How to Install GUI (Gnome 3) Using CD/DVD on RHEL/CentOS 7

Table of Contents#

1. Prerequisites
2. Insert the Installation Media
3. Enable the Installation Repositories
4. Install the Gnome 3 Packages
5. Configure the System to Boot into GUI Mode
6. Reboot and Verify the Installation

1. Prerequisites#

• You should have a RHEL/CentOS 7 installation CD/DVD. Make sure it's a valid and up-to-date media.
• You need to have administrative (root) privileges on the system. You can log in as the root user or use sudo commands if your user has been granted appropriate sudo rights.

2. Insert the Installation Media#

• Insert the RHEL/CentOS 7 CD/DVD into your server's optical drive.
• If your server has an auto-mount feature disabled (which is common in some server setups), you may need to manually mount the CD/DVD. For example, if your CD/DVD is detected as /dev/sr0 (this can vary depending on your system's hardware), you can mount it using the following command:

mount /dev/sr0 /mnt

This will mount the CD/DVD contents to the /mnt directory.

3. Enable the Installation Repositories#

• Edit the repository configuration file. For RHEL, it's usually in /etc/yum.repos.d/ (the exact name might be something like rhel-media.repo). For CentOS, it could be CentOS-Media.repo in the same directory.
• Open the file with a text editor (e.g., vi or nano). For example:

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Media.repo

• In the file, find the section related to the media (CD/DVD) repository. Uncomment the lines (remove the # at the beginning) that enable the repository. It might look something like this:

[media]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Media
baseurl=file:///mnt
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

• Save and close the file.

4. Install the Gnome 3 Packages#

• Now, you can install the Gnome 3 packages using the yum package manager. Run the following command:

yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop" "Graphical Administration Tools"

• This command will install the core Gnome 3 desktop environment along with some useful graphical administration tools. The installation process may take some time as it downloads and installs multiple packages. You'll be prompted to confirm the installation (type y and press Enter).

5. Configure the System to Boot into GUI Mode#

• By default, RHEL/CentOS 7 may boot into a text-based (command-line) mode. To change it to boot into GUI mode, you need to configure the system's default target.
• Edit the grub2 configuration file. Open /etc/default/grub with a text editor:

vi /etc/default/grub

• Look for the line that starts with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX. Add rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet (if it's not already there) and also add systemd.unit=graphical.target at the end. So it might look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet systemd.unit=graphical.target"

• Then, update the grub2 configuration:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

6. Reboot and Verify the Installation#

• Reboot your system using the command:

reboot

• After the system restarts, you should see the Gnome 3 login screen. Enter your username and password (if you have user accounts set up) or use the root credentials (not recommended for regular use but for initial testing).
• Once logged in, explore the Gnome 3 desktop. Check that applications like file managers (e.g., Nautilus), terminal emulators (e.g., Gnome Terminal), and system settings work as expected.

Reference#

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Documentation
• CentOS Documentation

That's it! You've successfully installed the Gnome 3 GUI on RHEL/CentOS 7 using a CD/DVD.