Life of a Geek

I mostly work with Ubuntu because I like it. You might say that I’m not a real Linux guy because of this fact and I’m okay with that, you don’t know me. But because of some work requirements I am having to build up CentOS environments. So I figured I would document the build for my own sanity.  This way when I have to build a similar one I have some instructions on what I did.

This is good news for me, and good news for you if you want to be like me and build servers.  This server is going to be a Pure-ftp server install.  So I’m going to have it setup for everything I need to have a working FTP server

So I guess we can start at the beginning. I’m going to walk through the install steps that I did. I don’t really like the way that CentOS takes up so much space when you install a Graphical User Interface (GUI, I know most of you are thinking, “I’m not a moron I know what that means”). Luckily CentOS gives you lots of options in the installation.

I downloaded the DVD image here: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/i386/

If you want the 64-bit version: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/x86_64/

I am using the i386 version but I’m assuming the install goes pretty much the same way.

Once you have that, and a ready machine to install it on (mine is a virtual machine) then we are ready to begin.

So pop the CD in and boot up the machine to the CD.

Just hit enter at this screen.

The next screen asks you to check the CD, just go ahead and skip it.

Then once it loads the GUI install screen hit next.

Select the language.

Choose your keyboard layout.

Now my (virtual) disk was completey unformatted so I got this warning.  I just clicked yes.

Now on this next screen I don’t really need any special partitioning schemes.  I’m installing this on to an 8 GB disk and once I have it up on my servers I’m going to add like a 20 GB secondary disk.  If you don’t know much about partitioning you should read this.

I told it to delete everything on the disk so it will throw a warning which I accept.

On this you normally want to do a manual static IP address assignment.  But I’m not going to do that, because I am using DHCP assignments so this will have it’s own reserved address on my network.  So while you might want to use a static address, I’m going to accept the default and use DHCP.

Next you want to choose your time zone.

Choose a password for the root login.  I recommend at least 8 characters, and using a random password generator making sure to include both capital and lowercase alphanumeric characters as well as symbols. (ex. Niu!5a?L, but just so you know I didn’t use this one) I have these generated for me using a random password generator online. I usually have it generate like 10-15 then I choose the ones I like.  Just make sure you can remember it.

Next we are going to choose our environment.  I am looking for optimal performance in this server so I’m not going to choose a GUI, they just take up too many resources, so I am selecting server.  This will be command line only after the OS install.  Notice at the bottom how I selected “customize now” at the bottom of the screen.

Next we are going to choose some packages to install from the CD.  We are going to leave the defaults in most categories but we need to add and subtract a few here and there.  On this screen I chose that I wanted the development tools (this is so we can compile programs from source if neccessary).

In the server category we are going to uncheck most of them.  I only left the mail server (in case I want to setup notifications later using a service monitor), server configuration tools, and at the very bottom even though you can’t see it Windows file integration.

After those customizations we hit next and move on and everything gets installed.

It takes about 15-20 minutes.  But we are finally finished with the CentOS install.  Next we will add our apache, php, mysql, pureftp, and other goodies.  We didn’t add them earlier because I like to have a little more control, I like to have the latest and greatest.  There are other cases where you want to install a certain version of apache or mysql and php because of support and what not.  Let’s move on shall we?