CentOS MinimalCD 6.5 Release Notes

Last updated: December 1st, 2013

Contents

Translations
Introduction
Most Important Packages and Applications
Features
Known Issues
How to help and get help
Further Reading
Thanks

1. Translations

Translations of these release notes are available for the following languages :

2. Introduction

The CentOS Development team is pleased to announce the availability of the CentOS MinimalCD 6.5 for both i386 and x86_64 architectures. These disks are based on our CentOS-6.5 i386 and x86_64 distributions.

The aim of this disk is to install a CentOS 6.5 system which has a minimum of packages needed to have a functional system, with no compromise regarding security and fully network and yum aware. It also includes support for the storage systems available in CentOS 6.5 (Adaptec, Brocade, QLogic, iSCSI and FCOE). Support for wireless devices is also included but installed only when needed.

Unlike the previous versions (up to CentOS 6.3) the set of installed packages is now almost identical to the one installed when choosing the group named "Minimal" from the full DVD image.

You can get the CentOS MinimalCD 6.5 from the CentOS mirrors:

32-bit

i386: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/6/isos/i386/
Filename: CentOS-6.5-i386-minimal.iso
sha1sum: 4f900bba81d0e3c5cc5354a94984ed2fa03d4061

64-bit

x86_64: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/6/isos/x86_64/
Filename: CentOS-6.5-x86_64-minimal.iso
sha1sum: f21a71e8e31df73297bdd1ccd4a64a36831284bd

3. Most Important Packages and Applications

almost all firmware	acl	attr	audit	binutils	checkpolicy	chkconfig	coreutils	cronie & related
curl	bridge-utils	db4-utils	device-mapper	dhclient	diffutils	dracut	e2fsprogs	efibootmgr
ethtool	findutils	fipscheck	gpgme	iproute	iptables	iputils	logrotate	lvm2
mdadm	mingetty	ncurses	net-tools	nfs-utils	nss-util	openssh-clients	openssh-server	postfix
python	rsyslog	selinux-policy-targeted	sudo	util-linux-ng	vi	yum

4. Features

SELinux aware (targeted policy only)
IPv6 aware
Except for selection of packages (this step is automatically skipped), installation is identical to the CentOS 6.5 DVD.
Once installed the system can be used as DHCP and NFS client
Support for delta rpms
Support for custom acl
Any application from a yum repository compatible with CentOS 6.5 can be added after the system is installed.
The CD can be used for memory testing (at boot time only).

5. Known Issues

Just like the CentOS 6.5 DVD the text installer has limited capabilities compared to the GUI installer.

If installing as a virtual machine in VMWare, do not allow the "New Virtual Machine Wizard" to use the "Easy Install" (also known as "autoinstall") feature. It includes several incorrect defaults which create problems after the installation is finished. As a workaround, do the following at the Guest Operating System Installation step instead of choosing Installer disk image file (ISO):

select I will install the operating system later.
advance to Ready to Create Virtual Machine and select Customize Hardware
select the New CD/DVD (IDE) entry from the list of hardware devices
under the Connection field select Use ISO image and browse to your local copy of the minimalCD.iso

If you did not configure the network during installation (see CentOS-6 FAQ#2) then:

make sure that the interface is activated at boot time (set the ONBOOT parameter in the interface configuration file to "yes").
if you are not using DHCP, you will have to manually configure your network interfaces because NetworkManager is not included. Documentation is here. Do not forget about DNS and default route.

vconfig has been removed from this image because its functionality has been superseded by the iproute2 package (ip link add $DEVICE type vlan).

6. How to help and get help

As a CentOS user there are various ways you can help out with the CentOS community. Take a look at our Contribute page for further information on how to get involved.

6.1. Special Interest Groups

CentOS consists of different Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that bring together people with similar interests. The following SIGs already exist:

Artwork - create and improve artwork for CentOS releases and promotion
Promotion - help promoting CentOS online or at events
Virtualization - unite people around virtualization in CentOS

And we encourage people to join any of these SIGs or start up a new SIG, e.g.

Alpha, S390, Sparc and PPC port - help with porting CentOS to other architectures
Hardware compatibility - provide feedback about specific hardware
RPM Packaging - contribute new useful RPM packages
Translation - help translating the documentation, website and Wiki content

6.2. Mailinglists and Fora

Another way you can help others in the community is by actively helping and resolving problems that users come up against in the mailing lists and the fora.

6.3. Wiki and Website

Even as an inexperienced CentOS user we can use your help. Because we like to know what problems you encountered, if you had problems finding specific information, how you would improve documentation so it becomes more accessible. This kind of feedback is as valuable to others as it would have been to you so your involvement is required to make CentOS better.

So if you want to help out and improve our documentation and Wiki, register on the Wiki or subscribe to the centos-docs mailing list.

7. Further Reading

The following websites contain large amounts of information to help people with their CentOS systems :

8. Thanks

We thank everyone involved for helping us produce this product and would like to specifically acknowledge the extra effort made by the QA Team. Without them working almost 24/7 we couldn't have released this as fast as we did.

This is a read-only archived version of wiki.centos.org