16.2. Network Installation of Fedora Using Network Boot Media

Problem

You created your Fedora boot CD or USB stick, and now you're ready to start your installation. What next?

Solution

Before you boot the installer, have a second Internet-connected computer handy. Or, first visit the Fedora mirrors page (http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html), and write down some mirrors that are close to you. You'll need the complete file-path to the installation directory, for example:

	ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os

Next, pop in your boot media, and boot up the system. Your first choice is to start the installer using either graphical mode or text mode. The main difference is you won't have a mouse in text mode. The graphical installer requires a minimum of 192 MB of RAM.

Go through the initial screens; there is nothing dramatic here, just the usual keyboard, language, and networking setup. The fun begins when you get to the "Installation Method" screen. Select either FTP or HTTP. Figure 16-1 shows the FTP screen.

Selecting your FTP installation mirror

Figure 16-1. Selecting your FTP installation mirror

Entering the correct site name and Fedora directory is the same for FTP and HTTP. On the site name line, enter the top-level domain name, such as ftp://mirrors.kernel.org. On the Fedora Core directory line, enter the filepath, such as /fedora/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os, then hit OK. If you did it right, the next screen will say "Retrieving images/minstg2.img…" This is a 34 MB image, which you can see for yourself by poking around on the download mirror you selected.

Now, it's just like any other Fedora installation—you'll partition your drive, select packages, and do all the usual installation chores.

Discussion

You should run yum update immediately after installation to bring your system up to date.

This is a nice method for installing Fedora on a single PC, and for downloading and testing a new release. It's not suitable for mass customized rollouts, but we'll get to that in the next few recipes.

It doesn't matter if you select FTP or HTTP transfer; either one works fine. If you don't get your filepaths correct, Fedora's Anaconda installer will give you as many do-overs as you need until you get it right.

The installer image must fit in RAM, so only systems with more than 192 MB of RAM can use the graphical installer. Systems with less RAM will fall back to using the text-based installer automatically.

Fedora has a mediacheck feature for checking the integrity of installation CDs. Sometimes, it reports good CDs as being defective. To make it work correctly, boot the installer with the linux ide=nodma option.

If the installation fails partway through, try booting with linux acpi=off.

See Also