The latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux i.e. 8 is released now. RHEL 8 is shipped with Linux Kernel 4.18 and a bunch of new features. We will discuss new features of RHEL 8 in our future posts, for now, we will see the process of RHEL 8 minimal installation. This type of installation is best for server platform without GUI and fulfills the concept of bastion system by limiting the installed packages.
In this article, we will perform installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux / RHEL 8 (Minimal) on bare-metal or virtual machines.
System Specification:
We have provisioned a virtual machine with following specification.
- CPU - 3.4 Ghz (2 cores)
- Memory - 1 GB
- Storage - 40 GB
Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux / RHEL 8 (Minimal):
Download RHEL 8 ISO from Red Hat website. You may need a Developer Account to download it.
After download, attach RHEL 8 DVD/ISO in our virtual machine’s DVDROM and start the VM.
After boot from DVDROM, you will see RHEL 8 installation menu.
Select Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0.0 and press <ENTER>.
Anaconda installer for linux is starting up.
Installer displays the welcome screen with the new Red Hat logo and ask us to select a Language for use during installation process of RHEL 8.
Select your preferred language here and click on <Continue>.
We are now at the Installation Summary screen. It is the main screen to access and customize all the RHEL 8 installation options. We will customize some of the default options here.
First of all, set the Time & Date.
Adjust Time, Date and Timezone according to your environment.
Click on <Done> to return to Installation Summary screen.
We are back at Installation Summary screen.
We are installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux / RHEL 8 minimally, therefore, click on Software Selection to customize it accordingly.
Select the option Minimal Install and click on <Done>.
Now, configure Installation Destination according to your requirement.
We are not required any special disk layout, therefore, we will accept the default disk layout. However, you can customized you disk layout, partitions, filesystems and mountpoints from this screen.
When finished customizing the disk layout, click on <Done>.
One more configuration and we are done with it. Click on Network & Hostname to configure networking.
We are now at Network & Hostname screen. We can configure IP Address, Gateway, DNS and Hostname here.
You may notice that, in default settings, Networking is off and the hostname is set to localhost.localdomain.
Since, we are installing on a virtual machine, and the VMWare has an integrated DHCP server. Therefore, we just turn on the networking and it will set all network settings like IP Address, Gateway, etc.
Furthermore, set a proper Hostname in the field at the bottom of the screen and click on <apply>.
After you have made above customizations, the screen may look like this.
After setup of networking, click on <Done> to return to Installation Summary screen.
We are done with configurations for RHEL 8 installation. Click on <Begin Installation> to start Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 installation.
Installation of RHEL 8 has been started. Meanwhile, we can configure two more options here.
First, we can set the root user password by clicking on Root Password option.
Set a strong password for root user. Click on <Done>.
Note: If you set a weak password then, you have to click twice on <Done> to get back to Installation Progress screen.
Second, click on User Creation option to create a custom user on RHEL 8.
We have created a user with administrator privileges. Click on <Done>.
After completion of installation, click on <Reboot>.
The system is now boot from hard disk and displaying RHEL 8 boot menu.
Select the first option and press <ENTER> or wait for 5 sec, to automatically select the first option.
We are reached at the Login prompt of RHEL 8 CLI mode.
We have successfully installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux / RHEL 8 (Minimal).
