Network Installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
The network installation of a system or logical partition (LPAR) has advantages over the traditional way using CDs. Especially when you are facing an installation of more than one system, the CD installation can become a nightmare - unless you are planning to improve your quality as DJ.
The other main advantage is that you can provide a configuration file which automates the tasks for a installation which finally means that it becomes very easy and fast to setup a system or LPAR.
Starting the installation
It is assumed that you have setup an installation server as descripted in the section Network Installation in this Wiki.
Hint: Copy the netboot.img to the /tftpboot directory of your installation server. You can find the netboot.img on CD1 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the directory images/pseries.
Now start your system and press either 1 to enter the SMS menu or 8 to go to the OpenFirmware prompt, as soon as you can see the following picture and the word Keyboard will be displayed.
Example - Startup screen
Comment: Please note that to be able to pass arguments to the installer you must use the OpenFirmware prompt!
The following example shows the way to boot a system or LPAR using the OpenFirmware.
After you've pressed 8 you will enter the OpenFirmware or OK prompt.
First you must find out, which device you want to boot of, using the ls command.
Example - Output of the ls command
In our example we are looking for the available network devices because we want to perform a network installation. We will find them under /vdevice named as l-lan@... - in our example /vdevice/l-lan@30000004.
Now the first thing to do is to define an alias otherwise you alway must use the fully qualified OF name of the device. In this example we will create an alias called net using the OF name /vdevice/l-lan@30000004.
Booting the system is straightforward and you can pass parameters to the kernel.
Example - Booting a rescue system
To use a Kickstart file you will use the following line.
Example - Using a Kickstart file
Kickstart file - SW RAID
Below you will find a Kickstart file which includes the setup for SW RAID. Please change as appropriate to suit your environment. By the way...the root pw is abc123 
Example - Kickstart file with SW RAID setup
Finally, don't forget to copy the boot partition /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb1 and make sdb bootable.
