#redhat11 — Public Fediverse posts

Red Hat 1.1 Mother’s Day + 0.1 on 86Box with Socket 8 [1995]

Red Hat 1.1 Mother’s Day + 0.1 is a bug fix version of the original Red Hat 1.0 Mother’s Day release that was unveiled on May 1995. This improved version of Red Hat, which was released three months later, brings bug fixes to various packages. ACC Bookstores bought out Red Hat Software Inc. when the beta program was still ongoing.

Our focus in this article is testing Red Hat 1.1 on an 86Box emulated machine with a Socket 8 [1995] motherboard. You can download it from here. We have also extracted the required floppy disk files, which you can download here.

We’ve configured the virtual machine as follows:

We’ve configured a virtual machine to run with:

• Machine type: [1996] Socket 8
• Machine: [i440FX] Intel AP440FX (Apollo)
• CPU: Intel Pentium II OverDrive @ 100 MHz
• Memory: 32 MB
• Video: [PCI] Cirrus Logic GD5434
• Keyboard: AT Keyboard
• Mouse: PS/2 Mouse
• Sound card: [ISA16] Sound Blaster 16 PnP
• Floppy disk controller: Internal device
• Hard disk controller 1: Internal device
• New hard disk: RHS01.vhd
  • C/H/S: 2078/16/63
  • Size: 1023 MB
  • Bus: IDE
  • Channel: 0:0
• CD-ROM drive 1: HITACHI CDR-8130 0020 (16x)

Once everything is configured as above, we can now start the virtual machine. First, insert both the boot floppy disk to the drive and the Red Hat 1.1 ISO file to the CD-ROM reader.

After that, let it boot to the Red Hat 1.1 installer, inserting the root floppy disk in the process. Passing hdb=cdrom is necessary so that the kernel detects the CD-ROM drive.

After that, we’re asked to insert the boot floppy again so that the kernel can be installed to the new installation.

After that, we’ll get out from Express Install, which will take us to a menu that lets us choose steps more clearly.

The first thing we’ll do is to mount the RHS 1.1 CD-ROM. We’ll select CD-ROM as the installation method. The installer should find /dev/hdb as the CD-ROM disk that contains the necessary files.

Now, we’ll go through the partitioning stage. Verify that /dev/hda appears before you start partitioning the disk.

Now, let’s create partitions for the Red Hat installation. We’ve selected /dev/hda as the disk drive, which is the first drive on primary IDE controller. Afterwards, we’ve created two partitions:

• /dev/hda1: Linux, 980.44 MB, bootable
• /dev/hda2: Linux Swap, 43.32 MB

Finally, we’ve written the partition tables so that the installer can recognize our newly created partitions, which we will format to be usable in the installation.

Reboot the virtual machine, and repeat the process until you get to the partitioning stage. When it tells you to select the partitioning program, just scroll down to Done, then highlight Continue and press ENTER.

Now, we will initialize and activate the swap partition, which will be used by Red Hat 1.1. After the swap partition has been activated, we’re told to select a partition to initialize the EXT2 file system. We’ve chosen the Linux partition, which is the only partition that we’ve set up on this disk.

At this point, none of the disks have been touched yet. We’ll select a few package series, including the XFree86 ones and the base ones. Because we’ve selected the XFree86 series to be installed, we were told to select an appropriate server for a graphics card. Since we’ve installed the Cirrus Logic GD5434 graphics card, we’ll go with the SVGA server.

Then, we’re told to provide a hostname.

At this point, the actual installation starts… We’ll format the disk, install the base system, install the selected series, and install the kernel. Ignore the error about an XFree86 server being installed already.

Now, let’s jump to the XFree86 configuration. First, we get asked to provide a mouse type. Since we’ve installed a PS/2 mouse, we’ve selected the ps2-bus mouse type.

Now, we are at the stage where we get asked if we need to run the prober. Let it run the probe.

You’ll get an error indicating that the server has failed to start. Press ENTER, then change the chipset of the graphics card to the one that Cirrus Logic GD5434 uses.

Next, we’ll provide the correct amount of video memory in kilobytes (4096 KB in this case) and accept the probed clocks.

Next, select the Generic Multisync monitor and choose all resolutions, then select the 640×480 @ 60 Hz as the primary resolution for the X server to start with.

Answer No to the below question about no_2mb_banksel, then accept the defaults.

The video card configuration is now done! Let the X server recognize that there are two buttons.

The X server configuration is now complete!

Next comes the networking and the modem setup. Disable both of them, since we don’t intend to have networking installed to this system. Then, choose your keyboard layout and your timezone.

The next step is to configure the bootloader so that it gets installed to the MBR of /dev/hda, with this Red Hat installation being the default partition. Make sure that hdb=cdrom is specified as a kernel configuration.

Afterwards, create a new user account and its home directory, and provide a root password.

After that, we restart the machine after ejecting the boot floppy from the floppy drive, since we don’t intend to create a “boot floppy”.

We logged in as root, and we have a fully functioning shell!

Type startx…

Awesome! The X server has started in 640×480 @ 60 Hz with a bigger virtual desktop resolution. We can verify that it’s running Linux 1.2.11!

Here are some demonstration pictures of Red Hat 1.1.

To install extra RPP (not RPM) packages, you’ll have to mount /dev/hdb to /mnt/cdrom with the iso9660 type. You have to specify the type, or else mounting won’t work. You can do that using mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom as root. Then, open the RHS Linux Installation Manager, select a series you want to install packages from, then look for binary or source packages to install. Then, select a package, click Install, then click Engage to initiate the installation process.

For a little extra fun, open the RHS Linux Installation Manager, click on LIM, then click on About. It shows you a red hat. With the cursor on the red hat, You can make it spin indefinitely by clicking on the left mouse button, make it stop spinning by clicking on the right mouse button, and make it spin like a pendulum by clicking on both the left and the right mouse buttons.

Clockwise spin: left click on the red hat

Pendulum spin: right and left click on the red hat

If you make the red hat spin, you can make it spin faster by clicking on the hat more than once.

Sounds fun, isn’t it?