So I was curious to try out CentOS 7 on my old Gateway GT5662 desktop that's lying around gathering dust.

Some more specs on the Gateway desktop:

  • Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE
  • Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor
  • Ethernet Controller Realtek
  • RTL8201N 2x 250GB Maxtor 7L250S0 SATA drives

These are the steps I took:

1. Download the CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD ISO (3.86 GB) and burn to a DVD

2. Boot the system and select boot from CD/DVD drive

3. Select 'Install CentOS 7'

4. Select your language, in my case I took 'English' -> 'English (United States)' and click on 'Continue'

5. Under 'LOCALIZATION' click on 'Date & Time' - then select your correct timezone - in my case, that is:

Region: Americas

City: Los Angeles

You can also select this by just clicking on the map. When done selecting your timezone click on 'Done' - it's on the upper left corner.

6. Make sure that under 'SOFTWARE', the 'SOFTWARE SELECTION' shows: 'Minimal Install' - this is going to be a server installation so we don't want any GUI/X-Windows

7. Under 'SYSTEM' click on 'INSTALLATION DESTINATION' - Since I have 2 disks I'm going to setup a RAID

  • You should now be at the 'Device Selection' screen - in my case I see the 2 Maxtor drives - click on each one once to tick them

  • Under 'Other Storage Options', select 'I will configure partitioning', then click 'Done' on the upper left corner

8. You should now be at the 'MANUAL PARTITIONING' screen - in my case I had a previous CentOS 7 installation that showed up as 'CentOS Linux Linux 7.0.1406 for x86_64' - because that installation is taking up all space on the drives, I need to remove those partitions first.

  • Expand the 'CentOS Linux Linux 7.0.1406 for x86_64' section

  • I now see the mount points: /home, /boot, / and swap

  • Click on '/home' and then on the lower part of the screen click the minus sign '-' which stands for 'Remove the selected mountpoint(s).'

  • This will give you a warning 'Are you sure you want to delete all of the data on home?', make sure to also tick 'Delete all other filesystems in the CentOS Linux Linux 7.0.1406 for x86_64 root as well' then click on 'Delete It'

  • Now under 'New CentOS 7 Installation' click on 'Click here to create them automatically', this will give you the following mounts: /home, /boot, / and swap

  • but we want to make sure they are set up as RAID - do the following:

  • Click on '/home', then on the right side of the screen, click on the 'Device Type' dropdown and select 'RAID' - then on the RAID Level dropdown select 'RAID0 (Performance)' then click on 'Update Settings' on the right side Do the same for /boot, / and SWAP - make sure they are all set as RAID0 and that you click 'Update Settings' for each :) Once you're done click on the 'Done' button on the top left

  • You'll now get a 'SUMMARY OF CHANGES' window - click on 'Accept Changes' to proceed

9. click on 'Begin Installation' to ... well.. begin the installation :)))

10. While the system is copying files, click on the 'ROOT PASSWORD' under the 'USER SETTINGS' and change your root password to something sensible, i.e. 'toucan' :))

11. Wait for the installation to complete - this is a good time for a coffee.

12. Once the installation is complete, go ahead and click on 'Reboot' - CentOS 7 will boot up and you should get to the login screen. Login as root with the password you set. Once I logged in I noticed that my ethernet card was not detected:

dmesg | grep eth

.. no output

After searching online some I found this solution: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=299864

On a computer with a working internet connection download this file:

curl -O http://mirror.symnds.com/distributions/elrepo/elrepo/el7/x86_64/RPMS/kmod-forcedeth-0.64-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

and copy it to a USB drive then back on CentOS:

cd /media
mkdir usb
mount /dev/sdg1 /media/usb
cd usb
yum localinstall kmod-forcedeth-0.64-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm -y
cd /
umount /media/usb

and reboot the system with:

reboot

login again - you should now have a network device:

dmesg | grep eth

Output:

[    6.862944] forcedeth: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[    6.863983] forcedeth: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.64.
[    7.381233] forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: ifname eth0, PHY OUI 0x732 @ 1, addr 00:1e:90:77:86:5c
[    7.381242] forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: highdma pwrctl mgmt lnktim msi desc-v3
[    7.711222] systemd-udevd[491]: renamed network interface eth0 to enp0s7
[   11.651907] forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[   11.651960] forcedeth 0000:00:07.0 enp0s7: MSI enabled

Install the net-tools package to get the ifconfig command that we all love:

yum install net-tools -y

Check what IP you got with ifconfig:

ifconfig
enp0s7: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.2.10  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.2.255
        inet6 fe80::21e:90ff:fe77:865c  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:1e:90:77:86:5c  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 6262  bytes 9046369 (8.6 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 4173  bytes 308745 (301.5 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 0  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

SSH is set to start by default and in my case it was already listening, so I can now SSH in from my other desktop for more adventures.