Red Hat Linux 9.0

This section contains product support, installation instructions, and known issues for the Red Hat Linux 9.0 operating system.

Support

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

•

VMware Workstation 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.5, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.5.3, 5.0, 5.5, 5.5.1, 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.4, 5.5.5, 5.5.6, 5.5.7, 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4 Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger support for Red Hat Linux 9.0 on Workstation 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4 Experimental support for 2-way Virtual SMP on Workstation 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.4, 5.5.5, 5.5.6, 5.5.7, 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4

•	VMware ACE 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6, 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4

•	VMware GSX Server 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1

•	VMware Server 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6 Experimental support for 2-way Virtual SMP on VMware Server 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6

•	VMware ESX Server 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.5.3, 2.5.4, 2.5.5 Virtual SMP supported

Note If you are installing a guest operating system through VMware VirtualCenter, be sure it is supported under the VMware product—ESX Server or VMware Server—on which you are running the virtual machine.

•	VMware Fusion 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3

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 can 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.

Note With many Linux guest operating systems, various problems have been observed when the BusLogic virtual SCSI adapter is used with VMware virtual machines. VMware recommends that you use the LSI Logic virtual SCSI adapter with this guest operating system.

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 must install Red Hat Linux 9.0 using the text mode installer, which you can 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.

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 can choose Generic Wheel Mouse (PS/2).

6	In the Installation Type screen, choose either Server or Workstation for the installation type.

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

You might 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.

9	If your computer is connected to a LAN that provides DHCP support, in the Network Configuration screen, you can select the option Use bootp/dhcp. If you prefer, you can also set the networking parameters manually.

10	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 kb.vmware.com/kb/340.

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

In many Linux distributions, if IPv6 is enabled, VMware Tools cannot be configured with vmware-config-tools.pl after installation. In this case, VMware Tools is unable to set the network device correctly for the virtual machine, and displays a message similar to

Unloading pcnet32 module

unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free

This message repeats continuously until you reboot the virtual machine. To prevent this problem in virtual machines running Linux, disable IPv6 before installing VMware Tools.

To disable IPv6 in a virtual machine running Linux

1	If the file /etc/sysconfig/network contains the line NETWORKING_IPV6=yes, change the line to NETWORKING_IPV6=no.

2	In the file /etc/modules.conf, add the following lines: alias ipv6 off alias net-pf-10 off

After you disable IPv6, you should be able to install and configure VMware Tools successfully.

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.

Known Issues

Forcing the Installer to Read the Second Installation CD

VMware Workstation, VMware ACE or VMware GSX Server: The Red Hat installer might 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, and 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 might notice that the guest performs poorly or slowly, or you might 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.

To modify 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 might 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.

To modify 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 recommends you do not migrate a Linux virtual machine between hosts when one host is running on an AMD processor and the other is running on an Intel processor.

During installation, many distributions of Linux choose a kernel that is optimized for the specific processor on which it is being installed, and some distributions install a generic kernel by default, but provide architecture-specific kernels that the user can choose to install. The kernel might contain instructions that are available only on that processor. These instructions can have adverse effects when run on a host with the wrong type of processor.

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

This problem is not specific to virtual machines and also occurs on physical computers. For example, if you move a hard drive with a Linux installation from an AMD machine to an Intel machine, you are also likely to 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 might fail with an error message indicating that 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.

Disable PAE in ESX Server Virtual Machines

ESX Server 2.5.x: Although ESX Server 2.5.x virtual machines are compatible with Physical Address Extension (PAE), they are not optimized for it. As a result, guest operating systems with PAE enabled might experience poor performance. For best performance, VMware recommends that you disable PAE in guest operating systems. For more information and instructions on disabling PAE, see the knowledge base article at kb.vmware.com/kb/2020.

 

Link: http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=guestnotes&file=guestos_redhat90.html

 

Install VMware Tools Package in Virtual Machine
   -you must be in text mode in Red Hat

     -login as root (type \'su\', then give root password)

     -click in VMWare menu->\'file\'->\'install VMWare tools\'
      and wait a while until the installation has finished

     -type:

       umount /mnt

     -type:

       mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

     -type:

       cd /tmp

     -type:

       tar zxf /mnt/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz

     -type:

       cd vmware-tools-distrib

     -type:

       ./vmware-install.pl

     -answer the questions:

       Installing the content of the package:

       -In which directory do you want to install the binary files?

         [/usr/bin], press <ENTER> to accept this default

       -In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?

         [/usr/bin], press <ENTER> to accept this default

       -In which directory do you want to install the library files?

         [/usr/lib/vmware-tools], press <ENTER> to accept this default

       -The path \"/usr/lib/vmware-tools\" does not exist currently.
        This program is going to create it, including parent
        directories. Is this what you want?

        [yes], press <ENTER> to accept this default

       -In which directory do you want to install the documentation
        files?

         [/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools], press <ENTER> to accept this
         default

       -The path \"/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools\" does not exist
        currently.
        This program is going to create it, including parent
        directories. Is this what you want?

       -What is the directory that contains the init directories?
        (rc0.d/ to rc6.d)?

        [/etc/rc.d], press <ENTER> to accept this default

        -What is the directory that contains the init scripts?

        [/etc/rc.d/init.d], press <ENTER> to accept this default

        You should then see something like:

         Unmounting the Tools ISO image mnt.
         The installation of VMWare Tools 4.0.0 build-4460
         for Linux completed successfully.
         You can decide to remove this software from your
         system at any time by invoking the following command:

          \"/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl\"

         Before running VMWare Tools for the first time,
         you need to configure it by invoking the following
         command:

          \"/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl\"

         Do you want this program to invoke the command for you
         now?

          [yes], press <ENTER> to accept this default

         After the configuration, you will see:

         You can now run VMWare Tools by invoking the following
         command:

          \"/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox\"

         during an XFree86 session.

After the installation of VMWare Tools, by the above steps,
    restart your Linux in VMWare

If everything goes allright, you should now see the
    graphical login screen of Red Hat

 

Note: possibly reduce the amount of memory assigned to this
    operating system via VMWare menu: \'Edit\'->Memory->say 80
    megabyte, especially on Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    with 256 megabyte totally, or else your computer might
    become very slow when VMWare runs (you will have to power
    down you Linux in VMWare, before being able to change this
    memory amount, otherwise it is grayed out).

Note: I received consistently a \'FAIL\' on CD5, when I tested it
    with the Red Hat checksum program during installation in Red Hat).
    I downloadeded this CD5 from ftp.redhat.com (downloaded it twice,
    tested if these 2 images where equal, by running in MSDOS

      fc <first filename> <second filename>

    and they were found completely equal,
    and also burned it (in order to eliminate possible CD errors)
    on 3 different brandnew CD-RWs
    using Roxio\'s Basic CD Creator (I did not test another burner
    software program like Nero).
    I decided finally to leave it, as you only will use CD1 and CD2
    when installing.