[CentOS] Installation of 6.0

[Lamar Owen]

On Tuesday, September 20, 2011 06:25:45 PM Robert Spangler wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 September 2011 17:39, the following was written:
> >  Do an install without GUI (not
> > necessarily a minimal install, but a server install) and see what comes up
> > on first boot.  Like I said, that's what my RHEL 6.1 box did on first boot.

> I guess it would all depend on what ISO you are using then because I built a 
> new system this weekend using 'CentOS-6.0-x86_64-minimal.iso' and upon reboot 
> I never get anything for first boot.  I had to edit my configuration files by 
> hand to get the system online.

As RHEL doesn't do a minimal install ISO, I installed with the default DVD ISO install.  As I said, this is the upstream installation, as a server.  If you're using the minimal ISO, then YMMV.  The point simply was that the firstboot script does not depend upon the GUI, that is all.

> NetworkManager is a POS and should be dropped.
> Of course this is my opinion and I stand by it.

With RHEL 6.1 running a server (that has remote GUI capabilities, but a text-mode console), I have found NetworkManager to be stable, and to make it quite a bit easier to configure multiple interfaces on first use.  It simply was not that difficult to set up and get persistent networking from the get-go.  I used the remote VNC GUI install, and set up networking inside the installer for all four NICs, even naming the connections in a reasonable manner.  

Everything just worked and has been rock-solid stable since installation.  Having the neat little 'blink this NIC's LED' made identification a snap, and when set up correctly even if the cards are moved around the settings are persistent.  Of course, cloning and going to another box, or complete NIC replacement, requires more thought since the MAC addresses of the NIC's are used for device naming and assignment, but that's true no matter what way you configure your networking, since you have little to no control over NIC enumeration order in a deterministic fashion.  A little forethought and it's painless even then (I do this frequently with virtual machine clones).

Text mode usage of NM isn't hard once the connections are set up, either.  Starting and stopping interfaces by connection name rather than device name has been quite handy for temporary tunnels/connections and such, as well.  That was all done in text mode, too, no GUI required.  GUI only required at present for configuring connections; that issue is being worked on.

Upstream may completely deprecate the old way in favor of NM one day; getting familiar with how to drive NM is a good idea for the future, regardless of what we think about NM.