4.1. Base Install

The RHN Proxy Server is designed to run on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system. Therefore, the first phase is to install the base operating system, either from disc, ISO image, or kickstart. During and after operating system installation, make sure you:

• Allocate plenty of space to the partition that will be used to store packages, according to the hardware requirements set forth earlier. The default location for cached Red Hat packages is /var/spool/squid, while custom packages are located in /var/spool/rhn-proxy.

• Install the packages required by RHN Proxy Server and only those packages. You must install only the base packages as others will cause the RHN Proxy Server installation to fail Refer to Section 2.1 Software Requirements for the method to obtain the correct package group needed for each version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS.

  	Important
  	If you plan to obtain Monitoring-level service, you must install your RHN Proxy Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3. This is the only supported base operating system for Proxies serving Monitoring-entitled systems. Do not install Proxy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1.

• Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP) on the Proxy and select the appropriate time zone. All client systems should already be running the ntpd daemon and be set to the correct time zone.

• Disable the ipchains and iptables services after installation.