Installation guide

Chapter 1. Itanium System Specific Information
1.1. It anium Syst em Inst allat ion Overview
Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an Itanium system is different from installing Red Hat
Enterprise Linux on an x86-based system. In general, the sequence of steps to a successful
installation are the following:
1. Boot into the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) Shell.
2. If you cannot boot from the CD -ROM, make an LS-120 diskette from the boot image file
provided with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
3. Using the EFI Shell and the ELILO boot loader, load and run the kernel, and boot into the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux installation program.
1.2. It anium Syst ems — T he EFI Shell
Before you start to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an Itanium, you must have a basic
understanding of the EFI Shell, what it does, and the information it can provide.
The EFI Shell is a console interface used to launch applications (such as the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux installation program), load EFI protocols and device drivers, and execute simple scripts. It is
similar to a DOS console and can only access media that is FAT16 (VFAT) formatted.
The EFI Shell also contains common utilities that can be used on the EFI system partition. These
utilities include edit, type, cp, rm, and mkdir. For a list of utilities and other commands, type help
at the EFI Shell prompt.
The EFI Shell contains a boot loader called ELILO. Additional information on EFI can be found at the
following URL:
http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/index.htm
1.2.1. It anium Syst ems — EFI Device Names
The map command can be used to list all devices and file systems that EFI can recognize. When your
Itanium system boots into the EFI shell, it probes your system in the following order:
1. LS-120 drive (if it contains media)
2. IDE hard drives on the primary IDE interface
3. IDE hard drives on the secondary IDE interface
4. SCSI hard drives on the SCSI interface
5. CD-ROM drives on the IDE interface
6. CD-ROM drives on the SCSI interface
To view the results of this system poll, type the following command at the EFI Shell prompt:
map
⁠Chapt er 1 . It anium Syst em Specific Informat ion
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