[BRLTTY] The rhel 4 cd

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by mattias on 2009/12/20 at 10:06 +0100]

>Dave
>How do you install fc 12
>Are you blind or not?

Yes, I'm completely blind. Since I have more than one system, I did a 
text-based install using telnet from a system whereon braille was operational.

When you boot the system with the install CD, you have a whole minute (exactly 
60 seconds) to start pressing keys before the default action is taken. It's in 
a grub screen at that point. The cursor is already on "install or upgrade 
existing system", which is what you'll probably want. The other useful one is 
the rescue system, which you get to by pressing the down arrow twice.

Normally, after arrowing onto the system you want to boot, you'd just press 
enter to start it. In this case, though, I had to tell the installer to use 
telnet mode. To do this, you have to add a few kernel parameters. Rather than 
pressing enter right away, terefore, press tab. This opens the kernel line for 
editing, with the curosr placed at the end of it. type a space (just to be 
sure), then type the parameters, and finally press enter to start the system. 

The parameters are:

   telnet ip=<address> netmask=<mask> gateway=<address> dns=<address>,...

For example (all on one line, of course):

   telnet ip=192.168.0.10 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.0.1
   dns=192.168.0.100,192.168.0.101,192.168.0.102

Then, from another system, telnet to the specified IP address. For example:

   telnet 192.168.0.10

There actually is another kernel parameter for specifying the network 
interface, e.g. eth0, in case the system you're installing has more than one. I 
don't remember the name of that parameter at the moment, though. If you have 
that problem and don't specify the parameter then you'll get a visual prompt 
with the cursor on the first intterface (eth0). Arrow down once for eth1, twice 
for eth2, etc, and then press enter. If the system only has one network 
interface then you don't need the parameter and you won't get a prompt.

Here's a warning, which I learned the very, very, very hard way. :-) If, while 
doing the install, you select "use the entire drive", don't wrongly assume it 
means only one disk. When using braille, and only reading one line at a time, 
it's all too easy (as I did) to wrongly assume that the disks have a set of 
radio buttons beside them with only the first disk having been selected. What's 
actually there is a checkbox beside each disk with all of them having been 
selected. Make sure you unselect the disks you don't want the installer to 
touch. I lost all the contents of my second disk (all of my children's home 
directories) as well as the contents of my USB stick this way.

Since the text-mode install has been so stripped down that it no longer allows 
you to control the partitioning, it's probably worth knowing how the installer 
does the partitioning. It makes a small primary partition at the start of the 
disk for /boot, and then allocates the entire rest of the disk to a volume 
group. This volume group contains a single logical volume for the root 
partition which fully consumes all of the space. In my opinion, that's kind of 
wasteful if you have a large disk.

I didn't like what it did, but still let it go ahead. Fixing it later was a bit 
tricky, though, because it's not possible to reduce the size of an ext 
partition while it's mounted, and, of course, it's impossible to unmount the 
root partition. It's also a bit risky to get the file system and partition 
sizes to match properly when shrinking them. Here's how I did it:

1) Boot the rescue system.
2) Tell the rescue system to skip mounting the parttions.
3) Start the shell.
4) Use lvm to activate the logical volume.
5) Use fsck -f to prepare the root file system for resizing.
6) Use resize2fs to make the root file system very small (I used 5G).
7) Use lvm to make the logical volume the desired size (I used 15G).
8) Use resize2fs with no size to grow the root file system to fill the volume.

The severely stripped down text-mode install also doesn't let you contorl which 
packages are installed. It only installs an extremely basic system. You need to 
use yum after you reboot to it in order to install all the packages you really 
want.

You won't have braille on the newly installed system yet either, of course. 
Since the system does have an ssh daemon already running on it, you could start 
out, therefore, by using ssh (similar to using telnet to do the install). Two 
problems stand in your way, though, so you'll need to log into it as root and 
do a bit of typing first. The commands you need to execute are:

   service firewall stop
   service network start

Fortunately, all that network information you so carefully entered as kernel 
parameters for the installer does get all correctly written into the installed 
system so the nwtwork interface is actually fuly defined. It's just that the 
installer doesn't automatically set it to start.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | The Bible is the very Word of God.
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | 2011 May 21 is the Day of Judgement.
EMail: dave at mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | 2011 Oct 21 is the End of the World.
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