In the process of installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) on a brand new Dell Optiplex 755, I came across the following error:
Unable to find any devices of the type needed for this installation type. Would you like to manually select your driver or use a driver disk?
Another symptom to this problem is the installation continuing in Text mode despite the command to install in GUI mode. You know you are in Text mode if you have no mouse control.
A quick workaround to the device request problem is to switch the SATA operation to “AHCI” mode in the BIOS. AHCI (stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface) allows communcation to SATA devices. With this setting, I started the installation without any other parameters. The installation went smoothly and took about six minutes to complete. Boot up to RHEL5 was error free as well.
Note that many sites recommend and alternative solution of switching the BIOS to “legacy” mode. I initially tried this method and found it greatly extended the installation time to over twenty minutes. It seems that switching to legacy mode has a major performance hit. Additionally, after the switch to legacy mode, a post installation problem occurred where the initial boot up resulted in a {}.
If you are still having challenges installing RHEL 5, refer to this great reference: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/rhel5/installation_guide/index.html
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