Installation guide

Chapter 4.
Installation
This chapter describes the initial installation of the RHN Satellite Server. It presumes the prerequisites
listed in Chapter 2 Requirements have been met. If you are instead upgrading to a newer version of
RHN Satellite Server, contact your Red Hat representative for assistance.
4.1. Base Install
The RHN Satellite Server is designed to run on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system.
Therefore, the first phase is to install the base operating system, either from disc, ISO image, or
kickstart. During and after operating system installation, make sure you:
• Allocate plenty of space to the partitions storing data. The default location for channel packages
is /var/satellite. For RHN Satellite Server with Embedded Database, remember the database
RPMs go in the /opt partition, while the database itself is built in /rhnsat. Refer to Section 2.2
Hardware Requirements for precise specifications.
• Install all packages required by RHN Satellite Server. Refer to Section 2.1 Software Requirements
for packages and package groups needed for each version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS.
Important
If you plan to obtain Monitoring-level service, you must install your RHN Satellite Server on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux AS 3 Update 3 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4. These are the only supported
base operating systems for Satellites serving Monitoring-entitled systems. Do not install Satellite
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1.
• Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) on the Satellite and separate database, if it exists, and select
the appropriate time zone. All client systems should already be running the ntpd daemon and be
set to the correct time zone.
• Disable the ipchains and iptables services after installation.
4.2. RHN Satellite Server Installation Program
The following instructions describe how to run the RHN Satellite Server Installation Program:
1. Log into the machine as root.
2. Insert the RHN Satellite Server CD containing the installation files or download the ISO image
from the RHN website.
3. Create a directory in /mnt to store the files with the command:
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
4. If you are installing from CD and it is not mounted automatically, mount it using the command:
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
If you are installing from download, mount the file from within the directory containing it using
the command:
mount iso_filename /mnt/cdrom -o loop
The rest of the instructions assume it is mounted in /mnt/cdrom.