Installation guide

Unpartitioned disk space means that available disk space on the hard drive(s) you are installing to has not been di-

vided into sections for data. When you partition a disk, each partition behaves like a separate disk drive.

Chapter 2. Steps to Get You Started

1. Upgrade or Install?

For information to help you determine whether to perform an upgrade or an installation refer to

Chapter 23, Upgrading Your Current System.

2. Is Your Hardware Compatible?

Hardware compatibility is particularly important if you have an older system or a system that you

built yourself. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 should be compatible with most hardware in systems

that were factory built within the last two years. However, hardware specifications change al-

most daily, so it is difficult to guarantee that your hardware is 100% compatible.

The most recent list of supported hardware can be found at:

http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/

3. Do You Have Enough Disk Space?

Nearly every modern-day operating system (OS) uses disk partitions, and Red Hat Enterprise

Linux is no exception. When you install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you may have to work with

disk partitions. If you have not worked with disk partitions before (or need a quick review of the

basic concepts), refer to Chapter 25, An Introduction to Disk Partitions before proceeding.

The disk space used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux must be separate from the disk space used

by other OSes you may have installed on your system, such as Windows, OS/2, or even a dif-

ferent version of Linux. For x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 systems, at least two partitions (/ and

swap) must be dedicated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Itanium systems, at least three parti-

tions (/, /boot/efi/, and swap) must be dedicated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Before you start the installation process, you must

• have enough unpartitioned

disk space for the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or

• have one or more partitions that may be deleted, thereby freeing up enough disk space to in-

stall Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

To gain a better sense of how much space you really need, refer to the recommended partition-

ing sizes discussed in Section 18.4, “Recommended Partitioning Scheme”.

If you are not sure that you meet these conditions, or if you want to know how to create free disk

space for your Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation, refer to Chapter 25, An Introduction to Disk

Partitions.

4. Can You Install Using the CD-ROM or