How To Install Rocky Linux 8.4

The Redhat's decision to shift its focus from CentOS 8 to CentOS stream 8 has paved the way for many distributions to rise and shine. Soon after Red Hat announced their plan, Gregory Kurtzer, the original founder of CentOS, started to develop another rebuild of RHEL, named Rocky Linux. A few months ago, the first stable version of Rocky Linux 8.4, codenamed Green Obsidian, has been released. This step by step guide explains how to download latest Rocky Linux 8.4 version, and then how to install Rocky Linux 8 with screenshots.

If you prefer fresh Rocky Linux installation, read on. In this article, I will walk you through step-by-step instructions on installing Rocky Linux 8.4.

Download Rocky Linux 8.4

Rocky Linux is available for ARM64 (aarch64) and x86_64 architectures. Go to the following link and download the latest Rocky Linux 8.4 version:

Rocky Linux is available as Minimal, Boot, DVD, and Torrent images. Download your preferred version.

Create Rocky Linux bootable medium

Once the Rocky Linux 8 ISO file is downloaded, you need to create bootable USB medium. There are many bootable USB creation tools available to create a bootable USB medium

You can choose any one of the following tools to create Rocky Linux bootable USB.

Command line bootable USB creation tools:

• How To Create Multiboot USB Drives With Ventoy In Linux
• How To Create Bootable USB Drive Using dd Command
• Bootiso Lets You Safely Create Bootable USB Drive In Linux

Graphical bootable USB creation tools:

• Create Bootable USB Drive With Ventoy WebUI In Linux
• Create Bootable USB Drives And SD Cards With Etcher In Linux
• Popsicle – Create Multiple Bootable USB Drives At Once
• Create Bootable USB Drive With USBImager In Linux
• Kindd – A Graphical Frontend To dd Command

If you are going to install the ISO in any hypervisor like KVM, Vmware, Virtualbox, etc. then there is no need to create bootable media.

For the demonstration purpose, I am using Oracle VirtualBox for installing rocky Linux 8.4.

Rocky Linux 8.4 step by step installation

If you already have installed CentOS 8 or RHEL 8, you won't find any difficulties to install Rocky Linux 8. Rocky Linux uses the same Anaconda Installer which CentOS used.

STEP 1 - Start Installer

Plug in the USB bootable medium, and power on the system. Make sure you've chosen USB drive as first boot device in BIOS.

You will be greeted with Anaconda installer screen.

Once you boot up the ISO, wait for the installer to load up and you will get the Install screen as shown in the below image.

Choose "Install Rocky Linux 8" option and hit ENTER to begin the installation.

STEP 2 - Preferred Language

In this step, choose your preferred Installation language and press continue. The next installation steps will be based on what language you choose in this step.

STEP 3 - Installation Summary

This is the important part of the installation. There are four sections localization, software, system, and User settings as shown in the below diagram. All these parameters decide how your operating system will be installed.

There are three mandatory parameters that need to be configured which are highlighted with a warning symbol as shown in the below image.

Here I will walk you through configuring all the parameters section by section.

STEP 3.1 - Keyboard Layout

Click on "Keyboard" and choose the layout you prefer. Here I have chosen English (US) as the layout. You can also add more layouts by pressing the + button.

STEP 3.2 - Language Support

Select "Language Support" and select the preferred languages. Press "Done" once the languages are selected.

STEP 3.3 - Time and Date

Set date and timezone by pressing the “Time & Date” option.

It will show a map to choose your locality. There is a toggle button to set up a date and time zone based upon NTP. Before toggling on/off network timezone networking should be configured.

STEP 3.4 - Installation Source

The installation source decides through which medium you are installing the operating system. Click the "Installation Source" icon and it will take you to a page as shown in the below image.

Here I have mounted the ISO image locally in VirtualBox. You can also do network install by configuring the location of the ISO image on the network. If you wish to verify the integrity of the installation medium press the "Verify" button and you will get the result as shown in the below image.

If you wish to add any additional repositories, you can add them under the "Additional repositories" section.

STEP 3.5 - Software Selection

Under software selection, there are different environments. Each environment defines how your operating system will be set up during installation and what packages will be installed as part of that environment.

I am choosing "Workstation" which comes with Gnome desktop. Depending upon your use case you can choose whatever you need.

STEP 3.6 - Root Password

Select Root Password icon and it will take you to a page where you can set the password for root user account. Always follow the best practice of setting up a strong password.

STEP 3.7 - User Creation

Press the "User Creation" button and it will take you to a window where you have to fill in the user name, password, and privilege for the user. You can make the user administrator which will grant elevated privilege to the user.

STEP 3.8 - Installation Destination

In this step, you will be configuring the underlying disk attached to the OS. You can decide how to partition your disk, what type of file system to be used and much more.

Click "Installation Destination" and it will take you to a page where you can set automatic partition or manual partition. By default "Automatic Partition" is selected in which system will decide how to partition your drive.

To create a custom partition select "Custom" as shown in the below image and press done.

You can use LVM or standard partitions. I am choosing a standard partition and the below table shows how my partition scheme will look like.

From the drop-down box, select "standard partition" and press the "+" symbol to add a new partition.

Under "Mount Point" drop-down box, there are few predefined options to choose your mount point. You can also enter a custom mount point too. In the desired capacity box, enter the partition size.

Repeat the same step and create all mounts according to how you designed your partition.

Once all the partitions are created, your partition table will look something similar to the below image. You can select a partition and can modify its parameters before pressing "Done".

Once you press "Done", you will see the summary of changes in the partitions. If you OK with current partition scheme, press "Accept Changes" to save the changes and continue.

STEP 3.9 - Kdump

Kdump is used to capture dumps when your Linux kernel crashes. Normally in the production system, kdump will be disabled and will only be enabled when requested by the vendor to capture dump.

Select the "kdump" option. By default, kdump is enabled. To disable kdump, remove the "Tick mark" and press done.

STEP 3.9 - Network and Host Name

To configure networking, go to "Network and Host Name". Toggle Ethernet interface "ON" and set hostname and press apply.

To set the static IP address, click "configure" and navigate to the IPv4 Settings tab. Add IP address, netmask, gateway, and press save.

STEP 3.10 - Security Policy

There are a standard benchmark, hardening, and security policies created by different governing bodies.

Go to "Security Policy" and there are many profiles to choose from. According to the requirement click on a profile and press "Select Profile" then press "Done".

STEP 4 - Start Rocky Linux 8 Installation

Once all the parameters are configured, press "“Begin Installation".

Once the installation is completed, the installer will prompt you to reboot the machine.

Finally, click Finish Configuration to complete Rocky Linux installation.

Step 5 - Login to Rocky Linux 8.4

Click the User name and enter its password to log in to the Rocky Linux.

Congratulations! We have successfully installed Rocky Linux 8.4.

Start using the newly installed Rocky Linux!

Conclusion

That's all for now. In this comprehensive guide, we discussed what is Rocky Linux and how to install Rocky Linux 8.4 with screenshots. If you have any questions on Rocky Linux installation, feel free to let us know in the comment section below.

We will post more guides related to Rocky Linux in the days to come. Stay tuned!