What powers a file serving environment? In this tutorial, we’ll begin to learn the skills required to install an enterprise grade operating system and discover the power and simplicity that makes CentOS the robust and reliable solution trusted by professional throughout the world. No previous experience of this operating system is assumed and during this presentation we will build on the process of a ‘basic server installation’ in order to get you up and running in no time at all.
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Before We Begin …
…Some basic requirements and a few assumptions will be made.
- This tutorial is intended to be an introduction to CentOS during which we will build a typical server installation without a GUI. No prior knowledge or experience of this operating system is assumed but a basic familiarity with the console environment, downloading and burning a CD/DVD image are assumed.
- In this instance we will be concentrating on the 32bit version using IPv4 but unless otherwise stated you may assume the 64 bit version is similar with very little modification required (you may need to remove some 32bit applications). IPv6 will not be discussed.
- All administration tasks will be achieved directly via the console (or a secure shell environment) and you will be shown how to configure the operating system, partition your hard disks, install a file-sharing environment, manage users and maintain a firewall. Additional options (including Apache, PHP/Perl, Virtual Hosts, MySQL, BIND etc … ) will be discussed in a future tutorial.
- CentOS will run on almost any hardware but for the purpose of this tutorial we will be using the computer system described below. Screenshots have been provided (where possible) to support the main body of text together with reasoning and related notes; and as I am from the UK you should be aware that my writing and examples will carry a harmless ‘anglophile’ bias.
- Throughout this tutorial I have used the text editor ‘nano’ due to its simplicity for new users but do change this to your preferred editor as and when required.
- This tutorial is considered to be a guide and there is no guarantee that a replication of the following instruction will work for you without making the necessary changes to suit your needs (i.e. computer name, user names, ip addresses etc …) whilst performing additional steps (based on your network topology) that are beyond the scope of this document.
I hope that this tutorial proves to be useful. Members may continue reading at Tuts+ Premium.