Installation guide

Tip

While partitioning your hard drive, keep in mind that the BIOS in some older sys-

tems cannot access more than the first 1024 cylinders on a hard drive. If this is the

case, leave enough room for the /boot Linux partition on the first 1024 cylinders of

your hard drive to boot Linux. The other Linux partitions can be after cylinder 1024.

In parted, 1024 cylinders equals 528MB. For more information, refer to:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html

To add default options to the boot command, enter them into the Kernel parameters field. Any

options you enter are passed to the Linux kernel every time it boots.

19.2. Rescue Mode

Rescue mode provides the ability to boot a small Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment entirely

from boot media or some other boot method instead of the system's hard drive. There may be

times when you are unable to get Red Hat Enterprise Linux running completely enough to ac-

cess files on your system's hard drive. Using rescue mode, you can access the files stored on

your system's hard drive, even if you cannot actually run Red Hat Enterprise Linux from that

hard drive. If you need to use rescue mode, try the following method:

• Using the CD-ROM to boot an x86, AMD64, or Intel® 64 system, type linux rescue at the in-

stallation boot prompt. Itanium users should type elilo linux rescue to enter rescue mode.

For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Deployment Guide.

19.3. Alternative Boot Loaders

If you do not wish to use a boot loader, you have several alternatives:

LOADLIN

You can load Linux from MS-DOS. Unfortunately, this requires a copy of the Linux kernel

(and an initial RAM disk, if you have a SCSI adapter) to be available on an MS-DOS parti-

tion. The only way to accomplish this is to boot your Red Hat Enterprise Linux system using

some other method (for example, from a boot CD-ROM) and then copy the kernel to an MS-

DOS partition. LOADLIN is available from

ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/dualboot/

and associated mirror sites.

SYSLINUX

SYSLINUX is an MS-DOS program very similar to LOADLIN. It is also available from

ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/loaders/

19.2. Rescue Mode