Installing Linux@DUKE 4

Linux@DUKE is built with network installs in mind, so we do not provide ISO images for CD-ROM installations. There are several ways you can install over the network -- an automated way for large clusters, and manually for personal machines.

Manual Install

You may use "boot.iso" to create a bootable installation CD, containing all necessary drivers. It can be used to start a network-based installation on both laptops and desktops. Please refer to your OS's documentation if you need help burning the .iso image to a CD.

Servers and paths

Boot the installation media you have created. When it gets to the network-install section select HTTP and provide the following two entries (depending on the architecture):

Server: install.linux.duke.edu
Path(i386): /pub/linux/base/4/i386
Path(x86_64): /pub/linux/base/4/x86_64

Automated Install

For an automated install you will need at least the following two things:

PXE Server
Kickstart File

Installing and Configuring a PXE Server

"PXE" stands for "Preboot Execution Environment" and allows you to load a bootable image for your machine from the network. In order to do that, however, your network card needs to support the "LAN Boot" option and have a recent version of PXE installed in its ROM. Chris Geddings has written a brief guide describing how you can install and configure a PXE Server to use with automated installations:

Quick Start, Building PXE Server

Creating a Kickstart File

Kickstart is a technology created and used by Red Hat to automate machine installations. This is a topic too lengthy to go into detail here, but you can read up on kickstarts on redhat.com website:

Once installed

Once the installation is complete, your first step would be to run: "yum update" in order to apply all available security errata to your newly installed machine. Also continue reading:

Centos-4: