Install questions

[Rick Stevens]

On 10/07/2010 03:59 PM, Ron Watkins wrote:
> We have several HP DL580 G5 boxes and want to configure dual-boot between RHEL and Solaris X64.
> I currently have Solaris X64 installed, and it has a GRUB boot menu.
> How can I install RHEL to use the "existing" GRUB boot loader rather than installinng it's own boot loader
> over top of the one already there?

Assuming grub is installed in the MBR of the boot drive, then the
installer should see it.  The trick is that the /boot directory must be
a filesystem RHEL understands natively (a filesystem type which is
either built into the installer's kernel or in the installer's initrd
RAMdisk image).

If /boot is a Solaris partition/filesystem, I don't think RHEL has that
built into the installer, hence it won't be able to decipher the /boot
partition and can't verify that the various second- and third-stage
loaders are there, nor can it find the /boot/grub/grub.conf file.

What you'll have to do is have RHEL install its version of grub into
the first RHEL partition on the drive.  Then bring up your Solaris
system and chainload to the grub on the RHEL partition--much as you'd do
if you were chainloading Windows.

> Also, my firs attempt at installing came up with an odd screen resolution for the console port. The resolution
> appears to be set during boot-up and I can't find where to change that resolution.
> The issue is that the console is being viewed through an ILO (lights-out) web-page with a resolution of
> 1024x768. However, the boot screen comes up as somthing like 1440x900 or somthing close to that. This makes it
> difficult to see the screen contents while booting. Thanks for any advice.

Since this is the beta, it's going to be based on Fedora.  On Fedora,
the installer probes the video hardware (both the card and the monitor)
and tries to use the largest display screen it can.  It doesn't know
about your ILO thingie--just the display hardware on your machine.

You can force the display resolution by entering this at the "boot:"
prompt during installation:

	linux resolution=1024x768

Set the resolution to whatever you want.
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