Apart of the regular local Redhat’s installation, the Redhat system allows admin to modify boot options to temporarily setup network interface and instruct the installation program Anaconda to initiate installation via VNC. In this article we will modify default Redhat’s boot options to initiate remote installation using VNC.
First insert installation image and boot into a Redhat’s boot options screen as show below:
On this screen we need to modify boot options to instruct the installation program Anaconda to provide us with VNC interface after the end of the boot sequence. Depending whether you use DHCP on your network you can either set static address or do not include any network options for dynamic IP address assignment. In the above screen we have included the following options after pressing “TAB” on the main ( first ) boot option:
ip=10.1.1.56 - optional netmask=255.0.0.0 - optional vnc - required
As it was already mentioned before, both ip and netmask options can be omitted, which means DHCP will assign IP address for us. If you are concerned about security you can also specify VNC password:
vncpassword=pass
If no password option is provided, black password will be used to connect. Once you modify Redhat’s boot options hit ENTER. This will start boot process which at the end will provide you with instructions on how to continue installation using VNC as illustrated below:
At this point we can connect to a remote VNC server using our local client. Depending on your system you my already have VNC client installed. If this is not the case you can install it by:
Redhat/Fedora # yum install tigervnc Debian/Ubuntu # apt-get install xvnc4viewer
Connecting to VNC Redhat server installation:
$ vncviewer 10.1.1.56:1
