Installing CentOS 7

The following instructions are designed to help you install CentOS 7.x. After installing the operating system, follow the instructions in the Installing Zixi Products on Linux section to complete the installation.

To install CentOS 7 on your computer:

Download the “CentOS-7x86_64-Minimal-1908.iso” file from the following link: http://mirrors.seas.harvard.edu/centos/7.7.1908/isos/x86_64/
A list of additional mirrors can be found at http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/
Copy the downloaded file to a FAT 32 formatted USB thumb drive of good quality with at least 8 GB of space.
To create a bootable USB drive, download Rufus to your computer from the following link - https://rufus.akeo.ie/
Right-click on the Rufus icon and choose Run as Administrator.
The following screen is displayed:
In the Device field, select the name of your USB thumb drive.
In the Create bootable disk using field, select the format of the downloaded image (e.g. ISO image).
Click on the disk icon to browse to the CentOS 7 ISO to install.
Click Start.
The process will take a couple minutes and the lower window will display “READY!” when done.
Remove the USB and install it on the machine you will be installing CentOS on.
Boot your computer by restarting it and then waiting for that first screen to be displayed.
Press the boot option key as instructed on the first screen (e.g. often, it'll say something like "Press F12 to Choose Boot Device").
Wait a moment to continue booting until see a menu pop up with a list of choices on it. Highlight your USB drive and press Enter.
Exit out of your BIOS, while saving your changes. Usually, this option is under "Exit" on the main menu, or available via a keyboard shortcut listed (e.g. F4) somewhere on your screen.
Your computer should reboot. If you're prompted to "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD" do so. Your computer should boot into the USB drive instead of your normal operating system.

Make sure ALL network adapters are connected and ON in order for the Linux installation protocol to be able to SEE them. Otherwise, they will not be set to start up on boot
On the following CentOS 7 prompt screen, select Install CentOS 7 and then press Enter.

To setup CentOS 7:

On the CentOS welcome screen, select the desired language and click Continue.
On the main screen, click Date & Time and then set the time zone, date, and time and then click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Keyboard and then click the big “+” button in the lower left corner and find your keyboards language (you can search), click Add to add it and then click Done (located in the upper left corner). When finished, click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Language Support and select the language of your choice, (default is English) and then click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Installation Source and select the installation USB as the installation source. When finished, click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Software Selection and select Minimal Installation (you may select another type of installation, but this is the minimal default requirement for installing Zixi). When finished, click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Installation Destination and select the device on which you would like to install. Make sure that the hard drive you want to install the system on has the check mark on it by clicking it (if it goes away when you click it, then click it again).
Under the Partitioning section, select the automatic partitioning option (this guide will not cover manually partitioning you hard drive). When finished, click Done (located in the upper left corner).
If your hard drive is empty, the main installation screen will be displayed.
If your hard drive contains partitions, it will ask you to reclaim the space on it in a popup like shown below.
Click Reclaim Space.
The following screen is displayed.
Click Delete All and then click Reclaim Space.
On the main screen, click Network & Hostname ensure you have at least one network adapter listed on the left. If you have multiple network adapters, select the network adapter you want to use. You can use multiple network adapters by configuring network bonding, load balancing and failover schemes (see the Zixi documentation for more details).
For each selected network adapter, toggle the ON/OFF switch to the right to turn it on. ALL network adapters need to be connected and ON in order for the Linux installation protocol to be able to SEE them. Otherwise, they will not be set to start up on boot.
To configure the network adapter, select it and click Configure.

If you want to receive the IP address through DHCP on your server, you can skip this step.
The following screen is displayed:
Click the IPV4 Settings tab and then click Add. Fill in the IP address you want this server to have (make sure it’s not already in use), the netmask and the gateway. When done, click Save.
In the Hostname field, enter the a name of the server (default - localhost.localdomain). When finished, click Done (located in the upper left corner).
On the main screen, click Begin Installation.
The installation will begin.
While it’s installing, you have to set the root password. Click the Root Password button in the middle of the screen.
Type in the password you want the root user to have in both password fields.

Select a strong password for the root.user and save it in a secure location.
Click Done.
When the progress bar is at 100%, click Finish Configuration.
When the process ends, remove the USB thumb drive and click Reboot.
After a minute or two the following screen is displayed:
Type the “root” user here and press Enter.
Type the password and press Enter.

To update the operating system:

Run the following commands as a “Root” user:

# yum update –y

# yum install –y yum-utils net-tools wget ntp network-scripts telnet

After the default CentOS7 installation, NetworkManager service will be running. As networking configuration can be handled by the network-scripts package, it is advised that NetworkManager be disabled and removed. Run the following commands to disable NetworkManager:

On CentOS8, the network-scripts package is deprecated so NetworkManager must be kept.
```
# systemctl stop NetworkManager

# systemctl disable NetworkManager

# yum remove –y NetworkManager
```