NUC5i5RYH - Barebone PC as Linux Server

After thinking of installing VMWare ESXi on NUC5i5RYH barebone , I decided not to go ahead. This is because you need a separate system to manage (vSphere Client) to manage your lab which in my case was not helpful. I decided to go ahead and install CentOS 7 as my main OS(host) and install VMware workstation to support Windows Server (for ActiveDirectory) as guest.

I faced few issues while installing CentOS into the i5 NUC. Mainly because the CentOS Kernel & drivers are bit outdated compared to NUC. Just to document what I've done to fix them !!

Preparation

Download Minimal CentOS7 from main site
Use "UNetbootin" to put the ISO into thumbdrive.
FAT32 formatting of your USB is best suited

Installation

Attach bootable USB to your NUC and enter ensure your USB as primary boot.
Ensure you create a "root" user and password
Reboot and CentOS installation is straight forward.

Network Issues

Your Wi-Fi won't be listed in your detected devices (ifconfig, iwlist etc are not installed)

NetworkManager to your rescue

NetworkManager Command Line (nmcli) is very powerful. Full details here


sudo su - # All activities in root

nmcli device show   # Shows all devices available. Only your ethernet and loop back would show

nmcli con show # Shows connections available. You won't be able to see anything initially

Installing Relevant Driver.

(You need an extra laptop for this)

I had CentOS 7 with Kernel 3.10.x . NUC5i5RYH uses Wireless 7265 ,but the downloads are meant for Kernel 3.13+ onwards. So I had to download multiple drivers thus facing lot of hit & miss. I can confirm, the driver that works is "iwlwifi-7265-ucode-25.228.9.0.tgz" though it's for a higher Kernel. Extract just the "iwlwifi-7265-9.ucode" file from the archive and copy it into usb drive and copy it to /lib/firmware/ of your CentOS installation. (USB mounting tips at this link). Now REBOOT your NUC

Verify if your Network is detected.


sudo su - # All activities in root

nmcli device show   # Shows all devices available. Now it show a wireless device (eg wls2p0)


nmcli con show # Connections won't be still available

if no devices are shown, something went wrong. Need to debug by running "dmesg | tail -100" to see if there are any errors when OS rebooted.

Add your interface

Now try adding a new connection to your interface using networkmanager cli (wls2p0 is my ifname shown when I ran "nmcli device show") . More Details in this link


nmcli con add con-name wls2p0 ifname wls2p0 type wifi ssid MyInternetConnectionName ip4 192.168.100.101/24 gw4 192.168.100.1

service NetworkManager restart# This should restart network

You should be now able to see ifcfg-wls2p0 file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ location with above details and will get a MAC address automatically.

Adding wifi plugin to NetworkManager

Unfortunately "NetworkManager" itself doesn't contain wifi setup plugins. You need to download "NetworkManager-wifi" rpm offline package separately into your laptop. Copy this again using usb into your NUC. Install it using rpm -Uvh <rpmfile>

Verify if the package is installed


rpm -qa | grep NetworkManager

service NetworkManager restart

service NetworkManager status

Connect your Wifi

nmcli device wifi connect <MyInternetConnectionName> password <myPassword>

Verify by running

curl -k https://www.google.com

Atlast, it should all work now !!

Now you could install GUI by
sudo yum groups install "GNOME Desktop"