Topic: Installation on a stock RedHat 6.1?

[Petri Savolainen]

Well, I know I am supposed to do a CDROM install. It just so happens I've got my hands on a PC with RH6.1 on it, but no CDROM.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated- I tried taking just the RPM for e-smith 3.1 but run into problems... got stuck with what seems to be a missing or differently placed Perl module on RH61 (reset-config claims Template.pm of Text::Template is missing, or something like that). Ie. missing Perl module search path entry?

Thanks,

 Petri

[Tim Litwiller]

I am also considering this.  

What I want to know is:

Do I install Redhat 6.1 first and then try to add the e-smith stuff?  
What rpms do I need, etc.

Or do I install E-smith first configure it and then do an upgrade install of Redhat 6.1?


might this break some of e-smith?

[Charlie Brady]

Petri Savolainen wrote:

> Any help on this would be greatly appreciated- I tried taking
> just the RPM for e-smith 3.1 but run into problems... got stuck
> with what seems to be a missing or differently placed Perl
> module on RH61 (reset-config claims Template.pm of
> Text::Template is missing, or something like that). Ie. missing
> Perl module search path entry?

No, that is an add-on perl module which is missing from RH6.1.

You would need to add all of the RPMs from the e-smith CDROM, and because there are some conflicts with RH RPMs, you would need to remove some of the RH RPMs - e.g. sendmail. Not a trivial task, in other words.

Charlie

[Fran Boon]

>>Text::Template is missing
> No, that is an add-on perl module which is missing from RH6.1.
> You would need to add all of the RPMs from the e-smith CDROM,
> and because there are some conflicts with RH RPMs, you would
> need to remove some of the RH RPMs - e.g. sendmail. Not a
> trivial task, in other words.

Not trivial, but doable - main things to add are autopasswd, proftpd (remove wu-ftpd), qmail + daemontools (remove sendmail), the perl module & e-smith.

Would be good to hear how you get on - I'm planning to get an e-smith 3.1 based on RedHat 6.1 together soon...

Regards,
Fran.

[Petri Savolainen]

Couple of more things to help out with this. So far, this seems to have worked - I've got a RH6.1 with some e-smith RPMs and things seem to be working. This is done via trial and error though so I would not be surprised if something pops up.

-e-smith doc says it is based on RH6.0 with a newer, 2.2.5-22 kernel so a symlink "/lib/modules/2.2.5-22" is needed. Now if we're doing RH6.1 this should point to the directory "2.2.12-20" that exists on RH6.1. Otherwise, no network modules will be found.

There's a gotcha here though: make sure you keep a copy of your network drivers somewhere else... as e-smith install will overwrite 3c59x.o, tulip.o, epic100, rtl8139.o in /var/modules/2.2.5-22/net (ie. if this is a symlink to your stock RH61, your modules compiled for the newer kernel will get overwritten by the ones made for the older kernel used by e-smith). The order of doing things is important.

The best thing to do seems to be making sure all necessary RPMs are in place, as well as the abovementioned changes and checks and then running the steps mentioned on the web site:

/sbin/e-smith/apply-patches
/sbin/e-smith/reset-config
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event post-install

- The doc says once you boot to the e-smith console (it is in the inittab!) you can drop back to login prompt by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F3.

Finally, here is a list of RPMs I got from e-smith distribution. Please let us all know if you find out some or all of these work ok with what comes w/ RH6.1. All other RPMs I have are already from RH6.1 and seem to work ok. Kind of stupid I did not try with stock RH6.1 RPMs, but I started from an existing minimal RH6.1 and went straight for what I thought would work the easiest, ie. grab the original e-smith RPMs that were missing, still.

apache-1.3.6-7.i386.rpm
autopassword-2.0-1.i386.rpm
daemontools-0.53-1.i386.rpm
e-smith-3.0.4-1.i386.rpm
fetchmail-5.1.0-1.i386.rpm  
ftp-0.10-22.i386.rpm          
kernel-2.2.12-20.i586.rpm    
perl-Text-Template-1.20-1.i386.rpm
proftpd-1.2.0pre3-6.i386.rpm      
qmail-1.03-1.i386.rpm              
qmail-initscripts-1.03.1-1.i386.rpm

(note: I removed newer apache, sendmail & all other ftp-related RPMs to be safe)

I hope this helps. If you figure something out that I forgot or made a mistake with, post it in!

 Petri

[Petri Savolainen]

Tried creating an account... well, this is what I got.
---
Software error:
Failed to set Unix password for account petri.
---

Perhaps need a newer autopasswd RPM or something... I have no clue.

 Petri

[Tom Hogevoll]

I had to install Linux on a system with a cantankerous CDROM that would not mount the CD duing the install so I just mounted the CD on my main workstation and did a network FTP install.  Not as fast as a local CDROM, but it worked.

Maybe you can do this with the e-Smith server CD.  I don't remember if there was a bootnet image on the e-Smith CD or not, but then maybe the RedHat bootnet image would work on your boot floppy.

[Charlie Brady]

Tom Hogevoll wrote:

> I had to install Linux on a system with a cantankerous CDROM
> that would not mount the CD duing the install so I just
> mounted the CD on my main workstation and did a network FTP
> install. Not as fast as a local CDROM, but it worked.
>
> Maybe you can do this with the e-Smith server CD.  I don't
> remember if there was a bootnet image on the e-Smith CD or
> not, but then maybe the RedHat bootnet image would work on
> your boot floppy.

There is a bootnet image on the CD, but it is a standard RedHat
bootnet image. It does not have the e-smith disclaimers and
warning prompts, and it does not have the kickstart file
which automates the configuration. You may be able to use
the redhat bootnet installation disk if you copy ks.cfg from the
CDROM to the bootnet floppy, then edit it to change the cdrom
source specification to the correct ftp location, then start
the install using "linux network ks=floppy".

I haven't tested it myself, so no guarantee that it will work.
If your system breaks, you have both bits

Charlie

[Rashid Khan]

Well....i just downloaded e-smith today and was hoping for an install via NFS option but didn't find it. The bootnet.img on the e-smith cdrom .iso is exactly the same as the boot.img. i'm thinking that that really the only way to get this to work correctly would be to edit the RedHat 6.1 bootnet.img
               Rashid

[Charlie Brady]

Rashid Khan wrote:

> Well....i just downloaded e-smith today and was hoping for an
> install via NFS option but didn't find it. The bootnet.img on
> the e-smith cdrom .iso is exactly the same as the boot.img.

Are you sure about that? It should be the same as a standard RedHat 6.0 bootnet.img, which is not the same as the RH boot.img.

> i'm thinking that that really the only way to get this to work
> correctly would be to edit the RedHat 6.1 bootnet.img

I'm not sure what you intend to edit on the RH 6.1 bootnet.img.

If you don't have any choice but to use NFS install, you can try it by making a floppy from bootnet.img, copying ks.cfg onto the floppy, then
starting the install using "linux network ks=floppy" at the syslinux command line. Please let us know how you get on.

Charlie