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Unit 1: Introduction to Network Operating System

Use RedHat boot diskette(s) and insert the CD-ROM 1 in the drive. A basic Linux kernel will notes
load and run the installation script. Select server as the installation class. The script, like in the
workstation case, will try to detect most of your hardware, but will ask at least what monitor you
have, mouse, and TCP/IP information to setup networking. Be sure to create a boot diskette for
your machine during the installation - the script will prompt you to do so.

1.3.4 Dual-booting issues

If you are building your dual-boot server on a new computer, be sure to install and configure
Windows first. By default, Windows doesn’t recognize any of the native Linux filesystems. But,
there are third-party utilities that allow Windows to read the drives of a Linux installation on
the same machine. If Linux is installed first, the Windows boot loader will take over and load
Windows; Linux will be there, but you won’t be able to boot into it. A Linux installation will
cooperate with Windows and allow you to boot into both.

Linux provides a means to read the FAT32 (typically used by Windows 98 and ME) or NTFS
(usually used by Windows NT, 2000, and XP) filesystems. In the case of FAT32, you’ll also be able
to write to the Windows partitions. If you’re using an NTFS-based Windows installation, the files
on the Windows partition will be read-only.
If you are installing Linux on a system that already contains a Windows operating system, it may
be useful to purchase a nondestructive partition management tool, such as Partition Magic. This
will allow you to move the partitions on your Windows system, creating room on the drive for
the Linux installation, and preserving the data that already exists on the drive.
With the exception of these important points, the process of installing a dual-boot system is the
same as a single OS installation.

1.4 Booting from cD

In order to install Linux, we must begin by booting the Linux kernel. This is accomplished in exactly
the same manner as if you wanted to reload MS-DOS: we need a boot disk. But most distributions
come only with a CD-ROM, and even if we had a running Linux system, the 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

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