Learning Other Installation Methods

anaconda, the Red Hat installer, supports a number of installation methods. The CD-ROM method is one that you see described in this chapter. The other methods involve installing from different types of servers or even a hard disk partition that holds exact copy of the Red Hat Linux CD-ROMs. These images of a CD-ROM are known as ISO images.

Here are all the installation methods that anaconda supports:

CD-ROM: This method installs Red Hat Linux from CD-ROMs. You can either boot from the CD-ROM or by using a boot disk with the bootdisk.img boot image. For laptop installations, use the boot disk together with a PCMCIA driver disk containing the pcmciadd.img image. This chapter describes the CD-ROM installation method in detail.
Hard Drive: If you have copied the Red Hat Linux ISO images to a local hard drive with either FAT or Linux (ext2 or ext3) file systems, you can use this method to install Red Hat Linux. You have to boot from a boot disk and then identify the hard drive partition and the directory that contains the ISO images.
NFS: This method installs from ISO images made available on a Network File System (NFS) server on the network. You have to boot the PC with a boor disk and then specify the NFS server and the directory as the source of the ISO images.
FTP: This method installs Red Hat Linux from ISO images located on an FTP server. You have to boot from a boor disk and then specify the FTP server and the directory that contains the ISO images.
HTTP: In this method, the Red Hat Linux ISO images are on a Web server and anaconda gets them by using HTTP (the Web server protocol). You have to boot the PC using a boot disk and then identify the Web server the directory where the ISO images are located.