Red Hat System Administration II
- SectionInstalling Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Guided Exercise: Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Automating Installation with Kickstart
- Guided Exercise: Automating Installation with Kickstart
- Installing and Configuring Virtual Machines
- Quiz: Installing and Configuring Virtual Machines
- Lab: Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Summary
Abstract
| Goal | Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on servers and virtual machines. |
| Objectives |
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| Sections |
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| Lab |
Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux |
After completing this section, you should be able to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a server.
Red Hat provides several different forms of installation media that you can download from the Customer Portal website using your active subscription.
A binary image file in ISO 9660 format containing Anaconda, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program, and the BaseOS and AppStream package repositories. These repositories contain the packages needed to complete the installation without additional material.
A smaller "boot ISO" image file containing Anaconda that requires a configured network to access package repositories made available using HTTP, FTP, or NFS.
A QCOW2 image containing a prebuilt system disk ready to deploy as a virtual machine in cloud or enterprise virtual environments. QCOW2 is the standard image format used by Red Hat with KVM-based virtualization.
Red Hat provides installation media for four supported processor architectures: x86 64-bit (AMD and Intel), IBM Power Systems (Little Endian), IBM Z, and ARM 64-bit.
After downloading, create bootable installation media based on the instructions at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/performing_a_standard_rhel_installation/index#making-media_preparing-for-your-installation.
Composer is a new tool available in RHEL 8. Composer allows administrators to build custom system images for deployment on cloud platforms or virtual environments for specialized use cases.
Composer uses the Cockpit graphical web console.
You can also invoke Composer from a command line using the composer-cli command.
Using the binary DVD or boot ISO, administrators can install a new RHEL system on a bare-metal server or a virtual machine. The Anaconda program supports two installation methods:
The manual installation interacts with the user to query how Anaconda should install and configure the system.
The automated installation uses a Kickstart file that tells Anaconda how to install the system. A later section discusses Kickstart installations in greater detail.
When you boot the system from the binary DVD or the boot ISO, Anaconda starts as a graphical application.
At the Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 screen, select the language to use during installation. This also sets the default language of the system after installation. Individual users can choose a preferred language after installation.
Anaconda presents the Installation Summary window, the central place to customize parameters before beginning the installation.
From this window, configure the installation parameters by selecting the icons in any order. Select an item to view or edit. In any item, click to return to this central screen.
Anaconda marks mandatory items with a triangle warning symbol and message. The orange status bar at the bottom of the screen reminds you that mandatory items must be completed before the installation can begin.
Complete the following items as needed:
Keyboard: Add additional keyboard layouts.
Language Support: Select additional languages to install.
Time & Date: Select the system's location city by clicking on the interactive map, or select it from the lists. Specify the local time zone even when using Network Time Protocol (NTP).
Installation Source: Provide the source package location that Anaconda needs for installation. If using the binary DVD, the installation source field already refers to the DVD.
Software Selection: Select the base environment to install, plus any additional add-ons. The Minimal Install environment installs only the essential packages to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Installation Destination: Select and partition the disks onto which Red Hat Enterprise Linux will install. The administrator must understand partitioning schemes and file system selection criteria to complete this task. The default radio button for automatic partitioning allocates the selected storage devices using all available space.
Connect to Red Hat: Register the system with your Red Hat account and select the system purpose. The system purpose feature allows the registration process to attach the most appropriate subscription to the system automatically. To register the system, you must first connect to the network using the Network & Host Name icon.
KDUMP: The kernel crash dump feature, kdump, collects information about the state of system memory when the kernel crashes. Red Hat engineers can analyze a kdump file to identify the cause of a crash. Use this Anaconda item to enable or disable kdump.
Network & Host Name: Detected network connections list on the left. Select a connection to display its details. To configure the selected network connection, click .
Security Policy: By activating a security policy profile, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) profile, Anaconda applies restrictions and recommendations, defined by the selected profile, during installation.
After completing the installation configuration, and resolving all warnings, click . Clicking aborts the installation without applying any changes to the system.
While the system is installing, complete the following items when they display:
Root Password: The installation program prompts to set a
rootpassword. The final stage of the installation process will not continue until you define arootpassword.User Creation: Create an optional non-root account. Maintaining a local, general use account is a recommended practice. You can also create accounts after the installation is complete.
Click when the installation is finished. Anaconda displays the Initial Setup screen, if a graphical desktop was installed. Accept the license information and optionally register the system with the subscription manager. You can skip system registration and perform it later.
During a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 installation, Anaconda provides two virtual consoles.
The first has five windows provided by the tmux software terminal multiplexer.
You can access that console using Ctrl+Alt+F1.
The second virtual console, which displays by default, shows the Anaconda graphical interface.
You can access it using Ctrl+Alt+F6.
In the first virtual console, tmux provides a shell prompt in the second window.
You may use it to enter commands to inspect and troubleshoot the system while the installation continues.
The other windows provide diagnostic messages, logs and other information.
The following table lists the keystroke combinations to access the virtual consoles and the tmux windows.
For tmux, the keyboard shortcuts are performed in two actions: press and release Ctrl+B, and then press the number key of the window you want to access.
With tmux, you can also use Alt+Tab to rotate the current focus between the windows.
| Key sequence | contents |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+F1 |
Access the tmux terminal multiplexer.
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| Ctrl+B 1 |
When in tmux, access the main information page for the installation process.
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| Ctrl+B 2 |
When in tmux, provide a root shell.
Anaconda stores the installation log files in the /tmp directory.
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| Ctrl+B 3 |
When in tmux, display the contents of the /tmp/anaconda.log file.
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| Ctrl+B 4 |
When in tmux, display the contents of the /tmp/storage.log file.
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| Ctrl+B 5 |
When in tmux, display the contents of the /tmp/program.log file.
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| Ctrl+Alt+F6 | Access the Anaconda graphical interface. |
Note
For compatibility with earlier Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions, the virtual consoles from Ctrl+Alt+F2 through Ctrl+Alt+F5 also present root shells during installation.
References
For more information, refer to the Performing a standard RHEL installation guide at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/performing_a_standard_rhel_installation/index
