XS Community Edition/6.0/Tony's install recipe

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Tony Anderson's (Unofficial) Install Recipe for XSCE 6.0

Currently the CentOS image is identified with the Intel NUC. I think it should be possible to install the image on any computer that meets the minimum requirements for CentOS 7. System requires BIOS or UEFI legacy mode.

Installation requires ports for bootable usb drive, usb (wired) keyboard, vga or hdmi monitor, ethernet (RJ-45) port

Recommended: as much memory as possible, e.g. 4GB+, as much hard drive capacity as possible, e.g. 1TB+

Fast install:

Download the current xsce centos 7 iso (e.g. 2015-11-19's at http://download.unleashkids.org/xsce/downloads/installer/centos/ and more recent ones at http://xsce.org/downloads/xsce-release-6.0/nuc-images/) . For the latest, please also check http://schoolserver.org and http://schoolserver.org/6.0. Then download the .iso and .md5 (checksum) files.

Use the md5 file to verify the .iso download.

Mount a usb 2GB+ drive (all content will be deleted)

Use the command line interpreter (shell) with the following command:

  $dd if=path to iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

Caution: make sure /dev/sdb points to the usb stick and not the drive where the iso image is located (normally the computer's hard drive). An error could result in erasing your hard drive!

Boot up the server to setup (typically, clicking on del or F2) with the usb stick installed. Verify that the usb stick is seen as a boot device (often shown as a usb hard drive and if a UEFI system, that legacy mode is selected). Make sure the usb device is first in the boot sequence (in some UEFI systems, this is not an option but the usb will be booted first anyway).

Continue the boot. You should see (with some error and warning messages to be ignored), the boot process begin.

The install takes a few minutes. When it is complete, remove the usb drive and reboot. The CentOS server software should boot to a prompt. Login as root. As root, run tags (don't know the current details. In my case, I package this in a script: xs-custom which does this and provides some additional installs such as Django). Make sure that a configured access point (TP-Link WR841N or similar) is connected to the ethernet port.

Reboot again. You should be able to log in to the server via ssh xsce-admin@schoolserver with password g0adm1n. You are now ready to install the content.

This process takes approximately 30 minutes.