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Appendix B. Setting Up a Red Hat
Installation Server
This chapter explains how to set up a server as an installation server for Red Hat Linux.
For a server to act as a Red Hat Linux network installation server, you need space on your server to copy the
entire contents of each CD onto your server. This is typically the number of CDs or ISO images multiplied
by 650MB.
Ensure that the space you intend to use is formatted with your chosen filesystem and is mounted. You can
check this space with the command:
df -h
Copying installation media
1. First create a directory to contain the installation files, for example /install
2. Mount your CD. Refer to your operating system documentation for assistance if needed. This example
assumes that it is mounted at /mnt/cdrom:
mount /mnt/cdrom
3. Copy the data from the CD to the installation directory:
cp -var /mnt/cdrom/RedHat /install
4. Unmount the CD:
umount /mnt/cdrom
5. Remove the first CD, put in the next one, and repeat for each of the CDs you have.
Note:
Copying the subsequent disks will overwrite some files, but these are generic files such as license.txt
that appear on each CD, and this is not a problem.
Enable remote access
Next, make your installation data available to other machines on the network. You can use NFS, HTTP, or
FTP protocols. You can enable all three services on your server or any subset of the three.
NFS
To install over NFS you must meet certain conditions on the server:
• The installation directory must be exported
To export your installation directory, edit the /etc/exports file and add an entry for /install to it:
/install *(ro)
Save the edited exports file and make the NFS daemon reread its configuration file:
exportfs -r