Chapter 15. Starting a remote installation by using VNC

Procedure

1. From the RHEL boot menu on the target system, press the Tab key on your keyboard to edit the boot options.

2. Append the inst.vnc option to the end of the command line.

   • If you want to restrict VNC access to the system that is being installed, add the inst.vncpassword=PASSWORD boot option to the end of the command line. Replace PASSWORD with the password you want to use for the installation.

     • The VNC password must be between 6 and 8 characters long.
     • This is a temporary password for the inst.vncpassword= option and it should not be an existing or root password.
3. Press Enter to start the installation. The target system initializes the installation program and starts the necessary services. When the system is ready, a message is displayed providing the IP address and port number of the system.
4. Open the VNC viewer on the remote system.
5. Enter the IP address and the port number into the VNC server field.
6. Click Connect.
7. Enter the VNC password and click OK. A new window opens with the VNC connection established, displaying the RHEL installation menu. From this window, you can install RHEL on the target system using the graphical user interface.

Procedure

1. Start the VNC viewer on the remote system in listening mode by running the following command:

   $ vncviewer -listen PORT

2. Replace PORT with the port number used for the connection.

3. The terminal displays a message indicating that it is waiting for an incoming connection from the target system.

   TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.8.0
   Built on: 2017-10-12 09:20
   Copyright (C) 1999-2017 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.txt)
   See http://www.tigervnc.org for information about TigerVNC.
   
   Thu Jun 27 11:30:57 2019
    main:        Listening on port 5500

4. Boot the target system from the network.
5. From the RHEL boot menu on the target system, press the Tab key on your keyboard to edit the boot options.
6. Append the inst.vnc inst.vncconnect=HOST:PORT option to the end of the command line.
7. Replace HOST with the IP address of the remote system that is running the listening VNC viewer, and PORT with the port number that the VNC viewer is listening on.
8. Press Enter to start the installation. The system initializes the installation program and starts the necessary services. When the initialization process is finished, the installation program attempts to connect to the IP address and port provided.
9. When the connection is successful, a new window opens with the VNC connection established, displaying the RHEL installation menu. From this window, you can install RHEL on the target system using the graphical user interface.

1. On the command prompt, run the following command:

   $ssh install@_my-z-system-domain-name_

   or

   $ssh install@_my-z-system-IP-address_

2. Depending on whether or not have you configured the inst.vnc parameter, the ssh session displays the following output:

   When inst.vnc parameter is configured:

   Starting installer, one moment...
   Please manually connect your vnc client to my-z-system:1 (_system-ip-address:1_) to begin the install.

   When inst.vnc parameter is not configured:

   Starting installer, one moment...
   Graphical installation is not available. Starting text mode.
   =============
   Text mode provides a limited set of installation options.
   It does not offer custom partitioning for full control
   over the disk layout. Would you like to use VNC mode instead?
   1) Start VNC
   2) Use text mode
   Please make your choice from above ['q' to quit | 'c' to continue | 'r' to refresh]:

   If you have configured the inst.vnc parameter, proceed to step 5.

3. Enter 1 to start VNC.
4. Enter a password, if you have not set the inst.vncpassword= boot option, but want to secure the server connection.

5. From a new command prompt, connect to the VNC server.

   $vncviewer _my-z-system-ip-address:display_number_

   If you have secured the connection, use the password that you have entered in the previous step or the one that you had set for inst.vncpassword= boot option.

   The RHEL installer is launched in the VNC client.