How To Download and Install  Unix "Red Hat"

 Installation and Other General Questions

 Hardware and space required

Question:

What are the minimum hardware and space requirements for installing Red Hat Linux on my PC?

Answer:

1620 MB for Server, 450 MB for Workstation , and 120 MB for Custom Install 16 MB RAM is recommended and can be installed on the Intel 386 to the latest P IIs.

4.2 Programming tools/compilers included

Question:

What Programming tools/compilers does Red Hat Linux ship?

Answer:

C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal, assembly, BASIC, perl, python, Tcl/Tk, LISP, Scheme, as well as a functional debugger and memory debugging library.

4.3 Multimedia tools included

Question:

What multimedia tools are shipped with the boxed set?

Answer:

Image viewers for JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, MPEG, AVI, and Quicktime video viewers.

4.4 Graphical programs included

Question:

What type of graphical program is shipped with Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

GIMP, 1.0 an image manipulation, retouching, and paint program. See http://www.gimp.org/ for more information.

4.5 Publishing tools included

Question:

What types of Publishing tools are shipped with Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

TeX, LaTex, groff text formatting systems, PostScript, PDF, and DVI previewers.

4.6 Mail server included

Question:

What mail servers are shipped with Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

Sendmail. POP, and IMAP are also shipped.

4.7 Red Hat Linux as a file server

Question:

Can I use Red Hat Linux as a File Server?

Answer:

Yes, we ship Samba and NFS to insure access to the File Server capabilities.

4.8 Does Red Hat Linux include an X windows system?

Question:

Does Red Hat Linux include an X windows system?

Answer:

Yes, Xfree86 version 3.3.3.

4.9 Running Windows programs in Red Hat Linux

Question:

Will my Microsoft applications be able to run on Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

No, only Linux based applications will run on the Red Hat Linux OS. However, it is possible to download a read-only windows emulator at http://www.winehq.com/. You can also run vmware, which is a virtual machine which will run Linux and another operating system concurrently. For more information, see http://www.vmware.com/

4.10 Obtaining Red Hat Linux

Question:

How can I get Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

Red Hat Linux is available on CD-ROM directly from Red Hat Software or various Red Hat Linux resellers; it is also available via FTP and its many mirror sites. You may be able to purchase it from stores like "Wal-Mart", "CompUSA", and many other retail stores. Another place to purchase it is online from our E-commerce store.

Due to the Open Source licenses that Red Hat Inc uses for its products, many companies are able to download our source-code. It is licensed using the GPL

4.11 Installing multiple operating systems

Question:

I have a blank hard drive and would like to install DOS or Windows 95 and Linux onto it. What is the best method of doing this?

Answer:

It is recommended to install the other operating system first, before installing Linux. This allows the other OS to get comfortable with the hardware and possibly write values to the Master Boot Record (MBR) that it would just over-write if Linux was installed first.

You will probably need to do this in a several step method, however. First start the install, but if the operating system partitions the entire drive for itself, see if you can bail out early and use the native fdisk to create a primary partition of the size you want to leave for the OS. Then reboot and go through the install again and normally the OS will just use the space that you just set aside. Once the install is finished, you can begin the Linux installation.

4.12 Creating an installation boot disk

Question:

How do I create an installation boot disk?

Answer:

To create the boot disk with the new images, you can either use the dd command under UNIX/Linux:

Or you can use the rawrite command in the /dosutils directory on the CD-ROM. There is documentation on using rawrite in /dosutils/rawrite3.doc.

To make floppies under DOS, Win95, or NT:

The .img files are boot images and can be found in your images directory on the Red Hat Linux CD #1.

4.13 Difference between Linux and DOS disk names

Question:

I have an IDE system, and I am confused by how Linux sets up drives in comparison to DOS. Can you explain this?

Answer:

Linux sets up the drive system in a very different pattern than DOS, and this can be rather confusing. Instead of calling the first hard drive C:, it will be usually be a combination of letters signifying what kind of BUS (sd for SCSI, hd for IDE) and on which sequence it was detected. Finally a number is tagged onto the end to specify which partition on the drive is being referenced.

For IDE hard drives the layout depends on which IDE channel the drive is on and whether it is the master or slave on that channel.

The partition number follows an old PC standard that there are a limit of 4 primary partitions per hard drive, but one of those partitions can be designated as an extended partition. Inside of this extended partition, logical partitions can be specified (for most drives you can have 12 logical drives in the extended partition for 16 partitions all together).

Question:

Linux is having trouble detecting my IDE CD-ROM drive during the install. Can I force the install to see it?

Answer:

Sometimes IDE CD-ROM drives will not be detected either due to the fact that they are on a IDE channel the BIOS doesn't know about, or that when queried, replies back with data that Linux thinks is bogus (Early NEC IDE CD-ROMs respond with data saying that it is an IDE floppy drive instead of a CD-ROM.)

To solve your problem, you need to specify the the CD-ROM drive from the LILO boot prompt.

When you see

or

You need to type in

where X is the IDE letter that Linux would specify for that drive depending on which IDE bus it is on.

4.15 Installing Red Hat Linux from a hard drive

Question:

I do not have a CD-ROM that will work with Linux and I can not install from the network. Is there another method?

Answer:

If you are going to need to do a hard drive install due to some problem with your CD-ROM, you will need to follow these steps.

Have a DOS partition that is formatted in FAT16, and create a directory called \RedHat. From there you will need to copy the items from the CD-ROM over to the hard-drive.

If you do not have enough disk space for copying the entire RPMS directory tree over to your hard-drive, you will need to look in the file \RedHat\base\comps file for the RPMS that are needed in the base and any other sections you feel you need.

Once you have done this, you can start the install and choose a hard drive install. You will be asked to insert the supplemental floppy and a progress meter will pop-up to show you what is happening. Once the supplemental disk has been loaded, you will be presented with the next screen on the install.

4.16 Laptop Installation Problems

Question:

I am having trouble getting Linux setup on my laptop computer. What should I do?

Answer:

Laptops are one of the hardest pieces of hardware to support in the industry. Many times the company that constructs the hardware has to tweak a chipset to make it fit in the confined structure or meet certain power requirements. These changes are usually only documented internally for trade secret reasons, and only can be reverse-engineered or reverse-worked around.

When Red Hat support finds itself with a laptop question our first and sometimes only reference is the Linux Laptop Pages, which can be found at:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/

4.17 Signal 11 or Signal 7 problems during install

Question:

During the install, I get a fatal signal 11 or signal 7. What does this mean and what can I do?

Answer:

Signal 11's and signal 7's are errors indicating a hardware error in memory or on the bus. This can be due to problems in executables or with the hardware of the system. The Linux kernel uses a lot more capabilities of the CPU, Cache, and memory, and is more prone to faulting on marginal hardware.

The first thing to do is check to see if you have the latest installation and supplemental floppies from Red Hat. Check the errata for updates and also the FTP site to see if newer versions are available. If the latest images still fail, it may be due to hardware. Common suspects are memory or CPU-cache. Try turning off the CPU-cache in the BIOS and see if the problem goes away. Also try swapping memory around in the motherboard slots to see if it is either slot or memory related.

The premier site on the net for this problem can be found at http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/

4.18 Upgrade problem: can't find a valid RPM data base error

Question:

I am trying to upgrade my earlier Red Hat system to the current release, but it complains that it can't find a valid RPM data base. What do I need to do?

Answer:

The problem is that a very few earlier versions of RPM would write the database in a way that seems corrupted to later versions. Rebuilding the database fixes the install problems. We will need to upgrade RPM on your system to the one on the installation CD-ROM, and rebuild the databases.

First thing to do is mount the latest CD-ROM on the system.

After doing this upgrade 'rpm' off the CD-ROM like so:

When the new RPM is installed, rebuild the database.

This will put the database in a format that the installation RPM can use (since they are the same.)

4.19 Booting Linux from the installation boot disk

Question:

I have Linux installed on an IDE drive, and for whatever reason I need to boot from floppy. How can I boot my system from the installation boot disk?

Answer:

If you have installed Linux onto an IDE hard-drive, you can boot from the installation floppy using the following method.

Insert the installation floppy and restart the machine. At the boot: prompt type the following:

Where X = is the Linux drive letter and Y is the partition on the drive you installed the root (/) partition to.

4.20 Where to go for updates

Question:

Where can I find updates for packages shipped with Red Hat Linux?

Answer:

Red Hat, Inc. posts all official updates at http://www.redhat.com/errata. You can also go to our updates FTP site

Also check the contrib directory on our FTP mirrors for packages that users have contributed. We also make periodic announcements to the redhat-announce-list with updates.

4.21 Contents of the 2nd RPM CD

Question:

During the install, I was not asked to use the 2nd CD-ROM. When I use the X program glint on it, it reports that there are no RPMs, but when I look at the directories, I see lots of them. What is going on?

Answer:

The 2nd CD-ROM in the Red Hat Linux boxed set contains the source code RPMs (SRPM) for all of the Open Source applications that are on the first CD-ROM. From these source RPMs, you can build all the Open Source applications we have in the distribution.

The reason that glint does not see source RPMs is due to that SRPMS are not stored in any of the RPM databases. This makes it almost impossible to tell if you have installed an src.rpm before or are over-writing an older version. Thus you will need to use the plain RPM command to install these items.

rpm -ivh < filename > will install the source code into the directory that the maintainer of that SRPM used. The data in src.rpms packaged by Red Hat are installed into /usr/src/redhat by default.

Rebuilding and improving on rpms is beyond the scope of this answer. The book Maximum RPM and the man pages are good sources of information on this.

4.22 Installing RPM packages

Question:

How do I install an RPM package?

Answer:

For most things, you can type

This will upgrade the RPM if you already have it on your machine. One occasion when you would not want to use the U flag is when you are installing a kernel. If you are installing a kernel, you'll want to leave your old kernel there in case the new one does not boot. For more information about installing new kernels, please see our Kernel Upgrade HOWTO.

4.23 More about RPM

Question:

How do I use RPM? What are some general commands that I will use with this command? Also, for whatever reason, I think files have changed on my system but I don't know which ones. Can RPM help?

Answer:

In general, normal usage of the rpm command can be summarized as follows:

Installation/Upgrading/Removal

To install a package: rpm -ivh < filename >

To upgrade a package: rpm -Uvh < filename >

To remove a package: rpm -e < packagename >

Also for upgrading or installing some packages you may need to use additional flags to force the install happen. It is only recommended to use these if you know why these flags were needed.

Querying

To see if a package is installed: rpm -q < packagename >

To get info on an installed package: rpm -qi < packagename >

To list which files belong to a package: rpm -ql < packagename >

To see what package a file belongs to: rpm -qf < path-to-filename >

One can usually join various query commands together, so rpm -qil will give info and list all the files in the package.

To look at an RPM filename that isn't installed, you add the p to the query line.

This will list the information and the files contained in somepackage.

More Advanced

More advanced usages can be found in the man page for RPM and at the web site, http://www.rpm.org

Verification

To see what files on the system may have changed from their initial settings you can use RPM, to check up on them.

will give you a list of all files that have changed in one form or another since the package it is associated was installed. This can be a lot of files (and a lot may be changed due to post installation work). To just see what packages have changed so that you can verify them more individually, you can do the following:

Then look in the file /tmp/file1 for which packages have had changes from them.

4.24 Getting started

Question:

I have installed Linux onto my machine. I am presented with a prompt that says:

What do I do now? Can you give me instructions on the next steps?

Answer:

After you have completed the Linux install, the machine should reboot and you will be presented with a prompt that looks like:

If you press the Enter key, it will begin the booting process of the Linux system. After a short time (from 20 seconds to 10 minutes depending on the machine speed and services running), you will see a clear screen with the text similar to the below:

At the login prompt, you will need to log in as the root user. Type root and press Enter again. You should be prompted for a password:

Type in the password you set during the install, and press Enter. For security reasons the password is not echoed onto the screen. If all goes well the machine should log you in. If you are prompted for a password again, what you typed did not match the install password. Try again, being careful to use correct capitalization. This is the standard text-mode login screen. You may be expecting a graphical login, but may have ended up at the text-mode virtual terminal screen.

Now you should create a user account and password for that user. Next, exit and log back in as the user.

Once you are logged in, you can use the command startx to start a GUI environment.

Question:

How do I install Windows NT and Linux onto the same machine?

Answer:

If you need to install Windows NT and Linux on the same machine, we have found that the following guide will ensure success. First, download and read the Linux and NT HOWTO that has been prepared by Bernd Reichert. The latest version can be found at http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html and a possibly earlier one can be found on the CD-ROM in \doc\HOWTO\mini\Linux+NT-Loader

Since this guide is extremely helpful, only a brief summary is presented below:

4.26 Adding users

Question:

How do I add users?

Answer:

First, log in as root and run the adduser command, like so:

Make certain that you also set up a password for the new user like so:

4.27 Questions about Secure Shell and PGP

Question:

How can I setup Secure Shell (SSH) or PGP on my Linux system?

Answer:

Due to United States of America export restrictions on munitions, Red Hat Linux can not distribute ssh. The Zedz Consultants site has set up various downloads of ssh and PGP.

4.28 "mount failed" error

Question:

I'm trying to install and I keep getting 'mount failed.' What should I do?

Answer:

If you are performing a full installation, make certain that you have set up the partitions as ext2 or Linux Native, depending on which partitioning tool you used. Also, make sure that you have created and initiated your swap partition.

There are five virtual consoles. Two of these consoles, Install Log,

and System Log,

should be beneficial in pinpointing the install problem you have encountered.

If you are running an upgrade, switch to a virtual terminal and make certain that none of the partitions are already mounted, and check /etc/fstab for fs types that aren't listed in /proc/filesystems

4.29 Forgetting the root password

Question:

I forgot my root password. What do I do?

Answer:

When the system comes to the LILO prompt, type:

When you get the # prompt you will need to type the following:

This will update the password to a newer one. At this point you can type shutdown -r now and the system should boot up with your new password available.

4.30 Avoiding running the fsck command after each reboot

Question:

Every time I turn my computer off, when I turn it back on, it makes me run fsck command on my partitions. Why?

Answer:

The most likely cause for this is that your partitions are not being unmounted properly when you last stopped the machine. Linux is very much like NT and Windows 98 in that it needs to be properly shutdown, or there could be disk corruptions and other inconsistencies.

Question:

How do I get sound to work with Linux?

Answer:

Setting up sound can be difficult in many cases, because most people have plug and play sound cards. This section of the FAQ tries to attack this issue from several different angles to try to cover all bases.

First, you will need to either disable plug and play on the card (via jumpers or card setup tools). You can also change your boot method to use Loadlin.exe from Windows (as windows would then have set up the plug and play hardware).

The command to set up sound is called sndconfig. You will need to log in as root (and if you are using the X Window System, open a terminal). At the prompt type: sndconfig. This will walk you through setting up your sound card.

If you have problems with sndconfig, here are a couple of other ways to attack the problem.

sndconfig tries to setup a good set of default values for the plug and play settings, and then load the appropriate modules. If it can't find a good set of values itself, you can try:

This will let you manually specify the plug and play values for the card. You need to choose these wisely however. The values from windows will probably work if it's the only plug and play device in the machine, but check out:

to find a set of resources that will work.

Enter them in and continue. It should then load the proper modules and play the sound.

Another approach is the following:

You can let sndconfig set it up as close as you can get to the real values of your card. Then edit /etc/conf.modules to use the correct values. It should have something like:

To reload the modules type:

This should load up the sb module with the proper resources.

You can also try this:

Then run /usr/sbin/sndconfig again.

Finally, here is another route to try:

You can try using the isapnptools programs.

Type this:

The pnpdump command probes to see what plug and play devices are installed and generates a template file for isapnp to read. Thats what the /etc/isapnp.conf is.

Once you have chosen a good set of resources for the card, making sure they don't conflict with any other cards (to see other resources, check the following:)

Then type:

to set up the devices. If this does not work, you can edit this file with a text editor (vi, pico, emacs, etc) and adjust the values to fit those of your card. The file format is a little obtuse, so you may want to check: http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools/ for more information.

If it's not a plug and play card, and you know the values for the resources it uses, you can just set them manually by editing /etc/conf.modules

You can also type: man isapnp.conf for a more detailed description of the format.

Then run:

You may need to go though this a few times to get good values. This is what sndconfig is supposed to do automatically, but it doesn't always work for all cards.

If all this fails, report problems to the sound-list@redhat.com so that they can be worked on.

4.32 Screen blanking

Question:

Every time I leave my computer for a few minutes, the screen goes blank. How can I fix this?

Answer:

If you have a screen saver running, you may want to turn that off. In text mode, the kernel will "screen-save" your system unless you use:

Otherwise, if you hear disk drives speed up or other sounds, this is probably APM kicking in. Disable APM from starting at boot time by logging in as root and typing:

then deselect APM. Leave ntsysv and you will need to reboot the machine (this is one of the few services that you have to restart the system as APM is so deeply connected to the kernel that a full reset is needed.)

4.33 bash: command not found

Question:

I compiled a program called hello but when I try to run it it says bash: hello command not found. Why won't my programs run on Red Hat?

Answer:

This problem is generally caused by the location of the program not being specified in your general path. The path is where Linux (like Windows) will search for a working executable. The current working directory is not in your path because of possible security exploits of a command masking itself as another one.

To run your file, you can 1)put the directory your are in in your path (you can find out what the path is by typing echo $PATH), or 2)put the file in a directory that is in your path, or 3)by typing ./filename.

4.34 Getting online with a modem

Question:

I can't get my modem to work. Can you help?

Answer:

First, check to see if your modem is a supported device. Double check the Hardware Compatibility List at: http://www.redhat.com/support/hardware/index.html

Verify that your modem is being detected by the system and that it is not conflicting with other resources. You can check this with the following commands (as seen in this example):

to make certain none of your resources are conflicting. Examples of this would be your modem and some other port sharing an interrupt. In the PC world, COM 1 (/dev/ttyS0) and COM 3 (/dev/ttyS3) will try to share the same interrupt unless told otherwise. While this works in some systems, we have generally found that it leads to a degradation of service.

Next, we recommend that you use minicom to double check that you are getting a signal back from your modem. Once you have determined this, refer to the following sites for information on setting up a PPP connection using wvdial, linuxconf, etc: http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/tips/PPP-Client-Tips/PPP-Client-Tips.html

http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/tips/Network-Config-Tips/Network-Config-Tips.html

Questions like this are also excellent questions for the Red Hat users' mailing list. There are many experienced Red Hat users on the list who might be of assistance on a matter of this sort. To subscribe to redhat-list, send mail to redhat-list-request@redhat.com with the following in the subject line:

Leave the body empty.

There is also a compiled listing of past posts to this group, You may find the answer to your question there:

http://www.redhat.com/support/mailing-lists/archives/search.cgi

There are, of course many commercial UNIX support organizations that may provide support for specific applications; we encourage you to contact them to enquire about their Linux support options.

4.35 Preventing Netscape from crashing

Question:

Netscape keeps crashing when I reach a page with Java applets in it. I have also noticed that some of my applications do not display fonts correctly. What is going on?

Answer:

There is a problem in one of the installation RPMS in that many systems do not have a complete list of fontpath for X to use.

To see if this is the problem you are facing, use the command:

You should get output that looks like the following:

Current directories in font path:

You should then add the 75dpi scaled font to your path list using the command:

This should fix the problem you are seeing.

However, if problems persist check the following as well:

http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/4.6/relnotes/unix-4.6.html#unix

(or Help -- release notes in the menu)

Basically, if Netscape exhibits consistent problems on pages containing Javascript, check your  /.mailcap file, and remove this line if it is in that file:

4.36 Problems trying to connect with Netscape

Question:

I can dial up to my ISP just fine, but I can't use Netscape. It says "cannot connect to remote host." What is wrong?

Answer:

What you are seeing occurs from one of two problems. The first problem is that your DNS (Domain Name Server) is not being set correctly during dial-up. Red Hat Linux 6.2 uses uwvdial which can determine this for most ISPs, but may have problems with some.

For Red Hat Linux 6.0 and earlier you will need to specify your ISP's DNS servers in your /etc/resolv.conf. Contact your ISP for this information and edit the file to include those settings.

Here's an example:

Another reason for this problem is expecting action like the Windows environment. When Windows detects that you are looking for something on a network and you have a modem in your system, it will try to start that modem connection. Linux currently requires you to start the connection manually (easiest through the X Window System program usernet).

4.37 Boot hangs during sendmail, httpd, or smb

Question:

I have installed Linux, and it seems to initially start booting. However it gets down to something called sendmail, httpd, or smb and then the machine seems to hang. What is happening and what should I do?

Answer:

If after the install the machine seems to hang when it reaches certain processes like sendmail, apache, or SMB there is probably a network problem. The most common cause is that Linux can not look up the name of the machine you have called the box (if you set up networking to have a machine name). The machine is currently paused waiting for the network timeout of DNS lookups, and will eventually bring up the login prompt. Login in as root and check the usual culprits for a problem.

If you are directly on a network with a DNS server, make sure the file /etc/resolv.conf has the correct values for your machine's DNS server. Check with your systems administrator that the values are correct.

If you are using Linux on a network without a DNS server (or this box is going to be the DNS server), then you will need to edit the /etc/hosts file to have the hostname and IP address so that the lookups will occur correctly. The format of the /etc/hosts file is:

Where the example machine is called mymachine.