30 Things to Do After Minimal RHEL/CentOS 7 Installation

25. Install Linux Malware Detect (LMD)

Linux Malware Detect (LMD) is a open source Linux malware scanner released under the GNU GPLv2 license, that is
specially designed for threats faced in hosting environments. For complete installation, configuration and usage of LMD can be found at:

  1. Install and Use (LMD) with ClamAV as Antivirus Engine

26. Server Bandwidth Testing with Speedtest-cli

speedtest-cli is a tool written in python to test internet bandwidth including download and upload speed. For complete installation and usage of speedtest-cli tool, read our article at Check Linux Server Bandwidth Speed from Command Line

27. Configure Cron Jobs

This is one of the most widely used software utility. It function as job scheduler i.e., schedule a job now that will execute in future itself. It is useful in logging and maintaining records unattained as well as several other routine work like regular backup. All the schedule is written in /etc/crontab file.

The crontab file contains 6 fields as follows:

Minutes	         Hour		Day of Month		Month of Year		Week Day		Command
(0-59)           (0-23)		  (1-31)                (1/jan-12/dec)       (0-6/sun-sat)          Command/script
Crontab Fields
Crontab Fields

To run a cron job (say run /home/$USER/script.sh) everyday at 04:30 am.

Minutes 	  Hour   	Day of Month        month of year 	Week Day         command
30                4  		      *		         *		   *            speedtest-cli

Add the following entry to the crontab file ‘/etc/crontab/‘.

30  4  *  *  *  /home/$user/script.sh

After adding the above line to crontab, it will run automatically at 04:30 am everyday and the output depends upon what is there in script file. Moreover script can be replaced by commands. For more examples of cron jobs, read 11 Cron Jobs Examples in Linux

28. Install Owncloud

Owncloud is a HTTP based data synchronization, file sharing and remote file storage application. For more detail on installing own cloud, you may like to see this article : Create Personal/Private Cloud Storage in Linux

29. Enable Virtualization with Virtualbox

Virtualization is a process of creating virtual OS, Hardware and Network, is one of the most sought technology of these days. We will be discussing on how to install and configure virtualization in detail.

Our CentOS Minimal server is a headless server. Lets prepare it to host virtual machines that is accessible over HTTP by installing following packages.

# yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' SDL kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms
Install Development Tools
Install Development Tools

Change working directory to ‘/etc/yum.repos.d/‘ and download Virtualbox repository.

# wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc

Install the key just downloaded.

# rpm --import oracle_vbox.asc

Update and Install Virtualbox.

# yum update && yum install virtualbox-4.3

Next, download and install Virtualbox extension pack.

# wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.3.12/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.3.12-93733.vbox-extpack
# VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.3.12-93733.vbox-extpack
Install Virtualbox Extension Pack
Install Virtualbox Extension Pack
Installing Virtualbox Extension Pack
Installing Virtualbox Extension Pack

Create a user ‘vbox‘ to manage virtualbox and add it to group vboxusers.

# adduser vbox
# passwd vobx
# usermod -G vboxusers vbox

Install HTTPD server.

# yum install httpd

Install PHP (with soap extension).

# yum install php php-devel php-common php-soap php-gd

Download PHP virtualBox.

# wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpvirtualbox/files/phpvirtualbox-4.3-1.zip

Extract the zip and copy the extracted folder to HTTP working directory.

# unzip phpvirtualbox-4.*.zip
# cp phpvirtualbox-4.3-1 -R /var/www/html

Next, rename file /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox/config.php-example to var/www/html/phpvirtualbox/config.php.

# mv config.php.example config.php

Open the configuration file to edit and add ‘username‘ and ‘password‘ we just created in the above step.

# vi config.php

Finally, restart VirtualBox and HTTP server.

# service vbox-service restart
# service httpd restart

Now forward the port and access it on a headed server.

http://192.168.0.15/phpvirtualbox-4.3-1/
PHP Virtualbox Login
PHP Virtualbox Login
PHP Virtualbox Dashboard
PHP Virtualbox Dashboard
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76 thoughts on “30 Things to Do After Minimal RHEL/CentOS 7 Installation”

  1. I followed this guide. Its really helpful. As you said quite extensively about installing apache, databases and others.

    Can you also provide a guide regarding how to upload a site in CentOS after doing all this?

    Reply
  2. There is a mistake in the SSH section. The config file is NOT ‘ssh-config’. That is meant for the SSH client not the server. The SSH server settings are in ‘sshd-config’. As a noob, it took me a while to figure out why my changes had no effect on the server.

    Otherwise, this has been a great resource for someone like me learning Linux for the first time. Thanks!

    Reply
  3. One of the commands didn’t work for me, the one related to opening up the httpd port through firewalld. I got a syntax error

    I got a successful execution with the following command, because I did not choose to assign http a funky port, just the standard one (80)

    # firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http 
    

    If you want to use a custom port for httpd, use this command, which specifies the port/protocol:

    # firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=2888/tcp 
    

    SOURCE:
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24729024/open-firewall-port-on-centos-7

    Reply
  4. Thank you for getting this information together, it is very helpful for people not familiar to minimal dekstop-less installations.

    Reply

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