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Installation of a workstation with the operating-system RedHat**-Linux** 7.1

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==> For 'stronger engines' (more than 300 Mhz CPU-speed and mehr than 96 MB RAM and more than 2,5 GB harddisk-space) I recommend RedHat**-Linux** 9 with a significantly improved GNOME-desktop (which is really sexy !); for the installation-instruction please follow this link.

Linux is a stable operating-system with a strong resistance against computer viruses.

With the fast development of office-applications for Linux** (e.g. browser Mozilla or Open-Office for text-processing, spreadsheets and presentation), and the potential, to run client/server-applications programmed with Java (e.g. the supply-chain-management-system), the usage of Linux** as operating-system for a workstation is a serious alternative to Microsoft**-Windows**.

All following instructions are for installing RedHat**-Linux** Version 7.1.

Select the graphic option lowres:

During the boot process from diskette or CD-ROM a 'Welcome' screen is displayed where different options can be chosen.
At that time key in lowres and press the Enter-Key.
This will disable the recognition of the Video-Graphics-Adaptor (VGA) and perform the installation in Standard-VGA-Mode which is supported by all VGA.

Language Selection, Keyboard Configuration and Mouse Configuration:

Please select the appropriate values according to your configuration.

Install Options:

This computer is powerful - particularly the RAM (random-access-memory) and the hard-disk-system are fast and of best quality.
To utilise all capabilities an avoid to waste capacity with not used functions Linux** will be installed as Custom System..

Disk Partitioning:

Select Manually partition with Disk Druid

    /boot

    48 MByte

    Swap

    1000 MByte

    /

    Rest of the disk

    Other directories as requiered;
    can also be on other disks.
    e.g. /home, /SAMBA_Disk, ...

    Size as requiered

Choose Partitions to Format:

Lilo Configuration:

Network Configuration:
This option is not shown if the NIC (network interface card) is not detected during the installation-process.
In that case the instruction for 'Configure the Network Interface Card' apply after finishing the stardard-installation.

Firewall Configuration:

Language Support Selection:

Time Zone Selection:

Account Configuration:

Authentication Configuration:

Selecting Package Groups:

Select individual packages: Yes (check)

X-Configuration:

Custom Configuration:


The instructions for the standard-installation end here.
Installation-steps which have to be done manually are described in the following steps.

Define the TCP/IP-address and the symbolic Name of the Workstation:

Under certain circumstances the TCP-/IP-address defined during standard-installation is not put to the configuration-file /etc/hosts.
If you do not find a line starting with the chosen TCP/IP-address (192.168.0.119 in this example), please insert the missing line.
Here is an example how the configuration-file /etc/hosts should look like :
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that requiere network functionality will fail
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain       localhost
192.168.0.119   accounting01.g2t.office.at  ACCOUNTING01

The above example aasumes, that the TCP/IP--Hostname as described under NetBIOS- and TCP/IP-Setup of a workstation was accounting01.g2t.office.at .

Configure the Network-Interface-Card:

Newer network-interface-cards (NIC) are detected during the standard-installation.
The following instruction have to be done only if the NIC was not detected during standard-installation.

The NIC-driver and I/O-adddresses (if not defined by a plug&play-bios) are defined in the file /etc/modules.conf; an example follows here:

alias eth0 ne
options ne io=0x300

If other lines are already existing in this file they must not be deletet.
A more detailed description is given in the Linux Ethernet-Howto.

Definition of the TCP/IP-addresses:

If the TCP/IP-Addresses were not already defined at the installation the can now be defined or altered with linuxconf .
After starting linuxconf please choose Config - Networking – Client tasks – Host name and IP network devices and enter the following values:

--- Adaptor 1 ---



Definition of the Name servers:

The shown sample-values for Primary and Secondary DNS are for the Internet-Service-Provider (ISP) A-Online; please ask your ISP for your optimized values.

The TCP/IP-addresses of the Domain-Name-Servers (DNS, to resolve Internet-domain-names to IP-adresses) are configured with linuxconf, too.
Please select Config - Networking – Client tasks – Name server specification (DNS) and input the following values:

The IP-adresses for the name servers are provides by the internet-service-provider; the samples above are the ones for A-Online.

Check for correct setup of the network-parameters:

If the drivers for the network-interface-card are loaded correctly is shown during startup in step
'Bringing up interface eth0';
it should show the result [OK].

or
can be checked after a restart of Linux** with the following command:

modprobe eth0
dmesg | tail

That shows the last lines of the log.
Unfortunelately the messages are specific for each driver; but if the hardware-id of the NIC (e.g. 0060 97 72 b0 93) is shown – that is a good sign..

If the parameters for the TCP/IP-addresses are korrect can be checked with the following commands.

ping 192.168.0.119 (if this is not the IP-address of the workstation to be set up replace it with the one defined two steps before)

shows the result:

PING 192.168.0.119 (192.168.0.119) from 192.168.0.119 : 56(84) bytes of data
64 bytes from 192.168.0.119: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=2.0 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.119 : icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.119 : icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.119 : icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.9 ms

'Pinging' can be interupted with the key-combination CTRL-C and a statistic is displayed thereafter.
An example of the display-output follows:

--- 192.168.0.119 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.9/1.2/2.0 ms

If the computer is already connected to the internal network, then the connection can be tested by 'pinging' an already existing computer within the internal network which TCP/IP-address is known.

ping 192.168.0.1 (where the 'pinged' PC must be active and have TCP/IP services installed)

shows the result:

PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) from 192.168.0.119 : 56(84) bytes of data
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=3.2 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.4 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=1.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=1.3 ms

'Pinging' can be interupted with the key-combination CTRL-C and a statistic is displayed thereafter.
An example of the display-output follows:

--- 192.168.0.119 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.3/1.7/3.2 ms

Further Tasks:

This document described how to set up the operating system RedHat**-Linux** version 7.1.
Installation instructions for further task to be completed on the way to a fully operational server are described in separate documents: