Learn how to – Install Rocky Linux 8 on Hetzner Root Server.
Rocky Linux is a very powerful and widely adopted open-source enterprise operating system designed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux® sources. Development of Rocky Linux is done by an active community with thousands of users willing to commit hours in writing code, reporting bug issues, writing documentation pages, and spreading the good news on Rocky Linux around the world.
In this article we’ll perform an installation of Rocky Linux 8 on Hetzner Root Server(s). Hetzner root servers gives you excellent performance and high availability of your hosted services. You can choose from a variety of Dedicated server offerings to host your applications on dedicated hardware or through virtualization.
Our installation of Rocky Linux 8 is performed on a Hetzner Root Server with the following hardware specifications:
- CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v5 @ 3.60GHz (Cores 8)
- Memory: 64GB RAM
- Disk: 2 x 480 GB SSDs
- Network Interface: 1Gbit
- IPV4 Address: 1 x IPV4 Public Address
When you order a dedicated root server from hetzner, you’ll get a single Public IPv4 address. For services that require additional public IP address, you’ll make an official from the wen portal once the server has been provisioned. You’re encouraged to use IPv6 which is free of charge.
#1 – Activate rescue system
Login into Hetzner console to access your root server management functions. To put the server in Rescue system, navigate to;
Main functions > Servers > Server Label > Rescue. From there choose an operating system and CPU architecture of the rescue environment.
Access to rescue system can be through SSH password authentication or SSH public key. Default user account is root. Once done, hit the “Activate rescue system” button.
Reboot the server under “Reset” menu, then “Execute an automatic hardware reset” > “Send“
#2 – Create Root Server Configuration
Wait for the server to come online then SSH to it using root user and password shown during Rescue activation / SSH pubkey. For ssh key based authentication, no password is required to access server’s shell.
$ ssh root@serverip
Enter passphrase for key '/Users/learnhowto/.ssh/id_rsa':
Linux rescue 5.16.5 #1 SMP Mon Feb 7 07:50:07 UTC 2022 x86_64
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to the Hetzner Rescue System.
This Rescue System is based on Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) with
a custom kernel. You can install software as in a normal system.
To install a new operating system from one of our prebuilt
images, run 'installimage' and follow the instructions.
More information at https://docs.hetzner.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rescue System up since 2022-06-20 15:27 +02:00
Last login: Tue Jun 21 16:50:21 2022 from 197.231.176.230
Hardware data:
CPU1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v5 @ 3.60GHz (Cores 8)
Memory: 64104 MB
Disk /dev/sda: 480 GB (=> 447 GiB) doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/sdb: 480 GB (=> 447 GiB) doesn't contain a valid partition table
Total capacity 894 GiB with 2 Disks
Network data:
eth0 LINK: yes
MAC: 90:1b:0e:b6:e6:1a
IP: 88.99.162.204
IPv6: 2a01:4f8:10a:332f::2/64
Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver
root@rescue ~ #
The server we’re using have two disks;
- /dev/sda
- /dev/sdb
We’ll configure the two disks in a non-redundant RAID 0 (striping) configuration. The OS image to be used is:
root@rescue ~ # ls /root/images/Rocky*
/root/images/Rocky-85-amd64-base.tar.gz /root/images/Rocky-85-amd64-base.tar.gz.sigHere are the Hetzner server configuration contents to be used by installimage:
root@rescue ~ # vim rocky-install-config.txt
DRIVE1 /dev/sda
DRIVE2 /dev/sdb
SWRAID 1 # Enable software Raid
SWRAIDLEVEL 0 # Use software raid level 0
BOOTLOADER grub
HOSTNAME myserver.ownyourlife.com.ng #Server hostname
PART /boot/efi esp 512M
PART /boot ext4 800M
PART lvm vg0 all #Create LVM Volume group which uses all space
### Customize disk allocations accordingly ###
LV vg0 root / xfs 50G # /root space allocation
LV vg0 swap swap swap 8G # swap space allocation
LV vg0 var /var xfs 100G # /var space allocation
IMAGE /root/images/Rocky-85-amd64-base.tar.gz
#3 – Install Rocky Linux 8 on Hetzner Root Server
Now that we have a template for OS installation using installimage script, we can initiate Rocky Linux 8 deployment on Hetzner root server using the command below:
root@rescue ~ # installimage -a -c rocky-install-config.txtFixing the error “ERROR: Value for CRYPTPASSWORD is not defined“
# Add to your config file
CRYPTPASSWORD CryptPassword01
# Then run installimage -a -c rocky-install-config.txtInstallation process should begin in few seconds.
Found AUTOSETUP file '/autosetup'
Running unattended installimage installation ...
....
WARNING:
Starting installation in 20 seconds ...
Press X to continue immediately ...
Installation will DELETE ALL DATA ON DISK(s)!
Press CTRL-C to abort now!
=> ......
Here’s the output of a successful installation of Rocky Linux 8 on hetzner root server.
Hetzner Online GmbH - installimage
Your server will be installed now, this will take some minutes
You can abort at any time with CTRL+C ...
: Reading configuration done
: Loading image file variables done
: Loading rockylinux specific functions done
1/18 : Deleting partitions done
2/18 : Test partition size done
3/18 : Creating partitions and /etc/fstab done
4/18 : Creating software RAID level 0 done
5/18 : Encrypt partitions and create /etc/crypttab done
6/18 : Creating LVM volumes done
7/18 : Formatting partitions
: formatting /dev/md/0 with ext4 done
: formatting /dev/vg0/root with xfs done
: formatting /dev/vg0/swap with swap done
: formatting /dev/vg0/tmp with xfs done
8/18 : Mounting partitions done
9/18 : Sync time via ntp done
: Importing public key for image validation done
10/18 : Validating image before starting extraction done
11/18 : Extracting image (local) done
12/18 : Setting up network config done
13/18 : Executing additional commands
: Setting hostname done
: Generating new SSH keys done
: Generating mdadm config done
: Generating ramdisk done
: Generating ntp config done
14/18 : Setting up miscellaneous files done
15/18 : Configuring authentication
: Fetching SSH keys done
: Disabling root password done
: Disabling SSH root login without password done
: Copying SSH keys done
16/18 : Installing bootloader grub done
17/18 : Running some rockylinux specific functions done
18/18 : Clearing log files done
INSTALLATION COMPLETE
You can now reboot and log in to your new system with the
same credentials that you used to log into the rescue system.Reboot the server to use Rocky Linux 8 operating system we just installed:
root@rescue ~ # shutdown -r now#4 – Use Rocky Linux 8 on Hetzner Root Server
Login to your Rocky Linux 8 server and check OS information.
[root@myserver ~]# cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Rocky Linux"
VERSION="8.5 (Green Obsidian)"
ID="rocky"
ID_LIKE="rhel centos fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.5"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Rocky Linux 8.5 (Green Obsidian)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:rocky:rocky:8:GA"
HOME_URL="https://rockylinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.rockylinux.org/"
ROCKY_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Rocky Linux"
ROCKY_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8"Let’s update OS packages to the latest releases and install basic utilities.
sudo dnf -y update
sudo dnf -y install epel-release vim wget curl bash-completionWe can install neofetch from EPEL repo
sudo dnf -y install neofetchThis is a screenshot of our neofetch output:
Wrapping up
In this blog post we’ve demonstrated how installation of Rocky Linux 8 can be done on Hetzner root server hardware. We also perform post-installation tasks such as OS updates and installation of common system management utilities. In our future guides we’ll cover custom ISO installation of operating systems on Hetzner. until then stay connected by checking regular updates on our website. Cheers!
More guides on Hetzner Cloud:
- Deploy VM Instances on Hetzner Cloud with Terraform
- How To Install FreeBSD on Hetzner Root Server
- Install Proxmox VE 7 on Hetzner root server
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