[CentOS] Installing a gnome-desktop on CENTOS-6.3 following minimal system install.

[James B. Byrne]

On Fri, October 5, 2012 10:43, Phil Dobbin wrote:
> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>
>> Nux! wrote:
>>> On 05.10.2012 14:31, Nux! wrote:
>>>> On 05.10.2012 14:05, James B. Byrne wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So what is it that I am missing?  What other step is required to
>>>>> get
>>>>> my 'normal' gnome desktop with the utilities ans such displayed
>>>>> in
>>>>> the title bar?
>>>> Try:
>>>> yum groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "General Purpose
>>>> Desktop"
>>>>
>>>> Btw, you can't really have "minimal" AND "gnome" ... :-)
>> <snip>
>> Yeah... they keep changing the group names, for no good reason
>> AFAIK. For
>> example, between 5 and 6, they changed KDE from "KDE (K Desktop
>> Environment)" to  "KDE Desktop". Note that we groupinstall "X Window
>> System" and Desktop, and *then* the KDE; I'd assume gnome was the
>> same.
>>
>>        mark, confirmed gnome disliker (and hater of gnome 3)
>
> If I require a minimal desktop in CentOS 6, I usually use the net
> install ISO & when the time comes, just select 'minimal desktop' &
> there's a small(ish) gnome desktop installed but without all the major
> cruft.
>
> Granted this minimal desktop does include Firefox but then again, if I
> want a desktop environment, I usually want Firefox.
>
yum groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "General Purpose Desktop"

appears to have worked.  As I had already installed two of these I
infer that the missing bit was "Desktop Platform".  Is there a purpose
served by making the process of installing the gnome-desktop so
opaque?  Not that it matters much to me for I am likely to be
switching to kde once Redhat embraces Gnome3.  But it does seem
needlessly convoluted.  I thought that the whole purpose of
groupinstall was to avoid this sort of peek-a-boo package selection.

Anyway, it is installed and working.  This is a temporary arrangement
as I intend to remove the desktop components from the kvm host OS once
I am finished.

There is one 'gotcha' however.  When I installed the three of these
packages NetworkManager got turned on.  This evidently overrode the
NM_CONTROLLED=NO configuration in the ifcfg files.

This is not a good thing when you have eth0 linked to a bridge and you
have a dhcp server somewhere on your lan.  I ended up with br0 having
one IP and eth0 having another, which had, shall we say, interesting
effects on connectivity.

Thank you for the help. I am very much afraid that I would never have
sorted this out on my own.

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