Fedora Server 26 has been released and it offers quite a lot of improvements and features you might want to employ for your business. Features like:

  • Enterprise domain solution with FreeIPA 4.5
  • SSSD file caching to speed up user and group queries
  • Preview of the upcoming Boltron (modular system which enables different versions of applications to run on the same system)
  • Server Roles (easily deploy various roles using the Rolekit tool)
  • Enterprise-class, scalable databases with PostgreSQL

There are so many reasons why you might want to integrate Fedora Server 26 into your current data center. However, you might be thinking that such power must be a challenge to install. I am here to assuage such thoughts by walking you through the installation of the latest server release from Fedora. Once complete, you will have a platform ready to serve.

And with that, let’s install.

Step 1: Download and burn

The first thing you must do is download the latest release. The Fedora download will be in the form of an .iso image. You will then have to burn that .iso image to a bootable disk or USB flash drive. How you do this will depend upon your platform and media of choice. If you’re burning to a USB drive, you can make use of UNetBootin (regardless of platform). If you’re burning to an optical disk, you will need to use a tool like Brasero or XFburn in Linux. Within the Windows platform (starting with Windows 7), the ability to burn bootable .iso images is built in.

Once you have your bootable media created, insert it and boot.

Step 2: Starting the installation

When the media boots, you will be greeted with the selection screen (Figure A). You can either hit Enter to boot, or wait for the auto boot timeout.

Figure A

Once you get beyond that first ncurses (text) screen, the installer will drop you into the GUI installer (Figure B). Here you will walk through a few very simple screens.

Figure B

Step 3: Configuring your server

In this next window (Figure C), you will do the bulk of the work for the installation. Some of these options (such as KEYBOARD, TIME & DATE, INSTALLATION SOURCE, LANGUAGE SUPPORT) are all very self-explanatory, so I won’t bother mentioning them.

Figure C

As a matter of interest, you only have to bother with any entry that contains an exclamation icon (which will most likely only be the INSTALLATION DESTINATION entry). However, you’ll want to take care of SOFTWARE SELECTION and NETWORK & HOSTNAME as well.

Click on the INSTALLATION DESTINATION button. In the resulting window (Figure D), click on the Local Standard Disk you want to use for installation. Once the disk has been selected, click the Done button in the upper left corner.

Figure D

At this point, I would highly recommend you clicking on the SOFTWARE SELECTION button and then, from the list of software (Figure E), select what you want included in your Fedora Server instance.

Figure E

Click Done when you’ve made your selections.

Finally, click on NETWORK & HOSTNAME. In this section (Figure F), you can configure your network device(s) for static IP addresses, set up the hostname of the server, configure a proxy, enable Wake on LAN, and more.

Figure F

Once you’ve completed the network and hostname configuration, click Done.

Step 4: Root password and user creation

Click the Begin Installation button and you will then be prompted to set a root password and create a new user (Figure G).

Figure G

Although you are not required to create a new user, I highly recommend you do (and make that user an administrator). The installation of the server packages will run in the background, as you set the root password and create a new user. When you’ve taken care of those two users, you can then sit back and wait for the installation to finish and prompt you to reboot.

That’s it. You’ve just installed Fedora Server 26. Do note, when the server boots, you will not be greeted by a GUI, but a text-only interface. However, for those not fond of text-only interfaces, Fedora Server does come with Cockpit (a web-based management console). I’ll be discussing that particular piece of software in an upcoming piece.

Until then, enjoy Fedora Server 26.