The system booted in the rescue mode and showed all boot up messages as expected on the connected terminal emulator but stopped at the end with the message of the sort: kernel panic! no device to boot from. I tried first to boot in rescue mode with the command: linux rescue console=ttyS0 These commands are necessary to boot the system without booting again to the RedHat installation wizard. You will find the following section at the end: I have prepared before the SYSLINUX.CFG file on the boot floppy also for this step. You leave the installation as it is because you have access to your linux box now over ethernet based telnet and/or you want still to have a console connection over the serial port to your installed system. Now after successful installation there are two choices. So I skip to the post installation setup. This will be the normal installation procedure. Now you may follow the installation guidance from the RedHat installation wizard. The system will now boot to the RedHat installation wizard and you will see all boot message on your terminal emulator window if you have set the communications parameters to: Terminal Type: VT100 Baud Rate: 9600, Data Bits: 8 Parity Bit: none, Stop Bit: 1 but you can also type in blindly with some attached keyboard the command install. I modified also the timeout for the autostart to 15 sec. Now you can boot the system with this modified boot floppy. (I chose serial port A or 1 which corresponds to ttyS0, may be it is a better choice to select serial port B or 2 (ttyS1) because ttyS0 is by default used for mouse connection)Īs I was not successful with this entry as mentioned before, although the system booted normally but without redirecting the console to the serial port, I chose to modify the file SYSLINUX.CFG in the following way:Īppend initrd=initrd.img local console=ttyS0Īppend linux single root=/dev/hda3 initrd= local console=ttyS0 I was not successful to get a console connection to the intel box on which I wanted to install RedHat Linux 6.2 by typing in the the following commands at the boot prompt mentioned by the RedHat installation guide for a serial installation:

You can find some guidance on the web (I soldered the cable for the Mac myself): To connect your PC, Mac or standalone Terminal you will need a null-Modem serial cable. These are the steps for a successful installation of RedHat 6.2 on a i86 box: As I found it unnecessary to buy also an external monitor for this server in order to have the monitor switched on only for installation and for time to time maintenance I wanted to use a terminal emulation at the serial port of the server. The situation was, that I bought a small Intel inside box (compaq deskpro en small) for the purpose of a small soho file- and mail-server for our Apple Powerbooks. As the process was not straightforward and it took me to do some recherche over several sources and a applay a trial and error approach I would like to contribute this feedback in order that others will be faster to succeed.

I have tried a serial installation of RedHat 6.2 / i86 and was successful after some workarounds. Mini HowTo: Serial Installation of Redhat 6.2, 7.0, 7.1 Mini HowTo: Successful Serial Installation of Redhat 6.2 (also 7.0 and 7.1) / i86

Mac terminal emulator 9600 baud