Installation guide
You cannot use a driver update to replace drivers that the installation program has already
loaded. Instead, you must complete the installation with the drivers that the installation
program loaded and update to the new drivers after installation, or, if you need the new
drivers for the installation process, consider performing an initial RAM disk driver update —
refer to Section 7.2.3, “ Preparing an initial RAM disk update” .
Devices wit h an eq u ivalen t d evice availab le
Because all devices of the same type are initialized together, you cannot update drivers for
a device if the installation program has loaded drivers for a similar device. For example,
consider a system that has two different network adapters, one of which has a driver update
available. The installation program will initialize both adapters at the same time, and
therefore, you will not be able to use this driver update. Again, complete the installation with
the drivers loaded by the installation program and update to the new drivers after
installation, or use an initial RAM disk driver update.
7.2. Preparing for a driver updat e during inst allat ion
If a driver update is necessary and available for your hardware, Red Hat or a trusted third party such
as the hardware vendor will provide it in the form of an image file in ISO format. Some methods of
performing a driver update require you to make the image file available to the installation program,
others require you to use the image file to make a driver update disk, and one requires you to prepare
an initial RAM disk update:
Met h o d s t h at use t he imag e f ile it self
local hard drive (IDE only)
USB storage device (for example, USB flash drive)
network (HTTP, FTP, NFS)
Met h o d s t h at use a d river u p d at e d isk p ro d u ced f ro m an imag e f ile
floppy disk
CD (IDE only)
DVD (IDE only)
USB storage device (for example, USB flash drive)
Met h o d s t h at use an in it ial R AM d isk u pd at e
PXE
Choose a method to provide the driver update, and refer to Section 7.2.1, “ Preparing to use a driver
update image file” , Section 7.2.2, “ Preparing a driver update disk” or Section 7.2.3, “ Preparing an
initial RAM disk update”. Note that you can use a USB storage device either to provide an image file,
or as a driver update disk.
SATA and SCSI
During installation, you cannot provide driver updates on media that is read by a device with
a SATA or SCSI connection. For example, if the only optical drive on your system is a DVD
drive with a SATA connection, you cannot provide a driver update on CD or DVD.
Chapt er 7 . Updat ing drivers during inst allat io n on Int el and AMD syst ems
79