Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am installing Rocky Linux on ButtonMash. There’s a lot to learn and a bit more to do, so let’s get started!
Checklists and Notepads
A home server is useful. However, if you ask me what one is good for, and I’ll struggle to come up with an answer before the conversation stalls. I’ll come across as simply begging for another expensive toy, and you’re even less interested in one than before.
To remedy the stress of the moment, I opened a text buffer and slapped in a few uses I had in mind. Over the next several days, I added some more for a total of seven or eight so far. None of them were new per se, but it was the first time I had them all in the same place at once.
On the topic of brainstorming, I’m considering developing my own checklist for installing Linux no matter the distro. Watch for it in a future topic once I’m half-satisfied with it.
I left a document open for several days to add ideas for running on server
I am developing a personal Linux Install checklist
Installation
As stated in my last post, I already flashed a thumb drive with Rocky Linux. I was considering using optical media this time because of the expected long term support for this install, but even the minimal option I ended up downloading was too large for CD and we’re seemingly out of blank DVD’s. When I did make my download, I accepted Firefox’s offer to open it with Popsicle, a USB flasher utility that came with either PopOS or KDE (I have reasons to think either is likely). I overwrote the Debian install media from my Laptop.
Slated for overwriting was a previous ButtonMash SSD (Solid State Drive) with MineOS on it. I had already cleared stuff out from it, but after working on the family’s Minecraft server on Apex, I started having second thoughts. I sought out and found an even older and smaller MineOS SSD originally from DerpyChips. My father and I connected it up and booted to the install media.
By this point, I knew this Linux installation will be provisional at best – to my relief. Without the pressure of getting a “forever server” going, I can further refine my approach until I’m satisfied. In the meantime, I can load up some lightweight services.
The installer was one of the smoothest I’ve ever seen. All the usual elements like time zone, user accounts/passwords, and partitioning were linked from a main menu. My one complaint is the full screen slide animation blasting my eyes whenever I clicked on something. It’s not worth my time to recompile the installer, though.
There were a couple unfamiliar panels from the installer menu. One appeared to be some sort of privacy policy configuration screen. I had no idea what most of the options were about, but I could still recognize the value in it. The other screen had options for a selection of software to install. We read through each option, deciding weather or not I wanted each piece. Stuff like networking tools for SSH or NFS were included. Stuff a headless workstation doesn’t need, like GNOME, stayed off. If I didn’t recognize something, I left it alone. Some of the stuff I opted to include with installation were things I knew I’d be installing anyway, so that’s a little time and effort saved.
Configuration
SSH is an easy skill to learn, but difficult to master; I’ve poked at it this week, but I’ll need more time with it before I can consider myself safe using it on an unsecured line. I had a little trouble matching key fingerprints when SSH’ing into ButtonMash from my Manjaro workstation vs having the later SSH into itself with localhost. I quickly realized they were using different hash algorithms, but I had to give up on forcing them into alignment for now. I was able to verify the code on DerpyChips, though.
As soon as I got myself SSH’ed into ButtonMash, I received a prompt to launch a webUI called Cockpit. I don’t know much about it, but I recognized the name from my research last week and the interface feels familiar from some of my previous experiences with server management over browser. The interface came back online after a reboot, so there’s that. I will note that Firefox wasn’t happy about its self-signed security certificate. I have fixed that in the past, but I’m ignoring it for now.
Takeaway
I can feel like I’ve come a long way since when I first started Linux. Each major jump feels like I’m landing in a less unfamiliar place, though there are still surprises. To answer one of my own early “Final Questions:” results are not as important as learning why you got the results in the first place. Though there are plenty of places that make no assumptions about prior skill, general experience will still be of benefit when working with such systems.
Side Note
After I was done with last week’s post, I poked around a bit more at my Manjaro workstation’s spell check for LibreOffice Writer. I was able to get it working by installing a package called hunspell-en_us, as no language libraries were included by default.
Final Question
What would you do with a home server?