Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed

Creating the Installation Source 11kickstart file. Then the clients are installed from this kickstart file. Refer to the “RedHat Network Provisioning”” section for a brief synopsis. Refer to the “Installing withKickstart” section for further information on kickstart installations.1Creating the Installation SourceBecause each Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription comes with access to Red HatNetwork, the files necessary to install the operating system can be downloaded fromRHN. Each installation CD is archived into one file called an ISO image. These ISO imagefiles can be used to create the installation source, depending on which installationmethod is used. Table 1.1 summarizes the installation sources per installation method.TABLE 1.1 Location of Installation Source per MethodInstallation MethodInstallation SourcesCD-ROMInstallation CDs created from CD ISO imagesHard driveISOs on ext2, ext3, or vfat partitionNFSISOs available via NFSFTPLoopback mounted ISOs available via FTPHTTPLoopback mounted ISOs available via HTTPThis section discusses creating each of these installation sources.Creating the Installation CDsThe ISO images for the installation CDs can be downloaded from Red Hat Network andthen burned onto the media. An ISO image is a file, usually with the .iso extension,which contains files properly formatted so they can be written to a CD-R or CD-RW,including making the disc bootable if necessary.Go to http://rhn.redhat.com/ and log in to your account. Click Channels from the horizontalnavigation menu on the top, and then click Download Software from the verticalmenu on the left. The software channels most relevant to your systems are shown bydefault. Select the name of the channel to download the ISO images for it. If you don’tsee the correct channel, click All from the vertical navigation menu on the left to view alist of all available channels.The download software page provides links to the installation and source CDs for theinitial release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux version and variant you selected as well aslinks to download the installation and source CDs for all update releases available. Eachupdate release contains all the files necessary to perform a complete installation, so youdo not need to download each update release. To use the latest, most secure version of thesoftware channel selected, download the install disc images for the latest update release.You do not need to download the source discs unless you need access to the source RPMs(the actual source code) used to create the software to be installed.