If you are planning to install CentOS 7.0 minimal (not all features installed by default), you may want to take a look at the following network configuration. CentOS 7.0 minimal install offers a very basic server capabilities so we need to take care of some features manually.
Here are some features that needs our attention after installing CentOS 7.0 Minimal
A. Initial Network Configuration
By default, network connection is in disconnected state. Even if your CentOS is physically connected to your LAN Switch, you won’t be able to connect CentOS to the network because its not enable yet. This issue can be resolved during CentOS installation. You must configure the network during the installation process. The other option is to start the network after the installation process. The second one will be discussed on this post.
Check the Network connection status
Use the following command to display all the network interfaces and its status
nmcli d
Output:
As you can see, my main network device (eth0) state is disconnected. We need to connect this interface in order to use CentOS for network server.
Configure the Network Connection
Now we need to edit the eth0 device. Use nmtui command to configure it.
nmtui
On the first screen, select edit a connection
Next, select the interface to configure and select Edit
On the next page, you will see some detailed settings for the network interface we choose. We can specify the network IP address manually or use the DHCP server if available on the network. On this example, I want to set the network in manual mode.
If you didn’t see the details as above, point your cursor to <show> and press Enter. It will display those IP address options. Select Manual and enter the address, gateway and DNS manually. We can also set to automatically connect upon startup. Select OK and press Enter to complete this step.
Finally go back to the first screen and select Activate a Connection
Select the interface we previously configure and Activate it.
We’ve just completed the initial network configuration for CentOS 7.
B. Update CentOS 7
After the network connection is working, the first thing to do is to update CentOS. It is essential to have the most recent packages with bug fixes and better security. You can update CentOS with the following command
yum update
The update process could take some times.
C. Install Cockpit, Web Based System Administration
Cockpit is a great application that provides an easier way to manage and configure CentOS as a server. It provide a web based GUI to access to some important feature of the CentOS server such as Storage, Networking, System Health and many more.
To install Cockpit, do the following command
yum install cockpit
Next, enable the service
systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
Modify the firewall
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=cockpit firewall-cmd --reload
Type the following address on a web browser from other computer:
https://centos-ip-address:9090
Example:
Thanks for reading. Please leave us comments if you have any questions.
