There is a new version of this tutorial available for CentOS 8.

How to install a CentOS 7 minimal server

This tutorial exists for these OS versions

On this page

  1. 1 Requirements
  2. 2 Preliminary Note
  3. 3 Install the Base System

This document describes the installation of CentOS 7 Server with a basic minimal installation. The purpose of this guide is to provide a minimal setup that can be used as basis for our other tutoruials here at howtoforge like the perfect server guides or the SAMBA , LAMP and LEMP server tutorials for CentOS 7.

1 Requirements

To install CentOS 7 with a basic installation of minimal installation we requires following things:

  • A fast internet connection

2 Preliminary Note

This tutorial is based on CentOS 7 server, I use 192.168.0.100 as my IP address in this tutorial and server1.example.com as the hostname. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

3 Install the Base System

Boot from your CentOS 7 DVD. Select Install CentOS 7

Next press ENTER

Next, you can customize the CentOS 7 installation setup-launguage. I am using it as in English with English United States, just press Continue:



Next we will get the following screen

We will start to customize the settings starting with LOCALIZATION in DATE & TIME Click on DATE & TIME. Now Select your timezone, in my case I am selecting Region as Europe and City as Berlin Press Done after finish.



It will make the server DATE & TIME as Europe/Berlin timezone. Next we will customize our KEYBOARD press over that.

Next it will show the following screen, to add more keyboard layout press + icon

It will show the following window, just add more languages as you need. In my case I am adding German, further press Add.

Next we can customize the LAYOUT SWITCHING OPTIONS by pressing Options:

Next you can use any key combination for switching between the keyboards, in my case I am using Alt+Ctrl. Further after selection press Done

Next press Done

Next we will add LANGUAGE SUPPORT by selecting it.

By default CentOS comes with English, we can add more language support. Similarly as in my case I am adding Deutsch German with Deutsch (Luxemberg) Press Done after selection

Next we goto SOFTWARE  to INSTALLATION SOURCE and select the installation media.

Next you will see that source of installation will be Auto-detected installation media, if you have any other source of installation like any network install then you can put the path On the network with and without proxy from Proxy Setup. Additionally we can add Additional repositories as per our choice and needs. After press Done.

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By: tim
Reply  

Thanks.   Good post.

By: tnt
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Download the DVD-image for a minimal install? Bad idea.

By: Aakash
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Great guide. Just installed the CentOS 7 minimal version on my dedicated server. Thanks a lot.

By: midia
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I'm testing in VBox. My first install succeeded, but couldn't ping any network resources. I decided to reinstall and checked the network settings during install. I needed to manually go into network settings and set the software to auto-activate the network interface during install, and then once completed, I could ping the network and internet resources.

By: Arun
Reply  

very nice informative article and I already installed the centos minimal in my vaio laptop but I didn't get get an option like software selection from installation summery page .. Now my system has some issues like taking too much time to boot up etc .. I don't have centos dvd so I stuck with how to install and configure yum package on my system because I cant install none of the application and softwares.. Could you please guide me that how can I install yum packages to my system without the help of a live centos dvd .. I'm very new to Linux so I feel strange with Linux ..

thanks

By: HImachali Ristha
Reply  

This has been illustrated in very simple and easy manner, i love how to forege team, it is indeed a very good website for the beginer, I run my own website www [dot] himachalirishta [dot] com on a centosserver and i have learned a lot from this site.

By: zoidberg
Reply  

And how do you go from minimal centos7 to a fully fledged x-install. I have problems getting xdm to work after installing minimal.

By: Zee
Reply  

Great Tutorial. I was stuck on "No Network available". Nothing showed up on /sbin/route. But this tutorial helped. I had to turn eth0 on.

By: Cipher
Reply  

What if I have both ipv6 and ipv4?Can i just follow you're instructions the same way you did or did I have to configure ipv6 too? I just followed you're instructions for ipv4.

By: syok
Reply  

it is same if i choose text mode. i want minimal instalation

By: SereneLunatic
Reply  

Hey - I do like your tutorials and I am using some of it to get some things working on my systems, but I am using only certain portions to do certain things before I move forward.  For example, I am setting up three servers as virtualization hosts before I do anything else, then I'll use those to create VM's or contianers for things like DNS servers, DHCP, etc., etc.

The one item I believe you should change in this tutorial is that openVZ requires ext4 and doesn't make use of xfs partitions.  At least, that's my understanding - I think I read it in the openVZ documentation or some other tutorial.  Anyway, Centos 7 uses xfs by default if you let it do its own thing with partitioning.  So I would put a disclaimer that if using openVZ on this host that you will want to manually configure the partitioning.  It's still somewhat automatic, as you can click a button to tell the installer to create what it thinks the partition scheme should be, then you can adjust the partitions to use ext4 or whatever else you'd like to do.  For instance, my servers have only two slots for SSD drives.  So I have two 300GB SSDs in a RAID1 configuration and so I click to manually configur partitioning, then I delete the /home that Centos wants to put, and I increase the / (root) parition to take up the entire thing.  That way, I have nearly 276GB to use for VM storage.

Anyway, forgive me if I am mistaken with the filesystem type that openVZ allows, but I did read that it uses ext4 and xfs is a non-started for openVZ.

By: said
Reply  

bonne fiche