CentOS Installation

Installing CentOS via Graphic User Interface Mode (GUI)

Perhaps GUI installation is the simplest way to get the job done. For our installation example, we are using CentOS 5.3 GUI mode

Step1: Choose CentOS installation Method

Once You have put in your disc, you should able to see the welcome screen.

Press ENTER key to start the installation wizard in graphical user mode.

You see the screen running with lines of code. Do not worry this is perfectly ok.

Step 2: Check your CD Media

This is basically tell you that you installation cd was found, and you may either want to perform the media test of your cd media. The test is optional, you may choose skip button by press on LEFT ARROW key or TAB key then press Enter key to proceed.

[optional: when you press OK button at Media Test Page ]

The Screen above shows the checking process.

[optional: when you press OK button at Media Test Page ]

The screen capture above shows the checking process was passed. Press OK to continue

Step 3: Centos Setup Screen

This is merely a CentOS Setup Page. If you wish to read on Release Notes, press the RELEASE NOTES button  on your left. Else press NEXT Button

[optional: when you press RELEASE NOTES button at previous Centos Setup Page]

The screen capture above shows the release notes of CentOS, press CLOSE button to go back to CentOS Setup Page.

Step 4: Centos Language Setup

In this page, you can choose your preferred  setup language. In this example, we use the default languange which is English (English). Press the NEXT button to accept language.

Step5: Select appropriate keyboard

You must particularly careful when choosing appropriate keyboard for the system, you system will not affected by choosing the wrong keyboard type, but it is very annoying as the character key you are different from the screen output. If you are not sure about the keyboard just accept the default U.S.English keyboard type. Press NEXT button to accept system default setting.

Step 6: Disk Partition deletion and Initialization 

A warning dialogue box will immediately pop-up after you select the keyboard type selection. On the screen capture above, the information shown that I have 8GB hard disk is known as sda (my installation of CentOS 5.3 is under VMWare). Press YES button to proceed with installation process. If you press NO button, the installation process will be terminated.

Step 7: Installation partition selection

Now, take extra care on this part. Navigate your mouse and click on "Remove linux partition on selected drives and create default layout". A drop-down box will appear, lets discuss further.

There are 4 options to deal with partition (highlighted in red box). Since we have only have one hard disk, the wizard has chose the disk for us, sda, 8189MB VMWare disk.

The 4 options are:

A) Remove all partitions on the selected drives and create default layout. 

- by selecting this option, ALL your drive partitions will be reinitializes, fdisk and formatted. Which also  

means ALL your data will be gone!

B) Remove llinux partitions on the selected drives and create default layout.

- the sentence explained very clearly all your linux partition will be removed (if you have any linux distro found on your disk, this will leave NTFS and Dos partition intact)

C) Use free space on the selected drives and create default layout.

The installation will only takes empty disk space (raw/unformatted space). This will leave both any previous linux installation and MS windows intact. However, the boot partition might changed. We discuss this further in next topic.

D) Create custom layout.

This are for advance user where you can customize each partition in detail.

The partition need a topic to discuss in detail, we shall choose option A (Warning! this will remove all your data in the disk). We also ignore the Advance storage installation for now.

This is the final warning dialogue box, press YES button to continue.

Step 8: Network Device and Host Information

We want to accept the Network Card (NIC) to be active on boot  by default. However, we are going to change two things.

(A) Change the NIC  named eth0 to static IP 192.168.1.1 Netmask 255.255.255.0, IPV4 Support

click on EDIT button and a dialogue box will be prompted. Ensure that "Manual Configuration" radio button is selected.

(B) Change the server hostname, gateway and DNS information

In our example, we change the hostname to manually, srv1.example.local (our domain is example.local).

Also, we are providing the gateway and dns information as per screen capture above.

Step 9: Choose your region selection

Choose your appropriate region by simple pointing your mouse on the map. Click NEXT button to continue.

Step 10: Enter root password

root's privilege is equivalent to MS Windows 's administrator right. Here you are advised to apply complex password to avoid Brute Force's Dictionary attack.

What is root?

Root is also known as root user the super user, super administrator and has full control over the Linux server (just like MS Windows Administrator). 

Step 11: Packages installation

This is package installation page. The default installation are those checked in the checkbox. You can either customize the installation package or later by choosing customise later or now. Do not worry about those server packages, we will customise it later. Click NEXT to continue.

Upon clicking on NEXT button at Packages Installation page, you will see a the above dialogue box prompted, this will checking all the dependencies before the wizard proceed with installation.

Step 12: Installation Confirmation

This is the installation confirmation press, you can find the installation log under /roor/install.log once it finished the installation. Press NEXT to continue.

Okay, now installation should be auto-pilot right now. It will initialize, split and format partition according to our previous setting, then image and packages will be transfer from DVD to your hard disk accordingly.

Step 13: Reboot and Start up the system

Upon complete the installation, the above screen will be shown, click REBOOT button to reboot the system.

The screen capture above shows the start up process after installation. This will take load necessary drives, kernal modules, application/packages and user script.

Great! You are now few more steps away. This is the welcome screen after your installation. Now what you need to do is to configure Firewall, SELinux etc. Click FORWARD button to continue.
 

Step 14:  Firewall configuration

SSH is enabled by default. However, you might enable other services such as WWW(apache) and other ports as well.

[optional: If you want to allow ports other than trusted services listed, click on other ports, then click on ADD button, type in port number and select appropriate protocol]

Step 15:  SELinux configuration

Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) providing enhance security control to tighten services. We are going to modify the setting to permissive at this moment. Click FORWARD to continue.

Step 16:  Date and TIme configuration

Configure Date and Time,  the Network Time Protocol (NTP) tab is enable you to adjust your time to NTP server. We will enable it click FORWARD button.

Step 17:  Create New User for server login

It is recommended to login to Linux as normal user than you can change the administrative rights to super user mode (root). You may ask why there is only one user account is created? No worry you can create other users later when you login to the system (we will discuss later in next module: Login, Logout & Reboot )

Step 15:  Sound Card Test

Test your sound card. Adjust your PCM device if your no sound was heard when click on PLAY button. If yes, click FORWARD.

Step 16:  Additional CD installation

Yeah! Final step.If you have additional CD to install, insert the additional CDs and click install, else we just click FINISH button to start login.

Great! After few seconds you click on FINISH button of previous page, now you are in  login screen. Type in the username you created just now or root then provide the password, and then login enjoy using centOS!

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