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RHEL 6 install highlights

News

RHEL 6.8 Installation Checklist

Recommended Links

Installation of Red Hat from a USB drive

 Creation of bootable USB with ISO for RHEL7

Modifying ISO image to include kickstart file
Disabling useless daemons in RHEL/Centos/Oracle 6 servers Redhat Network Configuration Disabling RHEL 6 Network Manager Network Manager overwrites resolv.conf Modifying ISO image Linux Disk Partitioning
Log rotation in RHEL/Centos/Oracle linux NTP configuration Changing timezone in RHEL6 from the command line Move config files from one server to another Linux Swap filesystem Red Hat Startup Scripts
RHEL subscription management RHEL6 registration on proxy protected network RHEL5 registration on proxy protected network Installing X11 and Gnome Desktop in RHEL RHEL handling of DST change Bonding Ethernet Interfaces in Red Hat Linux
RHEL networking VNC-based Installation in Anaconda Installing X11 and Gnome Desktop in RHEL Managing Disks by UUID Linux Multipath Burning CD and DVD on Linux
Partition labels Linux Disk Management udev Oracle Linux Installation Linux Software RAID Installing Mellanox InfiniBand Driver on RHEL 6.5
Loopback filesystem Booting from DVD problemMounting Linux filesystems Restoration of RHEL after harddrive crash Admin Horror Stories Humor Etc

Additional information can be found at RHEL 6 Installation Checklist

Important: On 64-bit systems, boot configurations of UEFI and BIOS differ significantly from each other. Therefore, the installed system must boot using the same firmware that was used during installation. You cannot install the operating system on a system that uses BIOS and then boot this installation on a system that uses UEFI. Generally if you can use old BIOS it is simpler and is recommended option.

After installation network card is not enabled on boot.

You need to enable eth0 interface (or whatever you have) to be available on boot. Otherwise networking does not work. One way to do that is to change onboot=yes to ensure that the card is available after boot

Network Manager overwrites resolv.conf See Disabling RHEL 6 Network Manager

If you have low quality/old version KVM in DRAC or ILO consider VNC-based Installation in Anaconda

RHEL 6.8 and its clones now contain Relax and Recover. It makes sense to put SanDisk 128GB FIT USB flash drive in USB slot and create rescue image immediately.  This package is supported by Red Hat and Red Had now provides instruction of how to restore the system using it in one of its manuals. See  Relax-and-Recover

RHEL 6.7 anaconda is buggy and does not always configure X11 correctly. In this case you can go back to RHEL6.5 which usually works OK.  Now you can use RHEL 6.8 instead.

Please be aware that the following issue exists with RHEL 6.7 fresh install

Boot hangs after starting 'rhsmcertd' service

Starting crond: [ ok ]
Starting atd: [ ok ]
Starting Red Hat Network Daemon: [ ok ]
Starting rhsmcertd: [ ok ]

Try interactive boot to find what service hangs

  1. Select/highlight the kernel you wish to boot using the up/down arrow keys.
  2. Press the e key to edit the entry.
  3. Select/highlight the line starting with the word kernel.
  4. Press the e key to edit the line.
  5. Add 'confirm' word to the end of line.
  6. Press ENTER to accept the changes.
  7. Press the b key to boot the kernel with the modified command line.

There are a few reasons why boot might hang just after the rhsmcertd service.

Commonly it is due to the X server failing.

It can also be due to other services or rc.local hanging.

Check the diagnostics section of this article, and if Xorg is failing with could not open default font 'fixed', then:

Restore the X environment by updating the 'libXfont' package as described in X server fails to start with error - Fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'

Root Cause

X server is updated to latest release without supporting libXfont package.

Newer versions of the X server require a font that is classified as type 'fixed' in order to function.

Diagnostic Steps

When booting the system with interactive mode and then logging in via ssh, the following errors are seen in /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

Errors are seen in /var/log/messages, after logging in via ssh:

Raw

<From above image last few lines reads>
Jun 11 08:39:00 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 1.013099 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:00 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 0.436943 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:00 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 0.431263 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:01 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 0.431709 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:01 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 0.432236 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:02 <hostname> gdm-binary[2113]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: 0.429812 lasted seconds
Jun 11 08:39:02 <hostname> WARNING: GdmLocalDisplayFactory: maximum number of X display failures reached: check X server log for errors.

Errors are seen in /var/log/Xorg.0.log indicating the "Fatal Server Error":

Raw

Fatal server error:
[ 54.894] could not open default font 'fixed'
[ 54.894] (EE)
Please consult the Red Hat, Inc. support
at https://www.redhat.com/apps/support/
for help.
[ 54.894] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[ 54.894] (EE)
[ 54.894] (II) NOUVEAU(0): NVLeaveVT is called.

Commands for investigation of boot problems

spci -nvvv &> lspci.out
dmidecode &> dmidecode.out
lspci -nvvv &> lspci.out
rpm -qa &> rpmqa.out

RHEL 6.8 is the last version of RHEL 6 as of August 2016.  The next version (RHEL 7) contains systemd and as such is not very attractive. It makes sense to delay its deployment as long as possible. 

To see how dust settles ;-).

Tips:

See also RHEL 6.7 Installation Checklist



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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

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The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: December, 12, 2020