Last fall, I used Rocky 8 KDE to build my local machine. All has been working fine since then.
I now want to install the same combination (RockyLinux and KDE) on a different machine.
The above link now answers a “404”, and I haven’t found an alternative.
How do I build an ISO for RockyLinux v8.5 and KDE?
How about:
You have one machine with that combo. Make a list of what it has (from rpm -qa, dnf list installed or something).
Make regular Minimal install first. Then install the missing packages.
To install RL & KDE : KDE Plasma Workspaces for RLRC - #8 by bobar ( for vm but just ignore the vm bits )
As to an iso, did you want a basic iso or a live disk ?
What I REALLY want is to create a live internal SSD that I can install on the target machine and then simply boot from it.
I have one system (“desktop”) that is already running RockyLinux v8.5 and KDE. It has stuff on it that I don’t need on the target. I have a 4TB ssd that will work fine, and I can attach it with a USB-3.2 inteface.
I’m looking at burning a DVD and installing from that because I haven’t yet found a recipe for directly building a bootable SSD.
I’m reading that as: you want to put an RL/KDE system on the SSD and then put the SSD in the new machine and boot it.
Could you just clone (as in copy verbatim) the existing working system disk (dd) ?
…but…why can you not just do a normal RL 8.5 install and then install KDE on that ? … if you don’t need the stuff on the existing system - the KDE bit doesn’t take long.
Could you just clone (as in copy verbatim) the existing working system disk (dd) ?
The source SSD is a different size from the target SSD (2TB vs 4TB), and there is detritus on the source system from the way I installed it (windows recovery partition and similar junk). I’d like the target system to be clean.
My impression from various usually-reliable web sources (stackoverflow, etc) is that dd can be very risky, especially when the target media is different from the source (as in my case).
why can you not just do a normal RL 8.5 install and then install KDE on that ? … if you don’t need the stuff on the existing system - the KDE bit doesn’t take long
I’m doing just that right now.
The target system can only read single-layer DVDs, so I’m starting with a minimal ISO. I plan to then add KDE on top of that.
I appreciate the assist!
Do you have network? I have and therefore I boot new systems with PXE. My tftp server (dnsmasq) offers install kernel via PXE. No DVD, USB, nor ISO required.
I do have a network. I wondered about PXE.
I have no “tftp server”. I assume you mean something along the lines of this recipe.
Once I get this target machine running, I may put PXE on it for convenience with future installs.
At the moment, my single working Rocky Linux system is required for everything I do every day. The above recipe looks like it adds a lot of new behavior (apache, tsftp, dhcp, etc) that is as or more complex than getting this install done.
You know you can dd the full RL 8.5 installation iso/dvd onto a usb stick (eg 16GB Sandisk) and boot/install from that ( the iso doesn’t need to go on a CD/DVD ) ?
sudo dd if=Rocky-8.5-x86_64-dvd1.iso of=/dev/sd[a-z] bs=4M status=progress
where sd[a-z] is the usb stick/device you’re using (instead of a DVD)
(not all iso files will allow this although most do today - if you have an iso that doesn’t work this way you can run isohybrid on the file to make it work/boot on a non-CD/DVD drive eg usb/normal disk.)
The target system was manufactured in 2010. It has only USB 2.0 ports, and the BIOS will not boot from USB.
That’s why I need to jump through these hoops.
I ended up burning the minimal.iso onto a single-layer DVD, and then installed Rocky Linux from there.
I did what appears to be a standard KDE-Plasma install, and all seems well.
I think I’m cooking with gas now. I appreciate the help!
If you want to create your own live images, I would check this. It contains kickstarts as well as instructions to building a live image. The reason why we didn’t make a KDE live image at the beginning is because qt5 had rebased and EPEL hadn’t rebased on it yet (and I believe there were other things that needed to be done too).
That “recipe” is mind-boggling. First it lists that one needs: DNSMASQ, TFTP server, Syslinux, and, VSFTPD but they never install dnsmasq. Instead, they install dhcp-server. If you set up dnsmasq, then you need neither dhcp-server nor tftp server.
Furthermore, they install both vsftpd and httpd, even though you need only one file sharing method. (I’ve used NFS, rather than either of those.) If you have solid network, then Rocky installer can reach public Rocky mirrors and you need no copy of repos at all. No vsftpd, NFS, nor httpd.
The resolver in glibc is not very “bright”. NetworkManager can start dnsmasq as caching resolver. That is nice even without any other use for dnsmasq. However, one can modify the config of that dnsmasq instance to get DHCP and TFTP server functionality.
Heh. Yeah, I took a pass on that one.
I’ll revisit the PXE question after I get this target machine working.
A man after my own heart: 2010?!? I’ve done a LOT of hacking on machines of that vintage. Depending on who made the BIOS, if the machine has USB 2.0, if you go into the guts of the BIOS there may be something under BOOT devices that will allow you to boot from a thumb drive.
One thing you may encounter depending on the BIOS update, is that any HDD, or SSD is limited to a total MAXIMUM of 500 GiB. You could have 2 250 GiB HDD / SSD because that does not exceed 500 GiB. The other thing is you may be stuck ONLY with HDD as SSD’s may have been too new at that time.
A couple of things you can do is spec out the system. Most come with a Intel duo 2 core CPU. Depending to the specs you might be able to run an Intel quad core, which you can find online for about $10. The MAX RAM you can use is a total of 8 GiB. Most of those systems came with a whopping 1 GiB of DDR or DDR2 RAM. Look in your parts drawer to see if you have any old RAM laying around and stuff it into that puppy. If not you should be able to blow it up all the way to the total 8 GiB of RAM.
I have a 2010 “Rescue” that had been put out by the dumpster. It is an OLD HP xw4200, dated 2010. Ex-Windows Workstation. It was really and seriously DEAD and thought of stripping it for parts, but then decided to take a few stabs at bringing it back to life – put in a new button battery, and a lot of pushing the ON/OFF button but after about a 1/2 hour it finally coughed and whizzed back to life. Today jaguar – aka the Trashcan Monster – serves as a test bed. If something causes the computer to crash, I want it to be on my test bed, not my workstation.
At some point I plan to at least try to put RL 8.5 on it – I did have CentOS 8.3. – that was before I got involved in building ocelot which will replace – soon I hope – my current workstation that is running CentOS 7.9
Have FUN with that Ol’ Lady.
D’Cat
As it turns out, I had none of the issues you describe.
I bought the machine from “Digital Storm” (still a great and reliable provider of gaming platforms). The limit on HDD/SSD size was removed during the bios update I did years ago. It had an SSD as its boot (C:) when it was built, that’s working fine. I replaced that with a 2TB SSD two years ago. Just before starting the current build, I replaced that with a 4TB SSD. It has 6G of RAM, plenty for my purposes.
It has four removable HDD drive bays, and I’ve been filling those 1TB+ drives for years.
I’ll be using it as file server for my local network, primarily to serve media files ripped from CDs, DVDs, and even vinyls.
It seems to be running fine. I’m having an issue getting public key access working for the root account (the same key works fine for a regular account), but that’s a nit. KDE-Plasma seems to have installed enough of itself to run.