Red Hat Linux 6.2

Support

This guest operating system is supported on the following VMware products:

General Installation Notes

Be sure to read General Guidelines for All VMware Products as well as this guide to installing your specific guest operating system.

The easiest method of installing Red Hat Linux 6.2 in a virtual machine is to use the standard Red Hat distribution CD. The notes below describe an installation using the standard distribution CD; however, installing Red Hat Linux 6.2 via the boot floppy/network method is supported as well.

Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created a new virtual machine and configured it using the New Virtual Machine Wizard (on Windows hosts) or Configuration Wizard (on Linux hosts).

Caution: Red Hat Linux 6.2 does not run on Pentium 4 processors. It also does not run on Xeon processors that are branded Xeon, with no qualifier, or Xeon-MP (Pentium III Xeon processors are OK).

Note: Due to VGA performance issues installing Red Hat 6.2 with the graphics mode installer, we highly recommend you install the operating system with the text mode installer. At the Red Hat 6.1 or 6.2 CD boot prompt, you are offered the following choices:

To install or upgrade a system ... in graphical mode ...
To install or upgrade a system ... in text mode, type: text <ENTER>.
To enable expert mode, ...
Use the function keys listed below ...

Choose the text mode installer by typing text followed by Enter.

Note: During the Red Hat Linux 6.x installation, a standard VGA16 X server (without support for the Click here to change product name; don't use VMware in name X server) is installed. To get an accelerated SVGA X server running inside the virtual machine, you should install the VMware Tools package immediately after installing Red Hat Linux 6.x.

Installation Steps

  1. Insert the Red Hat Linux 6.2 installation CD in the CD-ROM drive.
  2. Power on the virtual machine to start installing Red Hat Linux 6.2.

    We recommend you install the operating system with the text mode installer. At the Red Hat 6.2 CD boot prompt, you are offered the following choices:

    To install or upgrade a system ... in graphical mode ...
    To install or upgrade a system ... in text mode, type: text <ENTER>.
    To enable expert mode, ...
    Use the function keys listed below ...

    Choose the text mode installer by typing text followed by Enter.

  3. Follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine.

    Note: If the virtual machine's Ethernet adapter has been enabled, the installation program auto-detects and loads the AMD PC/Net 32 driver (no command line parameter is necessary to load the driver).

    Note: The text mode installer in Red Hat Linux 6.2 presents a Hostname Configuration screen. If you are installing this guest with DHCP in a virtual machine with host-only networking, do not specify a host name. Just respond OK and continue. (Specifying a host name will cause an installer error later.) At the next screen - Network Configuration - respond OK to use the default: Use bootp/dhcp.

  4. During the Linux installation, select the standard VGA16 X server.
  5. In the Choose a Card screen, select the Generic VGA compatible/Generic VGA card from the list.
  6. In the Monitor Setup screen, select Generic Monitor from the list.
  7. Select the Probe button from the Screen Configuration dialog box.
  8. Select OK from the Starting X dialog box. After Linux is installed, the generic X server is replaced with the accelerated X server included in the VMware Tools package when you install VMware Tools.
  9. Finish installing Red Hat Linux 6.2 as you would on a physical machine.

At this point Red Hat 6.2 boots and a login screen appears.

This completes basic installation of the Red Hat Linux 7.0 guest operating system.

VMware Tools

Be sure to install VMware Tools in your guest operating system. For details, see the manual for your VMware product or follow the appropriate link in the knowledge base article at www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=340.

Enabling Sound After Installing Red Hat Linux 6.2

VMware GSX Server: The sound device is disabled by default and must be enabled with the virtual machine control panel (VM > Settings) after the operating system has been installed. To set up the virtual machine to play sound, see Configuring Sound in the GSX Server documentation.

Known Issues

Guest Screen Saver

On a Linux host with an XFree86 3.x X server, it is best not to run a screen saver in the guest operating system. Guest screen savers that demand a lot of processing power can cause the X server on the host to freeze.