2.4. Preparing for a Hard Drive Installation

To prepare your system for a hard drive installation, you must set the system up in one of the following ways:

Using a set of CD-ROMs — Create CD-ROM ISO image files from each installation CD-ROM. For each CD-ROM, execute the following command on a Linux system:
```
 dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/file-name.iso 
```
Verifying that ISO images are intact before you attempt an installation, helps to avoid problems. To verify the ISO images are intact prior to performing an installation, use an md5sum program (many md5sum programs are available for various operating systems). An md5sum program should be available on the same Linux machine as the ISO images.

Additionally, if a file called RedHat/base/updates.img exists in the directory from which you install, it is used for installation program updates. Refer to the file install-methods.txt in the anaconda RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as how to apply the installation program updates.