Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4: Installation Guide for x86, Itanium™, AMD64, and Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel® EM64T)
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# 2.6. Preparing for a Hard Drive Installation

| Note
| Hard drive installations only work from ext2, ext3, or FAT file systems. If you have a file system other than those listed here, such as reiserfs, you will not be able to perform a hard drive installation.

Hard drive installations require the use of the ISO (or CD-ROM) images. An ISO image is a file containing an exact copy of a CD-ROM image. Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux has so many packages included with its distribution, there are several ISO images available. After placing the required ISO images (the binary Red Hat Enterprise Linux CD-ROMs) in a directory, choose to install from the hard drive. You can then point the installation program at that directory to perform the installation.

To prepare your system for a hard drive installation, you must set the system up in one of the following ways:

- Using a set of CD-ROMs — Create CD-ROM ISO image files from each installation CD-ROM. For each CD-ROM, execute the following command on a Linux system:

      dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/file-name.iso

- Using ISO images — transfer these images to the system to be installed.

  Verifying that ISO images are intact before you attempt an installation, helps to avoid problems. To verify the ISO images are intact prior to performing an installation, use an `md5sum` program (many `md5sum` programs are available for various operating systems). An `md5sum` program should be available on the same Linux machine as the ISO images.

| Note

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program has the ability to test the integrity of the installation media. It works with the CD, DVD, hard drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recommends that you test all installation media before starting the installation process, and before reporting any installation-related bugs (many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CDs). To use this test, type the following command at the `boot:` prompt (prepend with `elilo` for Itanium systems):

    linux mediacheck

Additionally, if a file called `RedHat/base/updates.img` exists in the directory from which you install, it is used for installation program updates. Refer to the file `install-methods.txt` in the `anaconda` RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as how to apply the installation program updates.

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