Installing Centos 4 on Hyper-V

Question

I am trying to install Centos 4 on Hyper-v Windows to support some legacy software.

I see that the ISO files are located here. But there are multiple ISO files. When creating a hyper-v machine, it only allows for a single ISO file to be selected.

What is the best way to install Centos 4 on hyper-v?

Answer 1

I have never tried to install CentOS 4 (it's 15 years old, wow), but I have found a RHEL 4 installation guide and it should be possible to do that:

1. You need to prepare bootable ISO image from the ISO #1 (see section 2.4.2.Making an Installation BootCD-ROM from the guide):

cp -r <path-to-cd>/isolinux/ <path-to-workspace>
cd <path-to-workspace>
chmod u+w isolinux/*
mkisofs -o file.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -R -J -v -T isolinux/

2. Copy all the CentOS ISO files to a partition on a secondary drive, you should be able to use these ISOs as a installation source during installation in Installation Method → Hard Drive (see section 4.6.Installing from a Hard Drive from the guide).

I don't know if this will work for CentOS, but it might and I didn't find any installation guide for CentOS 4. I would strongly recommend trying anything else than installing 15 years old CentOS, but if this is the only way... I'm also not sure if CentOS 4 will run on Hyper-V -- support for it was added with kernel 2.6.32 and CentOS 4 has only 2.6.9.

Answer 2

Thanks everyone for their replies.

I managed to install the rhel4 image on hyper-v. it was a painful experience. I carried out the following steps

1. Downloaded the full dvd iso from a torrent
2. Created a vm on hyper-v and booted from the iso dvd.
3. After the vm was created, updated the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file to contain static details of the ip address, gateway and the netmask.
4. Created a windows gateway using the New-NetIPAddress powershell command on the hyper-v
5. Created a static mapping using the Add-NetNatStaticMapping command in powershell
6. Dropped the windows firewall

This enabled me to connect to the rhel4 image!