CentOS 8.x from Scratch

This page targets primarily the setup of minimal CentOS 8.x installation.

Software and Applications

The installation and setup of the following software and applications will described.

• Minimal install of CentOS 7.x
• Xorg
• dwm windows manager
• dmenu
• st terminal

Installation

A simple way to set your screen resolution and color depth for most Live Linux distro's is via the use of the vga=parameter boot option. For example at boot you might type: Live vga=795. This would set your system to boot using the Live label with a screen resolution to 24bit 1280X1024. Here are some more examples of common vga boot values.

Depth	800x600	1024x786	1152x864	1280x1024	1600x1200
8 bit	vga=771	vga=773	vga=353	vga=775	vga=796
16 bit	vga=788	vga=791	vga=355	vga=794	vga=798
24 bit	vga=789	vga=792		vga=795	vga=799

Since this page targets the setup of a minimal CentOS 8 installation you should stick with the default minimal software selection during graphical installation of CentOS 8. Please keep in mind that with this minimal set of software you will not be able to join wireless networks. In order to automatically connect to the wireless network, which you have configured and used during the graphical installation process of CentOS 8, you have to have the following packages installed.

• NetworkManager.x86_64
• NetworkManager-libnm.x86_64
• NetworkManager-team.x86_64
• NetworkManager-tui.x86_64
• NetworkManager-wifi.x86_64

But usually the minimal install of CentOS 8 doesn't come with NetworkManager-wifi installed, which is not cool ... specially on my DELL Latitude E6510. So how do you get this package installed without wireless network connection. You don't wanna mess with cables at the end. Simplest way to go is to mount your installation medium, which is probably still hooked up, change to the repository directory and install the package manually. As root do the following to mount the installation medium and to install the missing package. The following example aims at CentOS 7.6 1804. Other versions may vary.

mkdir -p /mnt/usb1
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb1
cd /mnt/usb1/BaseOS/Packages
dnf install -y wpa_supplicant*
dnf install -y NetworkManger-wifi*
dnf install -y NetworkManager-libnm*

At this point you should be able to use Wifi after rebooting and you may do the following to get NetworkManager upgraded

dnf install -y NetworkManager

But much better would be to update the whole system.

dnf update -y

Post Installation

Disable graphical Boot

plymouth-set-default-theme details
dracut -f