Successful

This chapter describes how to manage a harddisk-installation of Red Hat 6.1 on the aero. It tells you which files to copy to the harddisk and how to start the installation-software "anaconda". The further Red Hat 6.1 installation-process is described in the next chapter.

The harddisk-installation of RedHat 6.1 on the aero was quite easy - after understanding what exactly was to do. The first thing is: DON'T TRUST THE MANUAL - even online or printed. I did and it took me three days to find out why it didn't work. Finally I found that error in the manual and several others are listed at

http://www.redhat.com/support/resources/gotchas/6.1/gotchas-6.1-4.html

If you want to know more about the installation hell I (and many others according to google-groups) gone through before that, you find a description at:

"Experiences with a false Red Hat 6.1 manual"

You sure DON'T HAVE TO read it. Just keep in mind that there are many man-traps, stumbling blocks and pot-holes on your path to linux.

As I know better now - here we go ;-)

Step 1: Copying the RedHat-files to the harddisk

All installation files have to be placed in a fat16-partition on the aero. If you don't have this partition make it with partition magic. You don't need to copy the whole cds: All you need to copy are the files from the directory "\RedHat":

Go to the above mentioned hda8 fat16 partition on the disk (drive g:).

DON'T copy the file "< translation table >" that sits in every directory of the cd. It's filename doesn't match the dos-specifications - copying them will lead to an abort.

If you copy the files with the windows explorer, unselect the "< translation table >" files before dragging them to the network directory of the aeros-harddisk.

Or use the xcopy-command in an MS-DOS-Window.

xcopy /s /c d:\RedHat f:\RedHat

(assuming that d: is your cd-rom drive and f: is your fat16 partition on the aeros harddisk, connected over network.)

Step 2: Preparing the installer for harddisk install

Get the newest Red Hat 6.1 installer - the original ones had a bug. You can get it from:

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-1999-045.html

I took the pcmcia.img because I wanted my network card to be detected in the installation process.

After downloading this file I expanded the img-file to a floppy using rawrite. You can download rawrite3 for dos from

http://www.minix-vmd.org/pub/Minix-vmd/dosutil/

Just copy the executable rawrite.exe into the same directory as the img-file, press in a new floppy, start the executable and give in the img-filename.

After expanding the installer files to the floppy:

Step 3: Starting the installation

Now you have the Red Hat 6.1 installer laying in the aeros boot partition "c:\start" and all files needed for installation in a fat16 install partition (g: in my case).

Now you can shutdown the aero and start the installation from harddisk.

The Red Hat 6.1 Installation-software ("anaconda") now starts from harddisk. The installation itself is described in the next chapter.

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