Sunday, January 6, 2019

Create a Linux Environment - Server OS - Intro & CentOS

Linux OS is ideal for Lab Environments and of course real world scenarios. I am always trying to replace a service that is installed on a Windows machine, with a Linux one. Using the Windows GUI most of the times is easier and less time consuming, but with Linux the pros are more. I won't get into a lot of details, but first of all, most Linux OS comes with no cost, so we don't have to run Windows trials or buy licenses. The OS footprint is much smaller, which means less OS updates and as a result a more stable OS.

We will use CentOS, I would say it is the free version of Red Hat, the most popular Linux Distro. We will login to the main page and download the Minimal ISO, that contains the minimum packages requires to run CentOS. The current version is 18.10 (January 2019)



Now we will create our VM. One we specify CentOS on the VM name, Oracle VirtualBox will auto generate the type: Linux and the Version: Red Hat (64-bit). As we mentioned CentOS is the community version of Red Hat. 

If you want to review the VM Wizard installation check a previous post







Note: Specifically for the rConfig-CentOS VM, make sure that you use more than 8GB (default value) for the Disk, because you won't be able to even complete the installation. Since we use dynamic disks we can really set up a much higher value (30GB).For other VMs 8GB can be more than enough. Of course we can manually expand the disk if needed.





Note: I had some issues with the mouse integration when I tried to install CentOS. THe solution is to go to the VM Settings, System > Motherboard TAB and then change Pointing Device from PS/2 Mouse to USB Tablet 



After powering up the VM, we have the option to run the VM from the Virtual Optical Disk, or Install the OS. We will go with the installation. 





We can select Network & Host Name to change the Server name and the network settings. The installation Destination section give us a warning. We simply have to specify in which disk we need to install CentOS and if we want to partition that disk first. 



We will enable the interface and leave the default (DHCP option). As you can see our guest VM got an IP Address from our DHCP Server. 


We can easily set up a static IP Address, as shown on another post. 



Now we are ready to begin the installation. 



During the installation we can specify the root password and also additional users. 



The root password wizard can detect if the password is secure. 





After the installation, we can reboot our system and run the Linux OS. 



To login to the console the username is root (or we can use another user if we have specified one). 



The easiest way is to connect using SSH, instead of using the console. We can use Putty, or mRemoteNG.




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