Chapter 3. Before You Begin the Installation Process

Installation Overview

Installing Red Hat Linux on an Itanium system is different from installing Red Hat Linux on an x86 or Alpha machine. In general, the sequence of steps to a successful installation are the following:

  1. Boot into the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) Shell.

  2. If you can't boot from the CD-ROM, make an LS-120 diskette from the boot image file provided with Red Hat Linux.

  3. Using the EFI Shell and the ELILO bootloader, load and run the kernel, and boot into the Red Hat Linux installation program.

Disk Space Requirements

Before you begin the installation, be aware that you'll need certain amounts of free disk space to install Red Hat Linux.

  • At minimum, you'll need 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of free hard disk space to install Red Hat Linux.

  • You should have 1024 MB of RAM and 3 GB of free hard disk space on your machine for a full installation of Red Hat Linux.

Depending upon what type of installation you are performing, you may need an LS-120 diskette.