Preface: The CentOS team had a rough time catching up with the changes Red Hat made before releasing RHEL 8 last May. The single master local repository model has been replaced by a multi-segment repository ultimately homed on GitHub. That, combined with major changes to RPM v4.14 that introduced a range of new dependency types forced the team to radically change its package rebuild process. It wasn't enough to replace Red Hat copyrighted components and artwork. By the time the CentOS team hammered out their new process and released 8.0 last September, Red Hat had already released RHEL 8.1. CentOS 8.1 was finally released a couple of weeks ago, coincidentally right at a point where I needed to scrap a failed install and start over. Installing the basic operating system: Download the CentOS 8.1 x86_64 image from here: At 7,554,990,080 bytes, this is a very large ISO. It will take quite a while to download, and you will need at least an 8GB thumb drive to write it to. A USB3 port and thumb drive will speed up the write process quite a bit: # dd if=CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-dvd1.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=40960 status=progress When you boot to the thumb drive ISO image, be sure to choose the default second GRUB2 line that tests the integrity of the ISO before using it. I had to do three download/write cycles to get an image that passed this integrity test. The Storinator's boot drive is an ordinary 250GB SSD which requires no special installation. At the Software Selection screen I made the following choices: (*) Server with GUI In the right column I chose the following package groups: (*) Windows File Server (*) File and Storage Server (*) Graphical Administration Tools (*) Security Tools (*) System Tools Please note that my final installation includes many more package groups, so these five are just the beginning. A more complete list can be found below. When setting up the Internet connection, I would recommend assigning a fixed static IP address. I chose the following: IP Addr Subnet Gateway 192.168.1.20 24 192.168.1.254 Hostname: store.protogeek.org To access this machine, I later added the following line to the /etc/hosts file on all machines in the local network: 192.168.1.20 store.protogeek.org store After starting the installation, I created a local user ("doc") as a member of the Administrators group. When initial installation is complete and the system reboots, it will be to the GNOME 3 desktop. I personally prefer the MATE desktop, and that was one of the first follow-on modifications I made to the storage server's OS. The following RPM groups are installed on my system: # dnf grouplist --hidden Last metadata expiration check: 0:13:59 ago on Sun 29 Mar 2020 12:51:22 PM CDT Available Environment Groups: Server Minimal Install Workstation KDE Plasma Workspaces Virtualization Host Custom Operating System Installed Environment Groups: Server with GUI Installed Groups: base-x Container Management Guest Agents Guest Desktop Agents Internet Browser Office Suite and Productivity Printing Client Remote Desktop Clients Virtualization Client Virtualization Hypervisor Virtualization Platform Virtualization Tools Base File and Storage Server Graphical Administration Tools Hardware Monitoring Utilities Headless Management Legacy UNIX Compatibility Network File System Client Network Servers Networking Tools Common NetworkManager submodules Performance Tools Remote Management for Linux Security Tools Server product core Windows File Server Standard GNOME Desktop Environment Graphical Internet Multimedia Core Fonts Hardware Support System Tools Available Groups: Backup Client Conflicts AppStream Debugging Tools Desktop Debugging and Performance Tools .NET Core Development FTP Server GNOME Applications Graphics Creation Tools Input Methods Internet Applications Java Platform Legacy X Window System Compatibility Atomic Host ostree support KVM platform specific packages Hyper-v platform specific packages VMware platform specific packages RPM Development Tools TeX formatting system Basic Web Server Additional Development Anaconda tools Conflicts BaseOS Development Tools Dial-up Networking Support Infiniband Support Large Systems Performance Mail Server Mainframe Access Platform Development Python Web Scientific Support Smart Card Support Workstation product core CentOS PowerTools Critical Path (KDE) Fedora Packager KDE Applications KDE Educational applications KDE Multimedia support KDE Office KDE Software Development KDE Frameworks 5 Software Development Xfce KDE (K Desktop Environment) Games and Entertainment Sound and Video Second stage install: Access to additional non-CentOS repositories is required. The first is EPEL, the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux repository: The next is the Enterprise Linux Repository, or ELREPO:
And of course any CentOS or Fedora installation needs access to the RPM Fusion repositories, both free and non-free: # dnf install --nogpgcheck https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm # dnf install --nogpgcheck https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-8.noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-8.noarch.rpm # dnf config-manager --enable PowerTools The next added repository allows you to install the MATE desktop as an alternative to the stock GNOME 3 desktop. This is completely optional. Follow the instructions here: The last repository will allow you to install the ZFS file system for use by the hard drives in the payload bay. Note that this requires access to the EPEL repository (above):
Now that the preliminaries are all installed, it's time to set up the ZFS filesystem for the payload drives. If the ZFS filesystem package installation was correct, you'll see the following: # zfs --version zfs-0.8.3-1 zfs-kmod-0.8.3-1 The next installment will detail the ZFS configuration. --Doc Savage Fairview Heights, IL |