Preface

Preface

Many enterprise customers perform interactive installations on systems in datacenters. These systems are often, but not always, installed in a rack environment and do not have a display, keyboard, or mouse. Additionally, a lot of these systems even lack the ability to connect a graphical display. Given that enterprise hardware rarely needs that ability at the physical system, this hardware configuration is acceptable.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora Linux installer (anaconda) offers users two interactive modes of operation. The original mode is a text-based interface. The newer mode uses GTK+ and runs in the X Window environment. The purpose of this document is to explain how the graphical installation mode can be used in enterprise environments, even when the system lacks a proper display and input devices typically associated with a workstation.

The primary driver behind the document is to encourage use of the graphical installer, even in enterprise environments. The text mode environment lacks a lot of capabilities found in the graphical mode. Many users still feel that the text mode interface provides them with additional power or configuration ability not found in the graphical version. The opposite is true. Much less development effort is put in to the text mode environment and specific things (e.g., LVM configuration) are deliberately left out of the text mode environment. The reasons for this are:

All of these reasons and more are why you, the enterprise customer, should be making using of the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) mode offered in anaconda. VNC allows the graphical mode of the installer to run locally, but display on a system connected to the network.

1. Document Conventions

This manual uses several conventions to highlight certain words and phrases and draw attention to specific pieces of information.

In PDF and paper editions, this manual uses typefaces drawn from the Liberation Fonts set. The Liberation Fonts set is also used in HTML editions if the set is installed on your system. If not, alternative but equivalent typefaces are displayed. Note: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and later includes the Liberation Fonts set by default.

1.1. Typographic Conventions

Four typographic conventions are used to call attention to specific words and phrases. These conventions, and the circumstances they apply to, are as follows.

Mono-spaced Bold

Used to highlight system input, including shell commands, file names and paths. Also used to highlight key caps and key-combinations. For example:

To see the contents of the file my_next_bestselling_novel in your current working directory, enter the cat my_next_bestselling_novel command at the shell prompt and press Enter to execute the command.

A useful shortcut for the above command (and many others) is Tab completion. Type cat my_ and then press the Tab key. Assuming there are no other files in the current directory which begin with 'my_', the rest of the file name will be entered on the command line for you.

(If other file names begin with 'my_', pressing the Tab key expands the file name to the point the names differ. Press Tab again to see all the files that match. Type enough of the file name you want to include on the command line to distinguish the file you want from the others and press Tab again.)

The above includes a file name, a shell command and two key caps, all presented in Mono-spaced Bold and all distinguishable thanks to context.

Key-combinations can be distinguished from key caps by the hyphen connecting each part of a key-combination. For example:

Press Enter to execute the command.

Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to the first virtual terminal. Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to your X-Windows session.

The first sentence highlights the particular key cap to press. The second highlights two sets of three key caps, each set pressed simultaneously.

If source code is discussed, class names, methods, functions, variable names and returned values mentioned within a paragraph will be presented as above, in Mono-spaced Bold. For example:

File-related classes include filesystem for file systems, file for files, and dir for directories. Each class has its own associated set of permissions.

Proportional Bold

This denotes words or phrases encountered on a system, including application names; dialogue box text; labelled buttons; check-box and radio button labels; menu titles and sub-menu titles. For example:

Choose System > Preferences > Mouse from the main menu bar to launch Mouse Preferences. In the Buttons tab, click the Left-handed mouse check box and click Close to switch the primary mouse button from the left to the right (making the mouse suitable for use in the left hand).

To insert a special character into a gedit file, choose Applications > Accessories > Character Map from the main menu bar. Next, choose Search > Find… from the Character Map menu bar, type the name of the character in the Search field and click Next. The character you sought will be highlighted in the Character Table. Double-click this highlighted character to place it in the Text to copy field and then click the Copy button. Now switch back to your document and choose Edit > Paste from the gedit menu bar.

The above text includes application names; system-wide menu names and items; application-specific menu names; and buttons and text found within a GUI interface, all presented in Proportional Bold and all distinguishable by context.

Note the > shorthand used to indicate traversal through a menu and its sub-menus. This is to avoid the difficult-to-follow 'Select Mouse from the Preferences sub-menu in the System menu of the main menu bar' approach.

Mono-spaced Bold Italic or Proportional Bold Italic

Whether Mono-spaced Bold or Proportional Bold, the addition of Italics indicates replaceable or variable text. Italics denotes text you do not input literally or displayed text that changes depending on circumstance. For example:

To connect to a remote machine using ssh, type ssh username@domain.name at a shell prompt. If the remote machine is example.com and your username on that machine is john, type ssh john@example.com.

The mount -o remount file-system command remounts the named file system. For example, to remount the /home file system, the command is mount -o remount /home.

To see the version of a currently installed package, use the rpm -q package command. It will return a result as follows: package-version-release.

Note the words in bold italics above — username, domain.name, file-system, package, version and release. Each word is a placeholder, either for text you enter when issuing a command or for text displayed by the system.

Aside from standard usage for presenting the title of a work, italics denotes the first use of a new and important term. For example:

When the Apache HTTP Server accepts requests, it dispatches child processes or threads to handle them. This group of child processes or threads is known as a server-pool. Under Apache HTTP Server 2.0, the responsibility for creating and maintaining these server-pools has been abstracted to a group of modules called Multi-Processing Modules (MPMs). Unlike other modules, only one module from the MPM group can be loaded by the Apache HTTP Server.

1.2. Pull-quote Conventions

Two, commonly multi-line, data types are set off visually from the surrounding text.

Output sent to a terminal is set in Mono-spaced Roman and presented thus:

books        Desktop   documentation  drafts  mss    photos   stuff  svn
books_tests  Desktop1  downloads      images  notes  scripts  svgs

Source-code listings are also set in Mono-spaced Roman but are presented and highlighted as follows:

package org.jboss.book.jca.ex1;

import javax.naming.InitialContext;

public class ExClient
{
   public static void main(String args[]) 
       throws Exception
   {
      InitialContext iniCtx = new InitialContext();
      Object         ref    = iniCtx.lookup("EchoBean");
      EchoHome       home   = (EchoHome) ref;
      Echo           echo   = home.create();

      System.out.println("Created Echo");

      System.out.println("Echo.echo('Hello') = " + echo.echo("Hello"));
   }
   
}

1.3. Notes and Warnings

Finally, we use three distinct visual styles to highlight certain information nuggets.

Note

A note is useful bit of information: a tip or shortcut or an alternative approach to the task at hand. Ignoring a note should have no negative consequences, but you might miss out on a trick that makes your life easier.

Important

The Important information box highlights details that are easily missed: such as configuration changes that only apply to the current session, or services that need restarting before an update will apply. Ignoring important information won't cause data loss but may cause irritation and frustration.

Warning

A Warning highlights vital information that must not be ignored. Ignoring warnings will most likely cause data loss.