Installation of Rocky Linux 9 Operating System

Installation of Rocky Linux 9 Operating System

Installation of Rocky Linux 9 Operating System

This document outlines a graphical installation of Rocky Linux 9 Operating System on x86-64 server hardware. Icareus Playout will be installed as a set of programs running on this operating system.
Info
The Rocky Linux website contains some Documentation, e.g. Rocky Linux Guides, which can be helpful if you need more information.

Download Rocky Linux 9

Rocky Linux 9 ISO images can be obtained by download from Download Rocky Linux.
Please select architecture AMD/Intel (x86_64), version Rocky Linux 9 and choose the DVD ISO. At the time of writing this, the newest version is v9.7.
You need to write the DVD ISO image to bootable media, preferably a USB stick. Note that the image size is about 13 GiB, so you need a USB stick of size at least 16GiB.
Idea
To create a bootable USB stick on Windows, one option is to use the free "Rufus" software.

Hardware requirements

Icareus Playout uses standard Linux servers and our software are HW agnostic.
Server minimum requirements are:
1.    4 core processor
2.    8GB memory
3.    1TB disk(s)
4.    Icareus Playout can also be installed to virtual machine running Rocky Linux 9. We suggest to allocate 8GB RAM, at least 100 GB disk space on the root ( / ) partition and 2 NICs.
For remote support, Icareus needs a TeamViewer, AnyDesk or VPN connection for server access.
Info
For a normal Icareus Playout deployment on Rocky Linux 9, the disk usage is most often at least in the 10's of gigabytes, including the system and other installed software, but it's always good to have more space on / and /opt for e.g. backups or if the EPG database or Carousel or SSU files are large etc., that's why we recommend minimum 100 GB.
Warning
During the installation - and after it - keep the servers located in a secure network that is firewalled from the public Internet.

Rocky Linux 9 Installation

Note that the screenshots below are for Rocky Linux 9.7, but later versions probably install the same way.

1) Insert the USB stick and boot from it (select the boot media by selecting F11 when booting). In the first Rocky Linux 9.7 screen, select the first option Install Rocky Linux 9.7 using the keyboard and press Enter.
You will see some log message and on success, you will be greeted by a welcome screen. 

2) Select the language to use during the installation, select e.g. English (United States) and click the Continue button.


3) The installer provides an INSTALLATION SUMMARY page for navigating to various configuration options.



4) Under LOCALIZATION, click on Keyboard, Language Support and Time & Date to configure your preferred settings for these.

In this example, we enable Finnish keyboard, continue using the English (United States) language and specify the Europe/Helsinki timezone.



5) Under SOFTWARE, we keep the Installation Source as Local media. Click on software selection to install software. Choose Server with GUI as the Base Environment. As Additional software select
  1. Development Tools
  2. Graphical Administration Tools
  3. Headless Management
  4. System Tools
In the case that you know you need some other additional software for your environment, select that too.
Return from SOFTWARE SELECTION to the summary by clicking Done.



6) Back on the INSTALLATION SUMMARY page, click on Root Password under USER SETTINGS. The root user is a superuser account used to administer the system.

Enter a reasonable root password, make a note of it or remember it.

In addition, enable Allow root SSH login with password.


Press Done to return to the INSTALLATION SUMMARY.

7) Next, under the SYSTEM heading, click Installation Destination.

Here you can configure the hard disk where the system will be installed. In this example, we only have 30 GiB local disk.
The purpose is to maximize the size of the root (/) partition and make it bootable.
On the INSTALLATION DESTINATION page, we select the disk and under Storage Configuration select the Custom
 option.


Click the Done button to proceed.

8) On the MANUAL PARTITIONING page, under New Rocky Linux 9.7 Installation, we create mount points.
Click on the link Click here to create them automatically.



9) Continuing with the MANUAL PARTITIONING, make sure that the root partition (/) is at least 50% of the disk.
For example if the disk is 1000 GiB, assign at least 500 GiB to the root partition.
You can leave the other settings as they are by default. Make sure you have a /boot and a swap partition, the installer will provide these automatically.

After making changes click Done.




10) Review the SUMMARY OF CHANGES. Nothing will be written to the disk at this point, only later when we Begin Installation (see below). If all is good, click Accept Changes.



11) On the INSTALLATION SUMMARY page, click KDUMP under SYSTEM. On the KDUMP page disable kdump by unchecking the Enable kdump checkbox. Click Done.



12) Back on INSTALLATION SUMMARY page, click Network & Host Name to make initial network configuration.

You will see a list of Ethernet network interfaces, e.g. Ethernet (enp0s3).



13) Check that the toggle to the right is toggled and the selected interface is in Connected mode.

14) Click Configure... to configure settings for the selected ethernet interface.

15) In the Editing window select the tab General and check that Connect automatically with priority is enabled. Edit other features of the connection if necessary. Click Save.



16) Back on the NETWORK & HOST NAME page, change the Host Name.
The host name can also be changed later, when the system is up and running.
For example when installing a primary server, the Host Name can be playout-main. Click Apply.



17) On the NETWORK & HOST NAME page, click Done.

18) You can create another user under User Creation. This user can also be made an administrator of the system by selecting Make this user administrator. In this example we add an admin user with the username icareus. After entering the information, click Done.
If you create another user, do not use the user name playout, because the Playout software installation will create the playout user automatically later with the correct home directory.



Back on the INSTALLATION SUMMARY page, make a final review.


If everything is OK, click Begin Installation.

19) At the INSTALLATION PROGRESS page, wait for the installation to proceed. This will take at least a few minutes.



20) When the page says Complete! you can click Reboot System.

Info
You should remove the installation media (e.g. USB stick) from the server at this point.



21) Rebooting the server, if the installation succeeded you will see a boot screen and the system will start running. You will be able to select the user to login with. To use root, click first on Not listed? which lets you write the Username root. Press Enter and write the root user's password and press Enter.
Idea
Optionally use the other administrator user if you created one.



Having logged in successfully you will see a Rocky desktop and will be able to e.g. start a terminal by clicking the Terminal icon. In the case that the icon is not visible, first click on Activities.



The terminal will be used to configure the operating system and install Icareus Playout. As a first example we run the powerful ls command which lists the files in root's home directory, showing the anaconda-ks.cfg file name and some directory names.




When done reboot the system. You can do this by typing the command reboot in root's terminal.
At this point please make sure that Rocky Linux starts running automatically after the reboot.
For example for Dell Servers you can press the function key F2 to enter the system setup and do necessary changes.
Warning
If the server gets stuck during boot time, the operating system doesn't start and this can lead to downtime in service.
Congratulations! If you got everything working so far, Rocky Linux 9 is up and running and you can proceed to configure the system so that Icareus Playout can be installed.


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