Minimum requirements are:
Hint
We recommend to use at least 2 disks to setup a RAID 1. The RAID software will ensure data integrity in case of a disk failure.
NethServer Enterprise is compatible with any hardware certified by Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL®), listed on hardware.redhat.com
NethServer Enterprise supports two installation modes. In short:
Installing from ISO
- Download the ISO image
- Prepare a CD / DVD
- Follow the wizard
Installing from YUM
- Install CentOS Minimal
- Configure the network
- Install from network
Warning
The ISO installation will erase all existing data on hard drives!
Download the ISO file from official site helpdesk.nethesis.it. The downloaded ISO file can be used to create a bootable media such as CD or DVD. The creation of a bootable disk is different from writing files into CD/DVD, and it requires the use of a dedicated function (e.g. write or burn ISO image). Instructions on how to create a bootable CD/DVD from the ISO are easily available on the Internet or in the documentation of your operating system.
Start the machine using the freshly backed media. If the machine will not start from the CD/DVD, please refer to the documentation of the motherboard BIOS. A typical problem is how boot device priority is configured. First boot device should be the CD/DVD reader.
On start a menu will display different types of installation:
NethServer Enterprise interactive install
It allows you to select the language, configure RAID support, network, and encrypted file system. It will be described in depth in the next paragraph.
Other / Unattended NethServer Enterprise install
This installation mode does not require any kind of human intervention: a set of default parameters will be applied to the system.
Standard CentOS installations
Use the standard CentOS installation procedure.
Tools
Start the system in rescue (recovery) mode, execute a memory test or start the hardware detection tool.
Boot from local drive
Attempts to boot a system that is already installed on the hard disk.
At the end of the installation process you will be asked to reboot the machine. Be sure to remove the installation media before restarting.
After installation, the system will be configured as follows:
rootNethesis,1234usUTCYou can add extra parameters to unattended installation by pressing TAB and editing the boot loader command line.
To disable raid, just add this option to the command line:
raid=none
If you need to select installation hard drives, use:
disks=sdx,sdy
Other available options:
The interactive mode allows you to make a few simple choices on the system configuration:
Select the language in which you want to use the interactive mode. Keyboard layout and time zone are changed accordingly and can be modified just after the first login to the web interface.
System language is always set to English.
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) allows you to combine all the disks in order to achieve fault tolerance and an increase in performance.
This screen is displayed when two or more disks were detected at start.
Available levels:
You can create a spare disk if disk number is greater than the minimum required by the selected level RAID, A spare disk will be added to the RAID in case a failure occurs.
You can change the root user’s password inside the first
configuration wizard.
A good password is:
Default password is Nethesis,1234.
When enabling this option, all data written to the disk will be encrypted using symmetric encryption. In case of theft, an attacker will not be able to read the data without the encryption key.
It is possible to choose a password for the encryption, otherwise the system administrator password will be used.
Note
You will need to enter the password at every system boot.
Warning
Following characters are not supported inside the password:
#, = and $.
Select the network interface that will be used to access the LAN. This interface is also known as green interface.
Host and Domain Name (FQDN)
Type the host name and domain in which the server will operate (e.g.
server.mycompany.com).
- Note: Domain name can only contain letters, numbers and the
- dash.
IP Address
Type a private IP address (from RFC 1918) to be assigned to the server; if you want to install it in an existing network, you must provide a unused IP address valid for that network (in general you can use the first or last host inside the network range, e.g. 192.168.7.1 or 192.168.7.254).
Netmask
Type the subnet mask of the network. You can safely leave the default value.
Gateway
Type the IP address of the gateway on which you are installing the server.
DNS
Type a valid DNS. Example: 8.8.8.8
After parameters input, the procedure will start the installation. See also Next steps.
It is possible to install NethServer Enterprise on a fresh CentOS installation using the yum command to download software packages. This is the recommended installation method if you have
For example, if you wish to install NethServer Enterprise 6.10, just start with a CentOS 6.10 on your system (many VPS providers offer CentOS pre-installed virtual machines), and then execute below commands to transform CentOS into NethServer Enterprise.
Enable specific YUM repositories with this command:
yum localinstall -y http://mirror.nethserver.org/nethserver/nethserver-release-6.rpm
To install the base system, run:
nethserver-install
Alternatively, to install base system and additional modules, pass the name of the module as a parameter to the install script. Example:
nethserver-install nethserver-mail nethserver-nut
Enterprise promotion
To promote to NethServer Enterprise version follow the instructions available here.