Chapter 6. Updating drivers during installation on Intel and AMD systems
In most cases, Red Hat Enterprise Linux already includes drivers for the devices that make up your system. However, if your system contains hardware that has been released very recently, drivers for this hardware might not yet be included. Sometimes, a driver update that provides support for a new device might be available from Red Hat or your hardware vendor on a driver disc that contains rpm packages. Typically, the driver disc is available for download as an ISO image file.
Often, you do not need the new hardware during the installation process. For example, if you use a DVD to install to a local hard drive, the installation will succeed even if drivers for your network card are not available. In situations like this, complete the installation and add support for the piece of hardware afterward — refer to
Section 35.1.1, “Driver update rpm packages” for details of adding this support.
In other situations, you might want to add drivers for a device during the installation process to support a particular configuration. For example, you might want to install drivers for a network device or a storage adapter card to give the installer access to the storage devices that your system uses. You can use a driver disc to add this support during installation in one of three ways:
place the ISO image file of the driver disc in a location accessible to the installer:
on a local hard drive
a USB flash drive
create a driver disc by extracting the image file onto:
create an initial ramdisk update from the image file and store it on a PXE server. This is an advanced procedure that you should consider only if you cannot perform a driver update with any other method.
If Red Hat, your hardware vendor, or a trusted third party told you that you will require a driver update during the installation process, choose a method to supply the update from the methods described in this chapter and test it before beginning the installation. Conversely, do not perform a driver update during installation unless you are certain that your system requires it. Although installing an unnecessary driver update will not cause harm, the presence of a driver on a system for which it was not intended can complicate support.