OS Installing

CSCI N321 – System and Network Administration

Copyright © 2000, 2011 by Scott Orr

and the Trustees of Indiana University
Section Overview
Hardware Inventory & Compatibility
Disk Space & Partitioning
Installation Media & Methods
OS Installation
Customization
References
RedHat Fedora 15 Installation Guide
RedHat Fedora Support – Documentation
Evard’s System Life Cycle

New Rebuild

Build Update

Entropy
Initialize
Clean Configure Unknown
Debug

Retire

Off
Getting started
Pick OS, vendor, & version
Installation media
Read vendor documentation
HW Drivers?
 Directly Supported?
 Downloadable?
Hardware Inventory
CPU/Motherboard/Memory
Hard Drive(s) & Partitions
Keyboard/Mouse
CD/DVD
Graphics Card/Monitor
Sound
Networking
Gathering the Hardware Info
PC vendor documentation
Peripheral documentation
WinXP, or Win7 if installed

Record all information in Wiki

Hardware Info – Windows 7
System Properties
 General Tab
 Device manager
Disk Usage - Disk Manager
 Partitions
 Free Space
Network Settings – TCP/IP Properties
 Address/Subnet Mask
 Gateway
 DNS Configuration
Dr. Hardware Sysinfo Tool

www.dr-hardware.com
Fedora 15 Requirements
Text Mode
 CPU: 200MHz Pentium-class+
 Memory: 256 MB
Graphics (X Windows) Mode
 CPU: 400MHz Pentium Pro
 Memory
 Minimum: 640MB
 Recommended: 1152MB+
Disk Repartitioning
Destructive – fdisk
Non-destructive
 Split a larger partition into 2 or more
smaller ones
 Must defragment the partition first
 ntfsresize
 Commercial tools
 ALWAYS back data up first!!!
Fedora Installation Sources
Live CD
DVD
Minimal
 CD Boot
 USB Boot
 Rescue Boot
Network
 NFS Image
 FTP
 HTTP
 PXE
Installation from Media
Language Selection
Keyboard/Mouse
Partitioning
Boot Loader Configuraion
Network Configuration
Root Account Creation
Image copied from CD
Disk Partitioning
Create partitions on available drives
Lists existing partitions/filesystem types
Partition information
 Mount point
 Linux device
 Requested/actual space
 Filesystem type
Need native and swap partitions
Minimum Partition Sizes
Directory Min. Size
/ 250MB
/boot 250MB
/usr 250MB
/tmp 50MB
/var* 384MB
/home 100MB

* Will need more in order to patch the system the first time
Linux Drive Names
Floppy Disk - /dev/fd0
CDROM Drive - /dev/cdrom
Hard Drives - /dev/hdXY
 X – drive number (a-d)
 Y – Partition number (1-9)
 Example: /dev/hda5 (drive a, partition 5)
SCSI/USB Devices - /dev/sdXY
Swap Partitions
Extends the amount of RAM installed

Classic UNIX Rule of Thumb

 Swap partition should be twice the size of
RAM installed
 Can get by with much less under Linux
Fedora Swap Requirements

RAM Min. Swap Size

>= 4GB 2 GB
4GB – 16GB 4 GB
16GB – 64GB 8 GB
64GB – 256GB 16 GB
256GB – 512GB 32 GB
GRUB Boot loader
GRand Unified Bootloader
Installed on the primary hard drive
Provides a menu to boot installed
Operating Systems
Can modify for special boot modes
Password protection
Root Account
Superuser (Administrator in Windows)
System Administration account
Unlimited access to everything
Should use only when needed
Principle of Least Privilege
Post Media Installation
License agreement
Firewall – Enable only what you need
SELinux – More on this later
Date/Time
 Manual
 Time Server
User account Creation
Installation Testing
Boot Messages
 Display Devices found
 List services started
 Watch for any error messages
Login Prompt
System Patches
Fix bugs discovered after version
release
Notification
 Vendor email lists
 Security Announcements (i.e. CERT)
Automated systems
 Fedora & RedHat: yum
 Microsoft: Windows Update
Shutting Down
Do not just turn off!!!
Control-Alt-Delete
Command Line
 shutdown –h [-P]
 halt
 reboot
Dual-Boot Installations
Installation of more than 1 OS on system
OS chosen at boot time (e.g.: Grub)
Space Allocation Planning
Virtualization
 VMWare
 Virtual PC
 Xen/UML
 Application level (wine)
VMWare Server/Workstation

Source: VMWare, Inc.

VMWare ESX

Source: VMWare, Inc.

Large Deployments
Automated OS Installation
 Minimizes Mistakes & Non-uniformity
 Examples: RedHat KickStart, Windows AIK
Partially Automated
 Each station requires minor tweaking
Cloning
 Images based on Golden Machine
 Example: Ghost
Checklists!!!
Templates
Large Scale Patching/Updating
Fully Automated?
Gradual Rollout
 One
 Some
 Many
Document process