You have two ways you can ``FTP'' install your system. If you have an Ethernet card and are connected to the Internet, you can download just the three boot images and start installing via the network. If you are not directly on the Internet, but you do have access to an account from which you can FTP the distribution, you can download everything to a DOS or ext2 partition and install from there.
There are inherent problems associated with an FTP install, however. The biggest of these is that many FTP servers are very busy and timeouts can occur that the install can't deal with well. You should try and find a server that isn't loaded heavily and try to use off peak times for your install. Also try and use servers located close to your own site. Be prepared for a retry or two before everything works smoothly.
FTP to one of the above sites and cd to the current directory.
You will see several directories, but
the only ones you are concerned with are RedHat and images. You
may also need to get some of the files in the dos directory if
you are doing this from DOS.
First you will need to get a boot image. To do that, cd into
the images/1213 directory and get
the image.txt file. Exit FTP (or just escape back), read
the image.txt file and choose a hardware configuration.
Then return to your FTP session
and download the corresponding boot image (bootXXXX.img).
Next go to the images directory and download both ramdisk1.img
and ramdisk2.img.
You should now have the following:
bootXXXX.img ramdisk1.img ramdisk2.img
To make the images under Linux, you should use dd as follows:
dd of=/dev/fd0 if=ramdisk1.img
[swap floppy disks and label]
dd of=/dev/fd0 if=ramdisk2.img
[swap floppy disks and label]
dd of=/dev/fd0 if=bootXXXX.img
Existing Linux users may also want to download and run the
savesetup.pl Perl script after writing the boot floppy.
It saves a number of TCP/IP parameters and XFree86 configuration
to the boot floppy for use during the installation. To use it,
mount your boot floppy disk somewhere, and run:
savesetup.pl [mountpoint]
Under DOS, you need to run rawrite.exe to make the disks.
You can FTP this
utility from the dos directory of the FTP site. Put it somewhere
in your path. You can then run rawrite and tell it what file
to write and which drive to write to. Do this for all three floppies
labelling them as you go.
If you have an Ethernet card and are on the network, you can now do the install via the network. The only things you need are the three floppy disks you just created in the previous step.
Note that this method of install will NOT work via PPP or SLIP -- you must have a direct ethernet connection to the Internet. If you want to install via PPP or SLIP, you will have to first do a minimal install as described in the next section ``Installing from a spare partition''. Once up, you can use PPP or SLIP from Linux to download additional packages.
Just boot the boot disk and insert the ramdisks as prompted.
Hopefully your Ethernet card was detected at boot time.
If not, you may have picked the wrong boot image for your hardware or
you may need to specify hardware parameters at the LILO prompt.
Once your machine has booted and your hardware has been detected, continue by
answering the normal questions and then by saying you want to do an
FTP install. At that point, pick a site close to you (or choose ``custom''
and enter a FTP site and directory from the MIRRORS file) and you should
be off! Your install should run from there just like any other install.
If your only access to the Internet for your target machine is via PPP or SLIP or even Zmodem or Kermit, you can download Red Hat Linux to a DOS or ext2 partition and install it from there. It isn't the fastest way, but it can be done.
The basic steps are as follows:
base directoryCreate the boot and ramdisk floppies as described above in the ``Getting the Boot Images'' section.
At the ``root'' of your DOS or ext2 drive or partition,
make a directory called RedHat. Then cd
in there and make an RPMS directory and a base directory.
Note that for a DOS drive, the capitalization of the RedHat is
insignificant.
From the FTP site, download the RedHat/base/series file and place
it in your local RedHat/base directory. It
will look something like:
0
1 Base
MAKEDEV
SysVinit
adduser
at
bash
bdflush
cpio
crontabs
dev
e2fsprogs
ed
etcskel
file
fileutils
findutils
gawk
getty_ps
gpm
.
.
end
This shows you most of the ``base'' series.
The series file describes all the series, and which packages
they contain.
The first line in each series contains a number and the name of the series;
you can ignore the number.
The series ends with the keyword ``end''. Everything inbetween
is an RPM name.
For each series that you want you need to download all of the corresponding RPMs. It may not hurt to leave some RPMs out, but we highly recommend that you get all the RPMs for each series you select. At a minimum, you should get all the packages in the ``base'' series.
There is a directory RedHat/sets which contains subdirectories
for each series in the series file. In each subdirectory there are
symbolic links to the actual packages in RedHat/RPMS. This
can be used for two benefits. One, you can download an entire series
by going to the proper directory and getting everything in it, and
two, if you are installing from DOS the filenames will fit the DOS
8.3 convention. The installation scripts do not care what the rpm
package filenames are -- so you don't have to worry about them being
called package.031 and so on.
With this setup, you can easily download everything you need to make a
complete series. Just download everything in each subdirectory that you
want into your RedHat/RPMS directory on your local hard drive. Note:
When you are done, all your RPM files should be in the
RedHat/RPMS directory.
In addition, if you will be installing the X Window System, you will need to get an XFree86 server package corresponding to your video hardware. These packages are:
XFree86-8514 XFree86-P9000
XFree86-AGX XFree86-S3
XFree86-Mach32 XFree86-SVGA
XFree86-Mach64 XFree86-VGA16
XFree86-Mach8 XFree86-W32
XFree86-Mono
Change into the RedHat/base directory that you created
earlier and download RedHat/base/fsstnd.cgz and
RedHat/base/skeleton.cgz to that directory.
You should now be ready to install! You may now skip ahead to the ``Continuing the Install'' section.
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