[CentOS] "installation method" (CentOS 5.2)

Mon Jul 7 15:01:17 UTC 2008
nate <centos at linuxpowered.net>

Herta Van den Eynde wrote:
 up with Red Hat?
>
> I don't understand how DRAC works.  I download the iso image to the
> harddrive of my PC, connect to the DRAC using a webbrowser (over
> https), and select to serve that iso image as a virtual CD-ROM.
> I once tried to serve an iso image to a system that was already
> installed, hoping to be able to use it on the system, but I never
> found out to what device file it got connected.

At least in HP and Supermicro Virtual CDROMs the virtual CDROM is
presented as a USB device. I haven't tried installing CentOS or
RHEL using this method but have installed VMWare ESX just fine.

The system can boot off the virtual CDROM because the bios does
the right redirection stuff to help it boot. Once a 32 or 64-bit
system fires up there's no access to that low level stuff anymore
and you need a real driver. It sounds like the USB chipset in the
system is not supported by the kernel.

If you can, boot using a serial console so you can capture the
output of the bootup, and note what USB drivers are loaded, and
what additional drivers are loaded once anaconda(installer)
fires up.

But it sounds like your best off doing a network installation,
which is pretty easy to setup, there's tons of docs out there.

nate