Installation guide

8 Chapter 2. Steps to Get You Started
To prepare your system for a hard drive installation, you must set the system up in one of the following
ways:
• Using a set of CD-ROMs — Create CD-ROM ISO image files from each installation CD-ROM.
For each CD-ROM, execute the following command on a Linux system:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/file-name.iso
• Using ISO images — transfer these images to the system to be installed.
Verifying that ISO images are intact before you attempt an installation, helps to avoid problems.
To verify the ISO images are intact prior to performing an installation, use an md5sum program
(many md5sum programs are available for various operating systems). An md5sum program should
be available on the same Linux machine as the ISO images.
Note
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program has the ability to test the integrity of the installation
media. It works with the CD, DVD, hard drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recom-
mends that you test all installation media before starting the installation process, and before reporting
any installation-related bugs (many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CDs).
To use this test, type the following command at the boot: prompt (prepend with elilo for Itanium
systems):
linux mediacheck
Additionally, if a file called RedHat/base/updates.img exists in the directory from which you
install, it is used for installation program updates. Refer to the file install-methods.txt in the
anaconda RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, as well as how to apply the installation program updates.