Starting the Installation Program

Now it's time to begin installing Red Hat Linux. To start the installation, you must first boot the installation program. Please make sure you have all the resources you'll need for the installation. If you've already read through Chapter 3, and followed the instructions, you should be ready to begin.

Please Note

Occasionally, some hardware components require a driver disk during the installation. The driver disk could be produced by Red Hat, it could be a disk made by you, or it could be a disk that a hardware vendor includes with a piece of hardware. Another source for finding driver disks is http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/.

If a screen appears prompting you to insert a driver disk, please do so. For more information about driver disks, refer to Appendix C. Driver Disks in the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD.

Booting the Installation Program

	Please Note
	If you need to create a boot disk, please refer to the section called Making Installation Diskettes in Chapter 3.

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.

Tip

To change your BIOS, 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 or F1 key to enter the BIOS settings.

Next, find the section where you can alter your boot sequence. The default is often C, A or A, C (depending on whether you boot from your hard drive [C] or a floppy drive [A]). Change this sequence so that the CD-ROM is first in your boot order and that C or A (whichever is your typical boot default) is second. This instructs the computer to first look at the CD-ROM drive for bootable media; if it cannot be found there, it will look at your hard drive or floppy next.

Save your changes before exiting the BIOS. For more information please refer to the documentation that came with your system.

There are three possible workstation-class boot methods:

Bootable CD-ROM -- your machine supports a bootable CD-ROM drive and you want to perform a local CD-ROM installation.
Local boot disk -- your machine will not support a bootable CD-ROM and you want to install from a local CD-ROM or a hard drive.
PCMCIA boot disk -- use in cases where you need PCMCIA support, but your machine 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 installation methods (CD-ROM, hard drive, NFS, FTP, and HTTP).

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 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 the installation media.

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. For more information about "expert" mode, refer to section Starting the Installation Program in the chapter Installing Red Hat Linux via the GUI in the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD.

Booting without diskettes

Another way to start the installation without using a boot disk depends on whether you have MS-DOS on your system. The following method is specific to Intel-based computers only.

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, you should reboot your system and choose to "restart in MS-DOS mode."

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.