Unable to Boot from RHEL AS Disk1 !!!
 

I downloaded the iso images of enterprise linux from redhat site as per instructions from redhat's account setup email and burnt all images to CD.

I have a dell 8400 system with xp on one partition and unpartioned space for linux.

I did not create a separate boot cd for redhat but put the rhel-3-i386-as-disc1 CD in the cdrom drive to boot it up.

The CD is not recognised as a bootable CD so I cannot install redhat.

Do I have to create a separate boot CD for booting?

Also I do not have an existing redhat or unix system but only have windows xp so cannot create a boot cd using unix if required.

How can I create a boot cd in windows and use it if a boot cd is required.

I don't have a floppy drive in my pc so cannot create a diskette also.

Please help. I am stuck on the first point and I need to get this done imemdiately.

Thanks for the prompt response.

Installation CD 1 should be bootable. Did you verify that the MD5sums before burning the CD's ? Can you test it in a different machine ? Does the autorun work under XP ?

I do not have a unix machine so cannot verify the MD5sums since the test can be performed on a unix machine only. Autorun works under XP.

I was reading the installation docuemnt for RHEL and it talks about creating a boot CD or disk after copying the files from a particular dir from Disk 1. The Disk 1 i got from RHEL is an ISO image so I cannot get to the directory from where to copy and burn the bootable CD.

Is there anything specific to dell 8400 hard disk which could be causing this?

I have a Serial ATA hard disk.

Thanks

Firstly, please don't post multiple threads with the same question.

Next, Which update of AS 3 did you download and what is the size of the CD ? Currently there is:
RHEL AS 3 - RELEASE, UPDATE1, UPDATE2 and UPDATE3. The sizes of CD 1 are as follows for all of these:

RELEASE - 462920
UPDATE1 - No idea, sorry
UPDATE2 - 143428
UPDATE3 - 152584

Can you confirm that your cd matches one of those sizes ? Installation CD 1 is bootable for all of those revisions.

Also, as per my previous question, did you try and boot this CD in a different machine to the Dell ? The hard disk should not have anything to do with booting from a CD, but it would be a good idea to ensure that the boot order in the BIOS is configured to boot from CD first. You should also verify that you can still boot from an XP CD.

Before you get too far into this, you should also check that the Dell model in question is supported by Red Hat. You mention that it has a SATA disk, and I'm not sure what the support for SATA is like in the 2.4 kernel that Red Hat ship. 2.6 is not available on AS 3.

Lastly, please check the MD5sums of the images, using the checker at http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/using_md5sums.html


Regards,

Wayne

The rhel-3-i386-as-disc1.iso CD I have is RELEASE CD not Update 1/2/3. The size of the CD is 140MB i.e. 146,800,640 bytes to be exact. I'm not sure how you have 462920.

I tried to boot the same CD on another PC and it did not.

Is the iso image bootable or do I need to extract it in some way ro form and then use it?

I can try to get the size of the Update 3 CD also whch I have later in the day.

When I go to the downloads site for redhat here's the downloadable CD's for RELEASE 3(Not Update)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 AS (i386)
ISO Size MD5 Checksum
Binary Disc 1 140M 96201535b20c743428d12eddf05f04b1
Binary Disc 2 622M 5771b4bf6bcd07c6865851a3d024da22
Binary Disc 3 625M 1f568481fcdb5141cbb36ba6c558f5f8
Binary Disc 4 101M de2f75e0264daef19cb72fc21b3d2b00
Source Disc 1 516M 7ad480d316050cdb0fec129c657e70ea
Source Disc 2 516M 4cf8549dfd10a21109c961d8768bc08e
Source Disc 3 516M c5c8ab3c83626abece5b57fe1bb20636
US and APAC Documentation CD 642M 1ef2d123fee2195a8255c2efe6c2dd8e
US and EMEA Documentation CD 507M 498aef583562ced64d3ceb72969e1946

So where is the size 462920 for CD1?

Thanks

Also I think we need to install the RELEASE cd's first and then the UPDATE 3 which includes UPDATE 1 & 2 also. Right?

The size issue is odd. I'm going by the size of the ISO images that I cut from the CDs to our installation server. Have you been able to check the md5sums of your disc yet ?

As for upgrading from 1 to 3, you have a couple of choices...

1. Install Update 3 - This is the recommended solution as this saves you having to connect a potentially vulnerable machine to the internet to get updates and is a lot easier than installing the release version then freshening (rpm -f) all installed RPMs

2. Install RELEASE, then upgrade to Update 3 - I've never done this

3. Install RELEASE then use up2date or rhn_check to update all packages from the red hat network. This has the downside of attaching a vulnerable server to the Internet for a period of time long enough to download all errata.

If you go for Update 3, I think you'll need all 4 cds, but I may be wrong on this

I have not been able to check the sum sinec I do not have a unix machine to execute checksum. I got this http://www.md5summer.org utility from the web which checks the same thing on windows and since I do not have a floppy drive(A) of my PC I cannot use it as it only takes a floppy drive to write the details.

I also burnt the update 3 CD's so based on what you are saying I can just go with update 3 instead of doing the release and then update 3 if ofcourse I can ever get to that.

This is a very frustrating start.

I am not sure what I can do. Maybe I need to get the actual CD's from redhat instead of burning them myself and try it out. I just did not want to pay 40$ for CD's which I could burn easily but now it seems thats not the case.

Is there any other way to check the sum like any other utility in windows etc?

Thanks

Also the ISO image should by itself be bootable right? I should not have to extract it or do anything else with it to get it to boot. Correct?

Thanks

The first CD should be bootable, yes. Once you burn the ISO to the CD, you should then be able to read it in your XP drive. There should be a directory named /images. I _think_ there should also be a file called isolinux somewhere there, but I'm not at work right now, so I can't check.

What application are you using to burn the CDs out of curiosity ?

On a related note, $40 for the CDs isn't that harsh - we're paying around 1k per server... but that does give us 9x5 support as well ;)

I used Sonic Record now that comes with Dell systems to burn CD's. even before I burn the CD's the download prompt on redhta is only for an *.iso file and not something like a zip or gzip or any other file. All I have on every CD I have burnt is 1 file called *.iso. Nothing else in any CD. When you download any file from redhat website for RHEL AS they all have only one file called *.iso with * being the file name.

I guess I'm mising something here as everywhere I read that there should be directories in the CD's and I canot find any.

Could you please help and test it when you get to work. Thanks a lot.

Ahhh - everything is clear now. When you burn an ISO image to disc, you should end up with the contents of the ISO, not just the file on a CD. An ISO image is a filesystem, containing stuff. Wikipedia can probably explain this better than me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image

http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html has a section on burning ISOs with Windows, and they appear to recommend Nero. I don't really use Windows, but using Toast on my mac, I select Image File, then drage the iso there. This is then correctly burned.

I would suggest that you google for help on Sonic record and ISO images or some such, but I have no experience with this application.

hope you get somewhere now :)