Red Hat Linux 7.3 Installation Guidelines

VMware ESX Server 1.5
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The easiest method of installing Red Hat Linux 7.3 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 7.3 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 ESX Server Virtual Machine Wizard.

Note: You should not run the X server that is installed when you set up Red Hat Linux 7.3. 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 7.3.

Installation Steps

Use the VMware Management Interface to verify the virtual machine's devices are set up as you expect before starting the installation. For example, if you would like networking software to be installed during the Red Hat Linux 7.3 installation process, be sure the virtual machine's Ethernet adapter is enabled and configured. VMware also recommends that you disable the screen saver on the host system before starting the installation process.
Insert the Red Hat Linux 7.3 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive and power on the virtual machine.
You need to install Red Hat Linux 7.3 using the text mode installer, which you may choose when you first boot the installer. At the Red Hat Linux 7.3 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 ...
To choose the text mode installer, type text followed by Enter.
Follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine. Be sure to make the choices outlined in the following steps.
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.
Choose the language and keyboard, then in the Installation Type screen, choose either Server or Workstation for the installation type.
In the Package Group Selection screen, select Software Development. If you select Select individual packages, be sure to include the gcc compiler. You will need it during installation of VMware Tools.
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.
Allow automatic partitioning of the disk to occur in the Automatic Partitioning screen.
If your host operating system supports DHCP and is connected to a LAN, then in the Network Configuration screen, select the Use bootp/dhcp option.
In the Video Card Selection screen, choose any card from the list.
In the Video Card Configuration screen, choose Skip X Configuration.
Log in to the Red Hat 7.3 guest operating system as root and add a symbolic link that is needed for successful installation of VMWare Tools.
ln -s /usr/src/linux2.4 /usr/src/linux
This completes basic installation of the Red Hat Linux 7.3 guest operating system. Be sure to install VMware Tools in your virtual machine. For details, see Installing VMware Tools and the Network Driver in the Guest Operating System.
Note: With a Red Hat Linux 7.3 guest, you should install VMware Tools from the Linux console. Do not start X until you have installed VMware Tools.

Known Issues

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.

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