RHEL 6 install highlights

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:

•  RHEL 6.8 installer (anaconda) does a couple of stupid things that you need to aware of:
  • It does not enable network interface by default. You need to do it explicitly via GUI or command line, So by default after installation you do not have network connectivity.
  • It installs Network manager, even if installation is for the server.  It also install many useless packages such as cups (rarely used for servers), unless you explicidly refuse them during the initial installation (or use kickstart file)

• Use basic server as template for installation and select packages manually. This way you can avoid a lot of junk that RHEL install is you use other templates. The key here is not to forget to specify GNOMe as by default it is not included see below Packages selection for basic server . The main attention should be on remocing unllessesry for you packages. As for additional consider the follosing.
  • base
    • +dos2unix
    • +logwatch
  • console
    • +ftp
    • +lftp
    • +mutt
  • Network_tools
    • +nmap
  • Server
    • +ftp daemon
    • sysadmin tools
      • +mc
      • +screen
         
• Yum in 6.8 is broken and sometimes hangs after installation of a package. Kill it and you can proceed.
   
• If you install additional packages, especially from EPEL, RPM database can became confused and you can't patch the server. Delete offending packages using forced option in rpm update the system and then reinstall the packages (check some of them might well be installed during update). 
•  Unless you want to have /usr as read-only partition, it is not needed (nor makes much sense) to create separate partitions for /usr and /opt. They can be merged with root partition. Total size should be around 8G. 

  That makes usage of disk space more efficient.   That means that you need just four partitions and they all can be primary

  1. /boot (actually optional but convenient to have). should be ext2.
  2. swap
  3. root
  4. /home

• Use noatime mounting option for root partition and NFS
• You need to enable  AT daemon. It is not enabled by default
• You need to to select vsftpd explicitly if you need it. Or install it later. It is not installed by default
• To connect remotly you need to enable the Ethernet interface, specify the default router and shut down the firewall. You can  restart it later.

See also RHEL 6.7 Installation Checklist

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Last modified: December, 12, 2020