[BRLTTY] The rhel 4 cd
Dave Mielke
dave at mielke.cc
Thu Dec 24 13:17:37 EST 2009
[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.
http://FamilyRadio.com/ | http://Mielke.cc/bible/
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