” (assuming the diskette
you are created is inserted into the A: drive). The “rawrite” program will then copy the “boot.
img” file onto diskette.
Under Linux/Unix: Assuming the “boot.img” file is located in the current directory (you may
need to mount the CD-ROM under /mnt/cdrom and find the file in /mnt/cdrom/images), you
can type:
dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0
The “dd” utility will copy, as its input file (“if”), the “boot.img” file, onto the output file (“of”) /
dev/fd0 (assuming your floppy drive is accessible from /dev/fd0).
Unless your Linux or Unix system allows write permissions to the floppy device, you may need
to do this command as the superuser. (If you know the root password, type “su” to become the
superuser, execute the “dd” command, and then type “exit” to return to normal user status).
With either of the above schemes, you should now have a bootable Red Hat installation diskette
that you can use to install your new Red Hat Linux system.

1.2.3 Starting the Installation

To begin the installation, put the first installation CD in the CD-ROM drive and reboot the
machine. If your machine is configured to boot from the CD-ROM, when the machine starts.
The initial installation offers several options. You can choose to install in graphical mode by
hitting Enter, or in text mode by typing linux text at the boot: prompt. Either way, the first
thing the installer will do is offer to check the installation media for you. This is a good way to
determine if your installation CDs have been tampered with, or have become corrupted. The
process will take a little while, but it is recommended to run this test.
Like any operating system, Linux requires a minimal set of hardware drivers during the
installation. After testing the installation media, you’ll see lots of text scrolling down the
screen – this is the initial hardware probing process in action. Red Hat helped pioneer the
development of graphical Linux installers with Anaconda, Red Hat’s installation program.
It includes a highly accurate probing and testing mechanism that makes the rest of the installation
routine quite painless.

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