Chapter 3. Before You Begin the Installation Process
Installation Overview
Installing Red Hat Linux on an Alpha system is slightly more complex than installing Red Hat Linux on an x86 machine because a variety of Alpha machine architectures exist. In general, the sequence of steps to a successful installation are the following:
Use SRM commands to identify system information that you will need to boot the installation program and Red Hat Linux.
If you can not boot from the CD-ROM, make diskettes from the boot image and RAM disk image files provided with Red Hat Linux.
Using the SRM console and the aboot bootloader, load and run the kernel, and boot into the Red Hat Linux installation program.
MILO Is Not Supported As a resource for the Linux and Alpha communities, information that might be useful for MILO users is provided in Appendix B. Before you use MILO to boot your Alpha, however, you should realize that MILO is not supported by Red Hat, Inc.
Disk Space Requirements
Before you begin the installation, be aware that you will need certain amounts of free disk space to install Red Hat Linux on an Alpha.
At minimum, you will need 64 MB of RAM and 700 MB of free hard disk space to install Red Hat Linux.
You should have 128 MB of RAM and 4.5 GB of free hard disk space on your machine for a full installation of Red Hat Linux.
You may need a 3.5-inch diskette drive — referred to by Red Hat Linux as /dev/fd0 (known as the A: drive in certain circles). Note that many modern Alphas can boot the installation program from the CD-ROM drive.