Installing Centos 7 on Node Harddrive

Note: Some of this information may become irrelevant once we get network booting fully figured out, Evan W. has already created a network boot image for CentOS 7 minimal

Be sure you can access the IPMI console

Download the CentOS 7 minimal image in the VM you can access the IPMI console from

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Open your preferred web browser and log into the IPMI console. (Contact the ops team if you need access.)

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It may be necessary to perform a BIOS fix to CentOS 7 properly installs. First power off the machine…

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… then go to BIOS -> Configure BIOS -> Advanced -> Onboard Storage, and make sure “Onboard SCU Store SW Stack” says “Intel RSTe”.

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Start up the KVM console, and click “yes” and “continue” despite all the warnings. There are extra instructions on this, depending on your browser.

  • Click Virtual Media -> Activate Virtual Devices, click yes on warning.
  • Click Virtual Media -> Map CD/DVD -> Browse -> Select CentOS 7 image -> Click Map Device.

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Power on server, go to KVM console, and hit F6 to access the boot menu.

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Choose the boot device “Cisco vKVM-Mapped vDVD1.22”.

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Choose “Install CentOS 7” from the options.

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Unless you’re better at foreign languages than me, pick the install language as English.

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Click “Software Selection”, choose “Compute Node”. I’ve only tried the default settings.

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Note: THE NEXT STEPS NEED TO BE FOLLOWED EXACTLY, OTHERWISE THE INSTALLER CRASHES AND YOU NEED TO RESTART FROM “POWER ON SERVER”

Click “Installation Destination”.

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Under “Other Storage Options” -> “Partitioning”, click “I will configure partitioning.”

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Click “Done,” which brings you to “Manual Partitioning”.

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If there are any listed entries besides “New CentOS 7 Installation”, delete them by clicking on the listed entries then pressing the “-” button below.

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Under “New CentOS 7 Installation” → “New mount points will use the following partitioning scheme:”, pick “Standard Partition”. Remark: Partitioning as LVM ultimately is what causes the issue I warned about.) Next, click “Click here to partition them automatically.”

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Click “Done”, and then in the below window click “Accept Changes”.

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Click “Network & Host Name”.

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Depending on the node, select “Ethernet (enp130s0f0)” or “Ethernet (enp6s0f0)”, -> On. Click “Done.”

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Click “Begin Installation”.

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Click “Set Root Password”.

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Set a root password as appropriate, then click “Done”. (You may have to do this twice if CentOS 7 deems your password weak.)

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Click “User Creation”.

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Enter a username and password. I chose to click to make the user an administrator to use “sudo” without going to “su”. Next, click “Done”. (You may have to do this twice if CentOS 7 deems your password weak.)

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Wait! Your CentOS 7 install is finishing up. Click “Reboot” when it’s done!

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Enjoy!