7.3. Additional Ways to Prepare the Installation Media

7.3.1. Preparing USB Installation Media Using dd

The dd utility can also be used to write a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image to a USB storage device. The dd utility is available from the coreutils package, and versions of the dd utility are available on a wide variety of Linux and Unix operating systems. Windows users can obtain the dd utility by installing Red Hat Cygwin, a free Linux-like environment for Windows.
The basic syntax for the dd utility is as follows:
# dd if=[image] of=[device]
The [device] parameter is the path to the USB storage device on which the disk image will be written. The [image] parameter is the path and file name of the disk image to write to the USB storage device. By default, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image is located at /usr/share/rhev-hypervisor/rhev-hypervisor.iso on the machine on which the rhev-hypervisor7 package is installed. The dd command does not make assumptions as to the format of the device because it performs a low-level copy of the raw data in the selected image.

7.3.2. Preparing USB Installation Media Using dd on Linux Systems

You can use the dd utility to write a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image to a USB storage device.

Procedure 7.4. Preparing USB Installation Media using dd on Linux Systems

  1. Run the following command to ensure you have the latest version of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image:
    • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6:
      # yum update rhev-hypervisor6
    • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7:
      # yum update rhev-hypervisor7
  2. Use the dd utility to write the disk image to a USB storage device.

    Example 7.10. Use of dd

    This example uses a USB storage device named /dev/sdc.
    # dd if=/usr/share/rhev-hypervisor/rhev-hypervisor.iso of=/dev/sdc
    243712+0 records in
    243712+0 records out
    124780544 bytes (125 MB) copied, 56.3009 s, 2.2 MB/s
    

    Warning

    The dd utility will overwrite all data on the device specified by the of parameter. Ensure you have specified the correct device and that the device contains no valuable data before using the dd utility.

7.3.3. Preparing USB Installation Media Using dd on Windows Systems

You can use the dd utility to write a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image to a USB storage device. To use this utility in Windows, you must download and install Red Hat Cygwin.

Procedure 7.5. Preparing USB Installation Media using dd on Windows Systems

  1. Open http://www.redhat.com/services/custom/cygwin/ in a web browser and click 32-bit Cygwin to download the 32-bit version of Red Hat Cygwin, or 64-bit Cygwin to download the 64-bit version of Red Hat Cygwin.
  2. Run the downloaded executable as a user with administrator privileges to open the Red Hat Cygwin installation program.
  3. Follow the prompts to install Red Hat Cygwin. The Coreutils package in the Base package group provides the dd utility. This package is automatically selected for installation.
  4. Copy the rhev-hypervisor.iso file downloaded from the Content Delivery Network to C:\rhev-hypervisor.iso.
  5. Run the Red Hat Cygwin application from the desktop as a user with administrative privileges.

    Important

    On the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, you must right-click the Red Hat Cygwin icon and select the Run as Administrator option to ensure the application runs with the correct permissions.
  6. In the terminal, run the following command to view the drives and partitions currently visible to the system:
    $ cat /proc/partitions

    Example 7.11. View of Disk Partitions Attached to System

    Administrator@test /
    $ cat /proc/partitions
    major minor  #blocks  name
        8     0  15728640 sda
        8     1    102400 sda1
        8     2  15624192 sda2
  7. Attach the USB storage device to which the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image will be written to the system. Run the cat /proc/partitions command again and compare the output to that of the previous output. A new entry will appear that designates the USB storage device.

    Example 7.12. View of Disk Partitions Attached to System

    Administrator@test /
    $ cat /proc/partitions
    major minor  #blocks  name
        8     0  15728640 sda
        8     1    102400 sda1
        8     2  15624192 sda2
        8    16    524288 sdb
    
  8. Use the dd utility to write the rhev-hypervisor.iso file to the USB storage device. The following example uses a USB storage device named /dev/sdb. Replace sdb with the correct device name for the USB storage device to be used.

    Example 7.13. Use of dd Utility Under Red Hat Cygwin

    Administrator@test /
    $ dd if=/cygdrive/c/rhev-hypervisor.iso of=/dev/sdb& pid=$!
    

    Warning

    The dd utility will overwrite all data on the device specified by the of parameter. Ensure you have specified the correct device and that the device contains no valuable data before using the dd utility.

    Note

    Writing disk images to USB storage devices with the version of the dd utility included with Red Hat Cygwin can take significantly longer than the equivalent on other platforms. You can run the following command to view the progress of the operation:
    $ kill -USR1 $pid

7.3.4. Preparing Optical Hypervisor Installation Media

You can write a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image to a CD-ROM or DVD with the wodim utility. The wodim utility is provided by the wodim package.

Procedure 7.6. Preparing Optical Hypervisor Installation Media

  1. Install the wodim package and dependencies:
    # yum install wodim
    
  2. Insert a blank CD-ROM or DVD into your CD or DVD writer.
  3. Write the disk image to the disc:
    wodim dev=[device] [image]

    Note

    To find out the name of your writer device, run the following command:
    # less /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info

    Example 7.14. Use of the wodim Utility

    This example uses the first CD-RW (/dev/sr0) device available and an example unified installer disk image location.
    # wodim dev=/dev/sr0 /usr/share/rhev-hypervisor/rhev-hypervisor.iso
    

Important

The Hypervisor uses a program (isomd5sum) to verify the integrity of the installation media every time the Hypervisor is booted. If media errors are reported in the boot sequence you have a bad CD-ROM. Follow the procedure above to create a new CD-ROM or DVD.
You have written a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor disk image to a CD-ROM or DVD.