Linux Install Help Needed

Posted by: Tim

Linux Install Help Needed - 05/08/2005 16:37

This is a great one. Due to reasons beyond my control (way, way beyond, I've bitched about it every chance I get), we have to use Redhat 8 for one of our applications here. Well, it isn't really an application, it is a lot more than that. The problem is, it only works with Redhat 8. That in itself isn't to awfully bad, yes it is old and I have a problem getting it to work on a lot of new hardware, but have always managed.

Until now. Our new ZPros have an Adaptec SCSI controller that RH8 doesn't have drivers out of the box. I was hoping to be able to install the driver during the initial install process (before partitioning the drive). It did have that choice, but only to install from a floppy. Since the machine didn't include a floppy, I happily ripped one out of another machine and went to install it.

Here's the next good part... there is no FD connector on the mainboard that I could find. The person who has the manuals that came with the machines is out until the middle of next week, and I haven't been able to find them on the support site yet.

My question (in a rather long-winded way) is: Is there any way to slipstream an install DVD for Redhat 8? I did that for XP to get my SATA drives detected as regular drives instead of a RAID, and it worked wonderfully. Is there any way to do something similar for RH8? Besides getting the drives on the install disk, it would have the added benefit of getting the four boot CDs onto a single DVD, which would be wonderful.

Thanks for any info/ideas.
- Tim
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Linux Install Help Needed - 05/08/2005 17:26

Not sure if this is your best solution, but WinISO will take a floppy disk and make a bootable .ISO image out of it. You could then burn that to a DVD.

Read this for my little adventure with RedHat and RAID, particularly the part about having to rebuild the initrd image after installing the driver before it will boot to the RAID array.