Install Centos 7 Netinstall
CentOS 7 NetInstall – Installation Source URL 3. SOFTWARE SELECTION: This is used to select the packages that you want to install, here i chose to install Minimal Server. CentOS 7 NetInstall – Software Selection. Once you have selected, click on DONE. Wait for some, installer will check the dependencies for the selected packages.
Have you ever fancied a portable instance of a CentOS 7 installation in your USB pen drive? You probably might not have known it, but you can easily install CentOS 7 in a USB drive just as you would install it in a physical hard drive or a virtual environment.
Read Also: How to Install Linux OS on USB Drive and Run it On Any PC
Install Centos Netinstall Vmware
This would enable you to plug your USB on any PC and seamlessly run your CentOS 7 after setting the PC to boot from your USB drive. Sounds cool right?
In this article, we will show you how to install CentOS 7 in a USB drive.
Prerequisites
Before you begin with the installation, perform a flight check and ensure you have the following:
- An installation media (DVD or USB drive of 4 GB or more).
- A 16 GB USB drive onto which we will install CentOS 7. This needs to be formatted by Gparted and the existing filesystem deleted to create unallocated space for installation.
- A software utility for making the USB drive bootable. For this guide, we will use Rufus.
- A CentOS 7 Live CD. This can be downloaded at CentOS main website.
- A PC. It’s important to note that no changes will be made to your system, so no worries.
- Internet Connection
Installing CentOS 7 in USB Drive
With all the prerequisites in check, it’s time now to make the USB drive bootable by downloading a copy of Rufus utility tool.
Once the download is complete, double click on the installer and the Window below will be displayed. Be sure to select your USB drive and the CentOS 7 Live installer ISO.
With everything in place, hit the ‘START‘ button to begin copying the installation files onto the USB drive. When the process is complete, eject the USB drive and plug it into a PC and reboot. Ensure to configure the boot order in the BIOS set up so that the PC first boots from the USB drive.
Save the changes and allow the system to boot.
Select the Appropriate Installation Option
Upon booting the Live CD medium, the default CentOS 7 home screen will be displayed as shown below. Click on the ‘Install to Hard Drive‘ option to begin the installation process.
Install CentOS 7 to Hard Drive
Select the Language
This takes you to the next step where you will be required to select your language of choice and hit the ‘Continue‘ button.
Configure Date and Time
The next step will prompt you to make a few configurations – Date and Time, Keyboard settings, Installation destination, and Network & Hostname.
CentOS 7 Installation Summary
To configure Date and Time, click on the ‘DATE & TIME‘ option.
This displays the world’s map. If your PC is already connected to the internet via internet or LAN cable, the installer will auto detect your current location, date and time.
Next, click on the ‘Done‘ button to save the changes.
Configure Date and Time
Configure Keyboard
Next step is the keyboard configuration. Click on the ‘KEYBOARD‘ option.
In the KEYBOARD LAYOUT section, you can test the keyboard configuration on the right text input field and when you are satisfied with the results, click on the ‘DONE‘ button as before.
Configure Keyboard Layout
Select Installation Source
In the next step click on ‘INSTALLATION SOURCE‘ to customize your installation using other sources other than the traditional USB/DVD. This is the section that we shall instruct the installer to install the CentOS 7 OS on the USB drive.
There are two main partitioning configurations: Automatic and Manual.
Automatic Partitioning
With automatic partitioning, the system automatically and intelligently partitions the hard drive without your input into the three main partitions.
- The
/(root) - The
/home - The
swap
To take advantage of this nifty and useful feature, click on the hard drive and click on the ‘Automatic configure partitioning‘ as shown below.
Click on the USB drive and click on ‘Automatically configure partitioning‘ to allow the installer to intelligently partition the USB drive for you. Hit the ‘Done‘ button to save the changes.
Select Automatically Configure Partitioning
Manual Partitioning
If you wish to manually partition the USB drive and specify the memory capacity, click on ‘I will configure partitioning‘ option.
This pops up the window as shown with LVM as the default option.
Other mount points you can choose from include:
- Standard Partition
- LVM Thin provisioning
- Btrfs
Select Manual Partitioning Filesystem
To make your work easy, click ‘Click here to create them automatically‘ option. The USB drive will be automatically be partitioned by the Installed into the crucial mount mounts such as root, /boot and swap.
Click on the ‘Done‘ button to save the changes. A pop up will display a summary of changes that will be made to the disk. If all looks good, click on ‘Accept Changes‘.
Summary of Partition Changes
Configure Hostname
Lastly, click on the ‘NETWORK & HOSTNAME‘ option to define the system’s hostname. Type your desired hostname in the text field and click on ‘Apply‘. Once again, click on ‘Done‘ to save the changes.
Begin CentOS 7 Installation
With everything set and ready, click on the ‘Begin Installation‘ button to commence the installation process.
Begin CentOS 7 Installation
Set Root Password and Create a New User
The next step will require you to set the Root Password and create a new user.
Click on ‘ROOT PASSWORD‘ to create the root password. Type a strong password and click on ‘Done‘.
Set Root Password
Next, click on ‘USER CREATION‘ to create a New User. Fill all the required details and click on the ‘Done‘ button to save the changes.
With the root password set and a new regular user created, the installer will begin to install the CentOS system together with all the required packages, repositories, libraries, and bootloader.
CentOS 7 Installation Progress
Finalizing the CentOS 7 Installation
At the end of the installation process, you will get a notification at the bottom right corner that the system has been successfully installed.
Click on the ‘Reboot‘ button to finish up the configuration. Remove the installation media but keep the 16 GB USB drive plugged in.
Once the system reboots click on ‘LICENSE INFORMATION‘.
Select License Information
Accept the End User Agreement License by checking on the checkbox. Next, click on the ‘Done‘ button.
Finally, click on ‘FINISH CONFIGURATION‘ to complete the process. The system will reboot, and you will be prompted for a user name and password of the user you just created.
Conclusion
We have successfully installed CentOS 7 on a USB Drive. Going forward, you can plug this drive on another PC and boot into your CentOS 7 new installation and start working! Take care not to lose your drive.
This tutorial will guide you on how to perform a minimal installation of latest version of CentOS 7.0, using the binary DVD ISO image, an installation that is best suitable for developing a future customizable server platform, with no Graphical User Interface, where you can install only the software that you need.
If you want to find out more about what’s new in this release of CentOS 7.0 holds and download links, I suggest reading the previous article on release announcements:
Requirements
- CentOS 7.0 DVD ISO
CentOS 7.0 Installation Process
1. After downloading the last version of CentOS using above links or using official CentOS download page. Burn it to a DVD or create a bootable USB stick using LiveUSB Creator called Unetbootin.
2. After you have created the installer bootable media, place your DVD/USB into your system appropriate drive, start the computer, select your bootable unit and the first CentOS 7 prompt should appear. At the prompt choose Install CentOS 7 and press [Enter] key.
CentOS 7 Boot Menu
3. The system will start loading media installer and a Welcome screen should appear. Select your Installation Process Language, that will assist you through the entire installation procedure and click on Continue.
Select Installation Process Language
4. The next step, present screen prompt is Installation Summary. It contains a lot of options to fully customize your system. First thing you may want to setup is your time settings. Click on Date & Time and select your server physical location from the provided map and hit on upper Done button to apply configuration.
5. The next step is to choose your Language Support and Keyboard settings. Choose your main and extra language for your system and when you’re finished hit on Done button.
Select Language and Keyboard
6. The same way choose your Keyboard Layout by hitting the plus button and test your keyboard configuration using the right input filed. After you finish setting up your keyboard, again hit on upper Done button to apply changes and go back to main screen on Installation Summary.
Choose Keyboard Layout
7. On the next step you can customize your installation by using other Installation Sources than your local DVD/USB media, such as a network locations using HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or NFS protocols and even add some additional repositories, but use this methods only if you know what you’re doing. So leave the default Auto-detected installation media and hit on Done to continue.
Choose Installation Sources
8. On the next step you can choose your system installation software. On this step CentOS offers a lot of Server and Desktop platform environments that you choose from, but, if you want a high degree of customization, especially if you are going to use CentOS 7 to run as a server platform, then I suggest you select Minimal Install with Compatibility Libraries as Add-ons, which will install a minimal basic system software and later you can add other packages as your needs require using yum groupinstall command.
Software Selection
Install Centos 7 Netinstall
9. Now it’s time to partition your hard-drive. Click on Installation Destination menu, select your disk and choose I will configure partitioning.
Choose Installation Destination
10. On the next screen, choose LVM (Logical Volume Manager) as partition layout and, then, click on Click here to create them automatically, option which will create three system partition using XFS filesystem, automatically redistributing your hard-disk space and gathering all LVS into one big Volume Group named centos.
- /boot – Non LVM
- /(root) – LVM
- Swap – LVM
Select LVM Partition Type
11. If you are not pleased with the default partition layout done automatically by the installer you can completely add, modify or resize your partition scheme and when you finish hit on Done button and Accept Changes on the Summary of Changes prompt.
Summary of Partition Changes
NOTE: For those users, who have hard-disks more than 2TB in size, the installer automatically will convert partition table to GPT, but if you wish to use GPT table on smaller disks than 2TB, then you should use the argument inst.gpt to the installer boot command line in order to change the default behaviour.
12. The next step is to set your system hostname and enable networking. Click on Network & Hostname label and type your system FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) on Hostname filed, then enable your Network interface, switching the top Ethernet button to ON.
If you have a functional DHCP server on you network then it will automatically configure all your network setting for enabled NIC, which should appear under your active interface.
Enable Ethernet Interface
13. If your system will be destined as a server it’s better to set static network configuration on Ethernet NIC by clicking on Configure button and add all your static interface settings like in the screenshot below, and when you’re finished hit on Save button, disable and enable Ethernet card by switching the button to OFF and ON, and, then hit on Done to apply setting and go back to main menu.
14. Now it’s time to start installation process by pressing on Begin Installation button and set up a strong password for root account.
Click on Begin Installation
Enter Root Password
15. After you finish setting up a strong password for root account move to User Creation and create your first system user. You can designate this user to become a System Admin with root privileges using sudo command by checking the box Make this user administrator, then click on Done to go back on main menu and wait for the installation process to finish.
User Creation and Set Password
16. After the installation process finishes, the installer will show a successfully message on screen, demanding to reboot your system in order to use it.
Congratulation! You have now installed last version of CentOS on your bare new machine. Remove any installation media and reboot your computer so you can login to your new minimal CentOS 7 environment and perform other system tasks, such as update you system and install other useful software needed to run day to day tasks.