Red Hat Linux 9.0

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 9.0 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 9.0 via the boot floppy/network method is supported as well. If your VMware product supports it, you may also install from a PXE server.

Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created and configured a new virtual machine.

Note: You should not run the X server that is installed when you set up Red Hat Linux 9.0. Instead, 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 9.0.

Installation Steps

  1. Insert the Red Hat Linux 9.0 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive.
  2. Power on the virtual machine to start installing Red Hat Linux 9.0.

    You need to install Red Hat Linux 9.0 using the text mode installer, which you may choose when you first boot the installer. At the Red Hat Linux 9.0 CD boot prompt, you are offered the following choices:

    To install or upgrade Red Hat Linux ... in graphical mode ...
    To install or upgrade ... in text mode, type: linux text <ENTER>.
    Use the function keys listed below ...

    To choose the text mode installer, type linux text and press Enter.

    Note: If you attempt to use the graphical installer, it fails and launches the text mode installer.

  3. Follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine. Be sure to make the choices outlined in the following steps.
  4. Choose the language and keyboard, then in the Installation Type screen, choose either Server or Workstation for the installation type.
  5. In the Mouse Selection screen, choose Generic - 3 Button Mouse (PS/2) and select the Emulate 3 Buttons option for three-button mouse support in the virtual machine. If you have a wheel mouse, you may choose Generic Wheel Mouse (PS/2).
  6. You may see a warning that says:
    Bad partition table. The partition table on device sda is corrupted. To create new partitions, it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on the drive.
    This does not mean that anything is wrong with the hard drive on your physical computer. It simply means that the virtual hard drive in your virtual machine needs to be partitioned and formatted. Select the Initialize button and press Enter. Also note that sda appears in the message as the device name if the virtual disk in question is a SCSI disk; if the virtual disk is an IDE drive, hda appears in the message as the device name instead.
  7. Allow automatic partitioning of the disk to occur in the Automatic Partitioning screen or partition the virtual disk manually if you do not want to use the Red Hat defaults.
  8. If your computer is connected to a LAN that provides DHCP support, then in the Network Configuration screen, you may select the option Use bootp/dhcp. If you prefer, you may also set the networking parameters manually.
  9. In the Video Card Configuration screen, choose Skip X Configuration.

This completes basic installation of the Red Hat Linux 9.0 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.

Do not start the X server in the guest operating system until you install VMware Tools.

Note: When you are installing VMware Tools, the configuration program asks you to specify a resolution for the guest operating system's display. Be sure to set the resolution to 1152 x 864 or lower. If you set a higher resolution, the guest operating system instead switches to a default resolution of 800 x 600.

Enabling Sound After Installing Red Hat Linux 9.0

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

Forcing the Installer to Read the Second Installation CD

VMware Workstation, VMware ACE or VMware GSX Server: The Red Hat installer may fail to read the second installation CD correctly if the CD drive in your virtual machine is set up using the defaults.

The specific failure message depends on the set of packages you choose to install. In many cases, the first package the installer tries to read from the second CD is the XPDF package, so the error message reports a problem with xpdf-<version number>.

You can force the installer to read the second CD correctly by taking the following steps:

  1. When the installer asks for the second CD, remove the first CD from the drive and leave the drive empty.
  2. Tell the installer to continue. It closes the CD drive tray, then gives an error message when it finds no CD.
  3. Insert the second CD and tell the installer to continue. It should read the second CD correctly and installation should continue with no problems.

Guest Screen Saver

VMware Workstation or VMware GSX Server: 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.

INIT Errors, Slow or Poor Performance

VMware GSX Server: While installing the Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system, you may notice that the guest performs poorly or slowly, or you may see INIT errors when you first boot the guest. To work around this issue and install the guest more easily, pass the nosysinfo option when you boot the Linux kernel at the beginning of the installation. At the boot: prompt in the guest, type text nosysinfo.

After you install the guest operating system, if you notice that the virtual machine runs slowly or if you still see INIT errors, you can modify your boot loader to always use the option when the guest operating system boots. Choose the steps for your boot loader - choose GRUB or LILO.

Modifying Your GRUB Boot Loader

  1. In a text editor, edit /etc/grub.conf.
  2. Look for the following section in the file. Note that you may see a different kernel instead of the 2.4.20-8 kernel shown below.
    title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/
    initrd ....
  3. At the end of the kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ line, add nosysinfo.
  4. Save and close the file. You can now boot the guest.
  5. Restart the guest operating system.

    Note: If you are not confident with changing this configuration file, copy the above four line section and change the title from Red Hat Linux to RH Linux Guest, and add nosysinfo to the end of the line beginning with kernel in the newly created section. At boot time, you can choose to boot either the RH Linux Guest for optimal performance or Red Hat Linux for your original setup.

Modifying Your LILO Boot Loader

  1. In a text editor, edit /etc/lilo.conf.
  2. Look for the following line
    append="....."
  3. Add nosysinfo to the line like this:
    append="..... nosysinfo"
  4. If there is no append= line in /etc/lilo.conf, add the following line:
    append="nosysinfo"
    at the beginning of /etc/lilo.conf, before the first image= or other= directive.
  5. Save and close the file.
  6. Run the lilo command again so your changes can take effect.
  7. Restart the guest operating system.

Migration to a Different Processor

VMware Workstation, VMware ACE or VMware GSX Server: VMware recommends you do not migrate a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine between hosts when one host is running on an AMD processor and the other is running on an Intel processor.

During the Red Hat Linux 9.0 installation, Red Hat 9.0 chooses a kernel that is optimized for the specific processor on which it is running. The kernel may contain instructions that are only available for that processor. These instructions can have adverse effects when run on a host with the wrong type of processor.

Thus, a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine created on a host with an AMD processor may not work if migrated to a host with an Intel processor. The reverse is also true: a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine created on a host with an Intel processor may not work if migrated to a host with an AMD processor.

This problem is not specific to virtual machines and would also occur on physical computers. For example, if you moved a hard drive with a Red Hat Linux 9.0 installation from an AMD machine to an Intel machine, you would experience problems trying to boot from that drive.

Getting a DHCP Address in a Red Hat Linux 9.0 Virtual Machine

When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt may fail with an error message that states the link is down. On ESX Server, this happens only if you are using the vlance driver for your network connection.

To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the guest operating system. If only one of these files exists, make the change for that file only.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth<n>
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth<n>

In both cases, <n> is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0.

Add the following section to each of these two files:

check_link_down () {
return 1;
}

Then run the command ifup eth[n] (where [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter) or restart the guest operating system.

Message about "Tainted" Driver

VMware ESX Server or VMware VirtualCenter: When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system loads the vmxnet networking driver, it reports that the driver is tainted. This does not mean that there is anything wrong with the driver. It simply indicates that this is a proprietary driver, not licensed under the GNU General Public License.