Part II. IBM Power Systems — Installation and Booting

This part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide includes information about installation and basic post-installation troubleshooting for IBM Power Systems servers. IBM Power Systems servers include IBM PowerLinux servers and POWER7 and POWER6 Power Systems servers running Linux.
For advanced installation options, refer to Part IV, “Advanced Installation Options”.

Important

Previous releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux supported 32-bit and 64-bit Power Systems servers (ppc and ppc64 respectively). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports only 64-bit Power Systems servers (ppc64).

Table of Contents

11. Planning for Installation on Power Systems Servers
11.1. Upgrade or Install?
11.2. Hardware Requirements
11.3. Installation Tools
11.4. Preparation for IBM Power Systems servers
11.5. RAID and Other Disk Devices
11.5.1. Hardware RAID
11.5.2. Software RAID
11.5.3. FireWire and USB Disks
11.6. Do You Have Enough Disk Space?
11.7. Choose a Boot Method
12. Preparing for Installation
12.1. Preparing for a Network Installation
12.1.1. Preparing for FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS Installation
12.1.2. Preparing for an NFS Installation
12.2. Preparing for a Hard Drive Installation
13. Updating Drivers During Installation on IBM Power Systems Servers
13.1. Limitations of Driver Updates During Installation
13.2. Preparing for a Driver Update During Installation
13.2.1. Preparing to Use a Driver Update Image File
13.2.2. Preparing a Driver Disc
13.2.3. Preparing an Initial RAM Disk Update
13.3. Performing a Driver Update During Installation
13.3.1. Let the Installer Find a Driver Update Disk Automatically
13.3.2. Let the Installer Prompt You for a Driver Update
13.3.3. Use a Boot Option to Specify a Driver Update Disk
13.3.4. Select an Installation Server Target That Includes a Driver Update
13.4. Specifying the Location of a Driver Update Image File or a Driver Update Disk
14. Booting the Installer
14.1. The Boot Menu
14.2. Installing from a Different Source
14.3. Booting from the Network Using a yaboot Installation Server
15. Configuring Language and Installation Source
15.1. The Text Mode Installation Program User Interface
15.1.1. Using the Keyboard to Navigate
15.2. Language Selection
15.3. Installation Method
15.3.1. Beginning Installation
15.3.2. Installing from a Hard Drive
15.3.3. Performing a Network Installation
15.3.4. Installing via NFS
15.3.5. Installing via FTP, HTTP, or HTTPS
15.4. Verifying Media
16. Installing Using Anaconda
16.1. The Text Mode Installation Program User Interface
16.2. The Graphical Installation Program User Interface
16.3. A Note About Linux Virtual Consoles
16.4. Using the HMC vterm
16.5. Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
16.6. Language Selection
16.7. Keyboard Configuration
16.8. Storage Devices
16.8.1. The Storage Devices Selection Screen
16.9. Setting the Hostname
16.9.1. Editing Network Connections
16.10. Time Zone Configuration
16.11. Set the Root Password
16.12. Assign Storage Devices
16.13. Initializing the Hard Disk
16.14. Upgrading an Existing System
16.14.1. The Upgrade Dialog
16.14.2. Upgrading Using the Installer
16.15. Disk Partitioning Setup
16.16. Choosing a Disk Encryption Passphrase
16.17. Creating a Custom Layout or Modifying the Default Layout
16.17.1. Create Storage
16.17.2. Adding Partitions
16.17.3. Create Software RAID
16.17.4. Create LVM Logical Volume
16.17.5. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
16.18. Write Changes to Disk
16.19. Package Group Selection
16.19.1. Installing from Additional Repositories
16.19.2. Customizing the Software Selection
16.20. Installing Packages
16.21. Installation Complete
17. Troubleshooting Installation on an IBM Power Systems server
17.1. You Are Unable to Boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux
17.1.1. Is Your System Displaying Signal 11 Errors?
17.2. Trouble Beginning the Installation
17.2.1. Problems with Booting into the Graphical Installation
17.3. Trouble During the Installation
17.3.1. The "No devices found to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux" Error Message
17.3.2. Saving Traceback Messages
17.3.3. Trouble with Partition Tables
17.3.4. Other Partitioning Problems for IBM Power Systems Users
17.4. Problems After Installation
17.4.1. Unable to IPL from *NWSSTG
17.4.2. Booting into a Graphical Environment
17.4.3. Problems with the X Window System (GUI)
17.4.4. Problems with the X Server Crashing and Non-Root Users
17.4.5. Problems When You Try to Log In
17.4.6. Your Printer Does Not Work
17.4.7. Apache HTTP Server or Sendmail Stops Responding During Startup