Rocky Linux Installation

VNC/GUI Setup

VNC Installation Guide

Network Configuration

  • Choose first non-virtual, plugged-in ethernet port (usually eno10n1)

  • Activate it to ON

  • Set hostname (not FQDN, just mawenzi-04)

  • Go to Configure

    • IPv6: Ignore

    • General: Connect automatically with priority (checked)

OS Drive Partitioning

  • Choose Custom

    • Remove /home partition, let /home just live under /

    • Expand / partition to 200G

    • Ensure old MBR/partitions are deleted

Kickstart Configuration

RedHat Documentation:

RHEL distributions have a kickstart feature which allows you to provide a configuration file to automate install option selections. This is equivalent to the autoyast.xml that OpenSUSE uses.

Doing a VNC/GUI setup will generate anaconda-ks.cfg kickstart file to the /root directory. You can use this as a starting point/template for more installs by hosting it on an HTTP server, like http://10.214.131.45/kickstart and referencing that via the grub command-line parameters during boot.

Boot via virtual media again, when you get to the grub prompt for Install Rocky Linux you can highlight it, hit e to edit:

GRUB entry

then add boot parameters for the kickstart file and hostname: inst.ks=http://10.214.131.45/kickstart/rocky86nvme.ks hostname=mawenzi-06

GRUB linux setparams
To fully automate it, embed kickstart file into ISO and have it boot that via PXE

Kickstart Templates

Example kickstart template:

#version=RHEL8
# Use graphical install
graphical

repo --name="Minimal" --baseurl=file:///run/install/sources/mount-0000-cdrom/Minimal

%packages
@^minimal-environment
kexec-tools

%end

# Keyboard layouts
keyboard --xlayouts='us'
# System language
lang en_US.UTF-8

# Network information
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=enp193s0f4u4 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto --no-activate
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ens10f0 --noipv6 --activate
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ens10f1 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ens10f2 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ens10f3 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ib0 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=ib1 --onboot=off --ipv6=auto

# Use CDROM installation media
cdrom

reboot
eula --agreed

# Run the Setup Agent on first boot
firstboot --enable

ignoredisk --only-use=nvme0n1

# Zero the MBR, and clear all partitions
zerombr
clearpart --all --initlabel

# Disk partitioning information
# Create 3 partitions:
# - /boot     : XFS filesystem, on /dev/nvme0n1, size 1G
# - pv.297    : LVM filesystem, on /dev/nvme0n1, size 75G
# - /boot/efi : EFI filesystem, on /dev/nvme0n1, size 600M
part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=nvme0n1 --size=1024
part pv.297 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=nvme0n1 --size=75784
part /boot/efi --fstype="efi" --ondisk=nvme0n1 --size=600 --fsoptions="umask=0077,shortname=winnt"

# LVM Physical Volume (PV) and Volume Group (VG) information
# Create volume group named rl, physical extent size of 4MiB using the pv.297 physical volume
volgroup rl --pesize=4096 pv.297
# Create swap Logical Volume (LV), with swap filesystem, sized to 4G
logvol swap --fstype="swap" --size=4096 --name=swap --vgname=rl
# Create root LV, with XFS filesystem, sized to 1G and allow it to grow
logvol / --fstype="xfs" --grow --size=1024 --name=root --vgname=rl

# System timezone, use HPE's lab NTP servers
timezone America/Denver --isUtc --ntpservers=16.110.135.123

# Root password
rootpw --iscrypted $6$8ECDqlb/TngydIOy$OXaf2ohWd8V9ze0JqNA04UPSzBCk2d0EZ/VJ9Bw5xpSQD26J1FizadA7G3wrAt0Jlf50G7V3tP1p73yAeOMRX1

# Enable RedHat kernel dump
%addon com_redhat_kdump --enable --reserve-mb='auto'

%end

%anaconda
pwpolicy root --minlen=6 --minquality=1 --notstrict --nochanges --notempty
pwpolicy user --minlen=6 --minquality=1 --notstrict --nochanges --emptyok
pwpolicy luks --minlen=6 --minquality=1 --notstrict --nochanges --notempty
%end

Once you’ve saved the configuration and continued booting via Ctrl + x, you should see the installation screen:

Rocky install screen

Kickstart just gets you a running OS, then you can use Ansible for further configuration like secrets, environment variables, services, etc.

Ansible, Puppet, etc are usually post-OS install tools.

Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

Show Physical Volumes

  • pvdisplay

  • pvs

Show Volume Groups

  • vgdisplay

Extending a Logical Volume

If you need more space for /, create a new partition (/dev/sda4) and use pvcreate to create another physical volume. Then you can add that new physical volume to the logical volume for root /.

Disable Firewall

Disable firewalld

systemctl stop firewalld
systemctl disable firewalld

Disable selinux

setenforce 0

DNF Proxy Configuration

cat >> /etc/dnf/dnf.conf << EOF
[main]
gpgcheck=0
installonly_limit=3
clean_requirements_on_remove=True
best=True
skip_if_unavailable=False
proxy=http://proxy.houston.hpecorp.net:8080
EOF

Proxy Environment

cat >> /etc/environment << EOF
#Proxies for LR1
http_proxy="http://proxy.houston.hpecorp.net:8080/"
https_proxy="http://proxy.houston.hpecorp.net:8080/"
ftp_proxy="http://proxy.houston.hpecorp.net:8080/"
EOF