Installation tutorial: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, introduction - part 2

This is the second part of the RHEL 4 installation tutorial. You can find the first part here

3.2 Graphical installation: network
The next menus you will encounter are designed to assist you installing the network card and network characteristics of the Red Hat system being build:

Here you can choose a dynamic TCP/IP configuration or a static. In the next part you will setup a static configuration, this allows a more thorough review of the installation menus. If your LAN network configuration allows for it, there is no reason to just leave the default settings.

For the purpose of this tutorial click the "Edit" button, this will bring up the "Edit Interface eth0" dialogue box:

If they don't conflict with your local network addressing scheme choose the settings as shown above and click "OK" to continue to the next menu:

Notice the menu has been updated to reflect your choice of manual (fixed) IP address configuration. Finalise the network configuration as shown above (using your own values) and move on to the next section by clicking

3.3 Graphical installation: firewall and security enhanced Linux
The next menu will ask if you want to have the firewall installed and what level of security enhanced Linux you want to deploy. If this is a standalone, server system within a protected privat network you probably won't need the firewall enabled. It is very likely the kernel filters (using iptables rules) might interfere with the services you are trying to deliver. For the purpose of this tutorial you will disable the firewall.
Security enhanced Linux (SELinux), the code originally added by the United States government National Security Agency, provides a mandatory security implementation to Linux. In addition to the traditional Linux (Unix) style security, based on ownership, SELinux adds mandatory access controls (rules based) to the Linux kernel. SELinux uses rule sets to control who and what can be done to any object within the system. For the purpose of this tutorial you will set the SELinux level to "warn" only. This provides a good way to learn about SELinux without it being in the way of your day to day operation of the system:

Make sure you switch off the firewall and select "Warn" for SELinux and click "Next" to continue.
A warning will be displayed making sure you really, really want the firewall to be switched off:

Click to continue

3.4 Languages, timezones and root password settings
The next few menus deal with the default system language, if you desire to do so, the installation of additional language support, what timezone your system is operating in and the system administrator, root, password. The menus are self explanatory, if you want to know more don't forget to scroll through and read the help window pane on the left side of the main menu.

Make sure you select the correct default language for your system. If you select any additional languages Anaconda, the installer, will add the appropriate dictionaries and language support files to your system but the default language is what you will use on a daily basis while interacting with the system. To continue click

As you can see overhere on this screenshot, London is the centre of the planet ...... not that we are biased overhere. You can use the map to "zoom" in on areas and select a city as close as possible to your location (make sure it is in the same time zone). You can also scroll down the list in the bottom window pane (that actually might be quicker and more accurate). When you're done click the "Next" button.

This menu asks you to provide the system "root" user password. As you undoubtedly are aware, the "root" user (on a non SELinux enhanced system) is able to access every file, process, system memory location, kernel driver and so on. A malicious non-priviliged user with bad intentions (even with good intentions) will try to elevate his/her privilege to the super user "root" as soon as possible (and then follows on to wipe out any traces of such an act). Choose the "root" user password with care. Strong passwords have a minimum length (8 characters), use upper and lower case characters, use punctuation characters and numbers but are relatively easy to remember and are not found in dictionaries. Some examples are (you can use normal words mixed with other characters): safe4Me+U, build2Strength!. Of course random characters are best but you might not be able to remember them. Whatever password you choose, type it into the appropriate menu field, make sure you remember, and click

3.5 Package selection
The following setup menu builds your final system to become a workstation or server or any other combination of software packages that Red Hat has included on the installation medium. Modern Linux distributions consist out of pre-selected and pre-configured package files that contain software, libraries, configuration and text files and many others together with the information where they need to be installed with what kind of security settings. If you have an opportunity when the system is running we suggest you have a look at the directory structure of one of the installation CDs and you will find within one of the directories a large amount of files with an ".rpm" file extention. These are the files that are used to create your system. Each ".rpm" file is a self contained unit and can be upgraded, removed or re-installed using simple command line or GUI tools.
To continue you need to decide what you want your system to be:

At this stage you will customise the installation by fine tuning what you want to have installed. Of course any selections you make overhere can be changed when the system is up and running. Choose the second option "Customize software packages to be installed" and click "Next".

The "Package Group Selection" menu shows the groups of packages, as selected by Red Hat, you can install on your system. You can further tune what you want to have installed by clicking the "Details" button, wherever available, to the right of the package selections. Red Hat for many years now has made this process very easy by using sensible package group names that are self explanatory (really!).
You can leave the defaults if you want or select your choice of packages. When you are done click "Next" which will bring you to the "About to Install" screen:

This menu as informational only and of course you have the option to return to the previous menus. Interesting is the mention of two files the system creates in the "/root" (i.e. the super user's home directory):

• /root/install.log
• /root/anaconda-ks.cfg

The first file contains a detailed log of the package installation process (the first view lines):
Installing 614 packages

Installing hwdata-0.146.10.EL-1.noarch.
Installing indexhtml-4-2.noarch.
Installing libgcc-3.4.3-22.1.i386.
Installing redhat-logos-1.1.25-1.noarch.
Installing rootfiles-8-1.noarch.
Installing setup-2.5.37-1.1.noarch.
Installing filesystem-2.3.0-1.i386.
Installing basesystem-8.0-4.noarch.
Installing termcap-5.4-3.noarch.
Installing tzdata-2005f-1.EL4.noarch.
Installing glibc-common-2.3.4-2.9.i386.
Installing glibc-2.3.4-2.9.i686.
Installing audit-0.5-1.i386.
Installing beecrypt-3.1.0-6.i386.
Installing bzip2-libs-1.0.2-13.i386.
Installing chkconfig-1.3.13.2-1.i386.
Installing device-mapper-1.01.01-1.RHEL4.i386.
Installing dmraid-1.0.0.rc6.1-3_RHEL4_U1.i386.
.....................

The second file contains, in simple text format, the choices you have made during the installation as interpreted by Anaconda, the Red Hat installer. In the more advanced installation tutorial you will learn how to use this file in unattended installations.

Continue with the installation, click
The system will let you know which installation media it requires:

Just click the "Continue" button and make sure you have the other media handy. The next information boxes will inform you about respectively the start of the installation process and the status of it (the behaviour of the progress bar is uncannily similar to the Microsoft version at installation time .....):

When done with the first CD the system will ask for the next (and so on):

When the system has asked for all the media it will perform some post installation tasks. You can see this in the final menu before the reboot:

Click the "Reboot" button and this part of the installation is complete.
After the reboot (don't forget to remove the last CD) the system will run a first boot script that will ask you for some final questions in configuring the system. This third and final part will be a subject of the next post, which you can find here.

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