Installing AlmaLinux 9 is like installing any other RHEL-based distro. But if you haven’t installed it manually before, it’s actually pretty easy and I’ll walk you though the installation process. I’m going to be doing this on a Proxmox VE host, which I got from NodeSpace Hosting and their new Proxmox private cloud offering.
Installing AlmaLinux 9
The first thing is to get the ISO. You can download it from https://www.almalinux.org.
Once you get the ISO, you can write it to a USB stick or upload it to a network share or to your hypervisor. Once you have done that, time to get started!
Note: On Proxmox systems, there is a bug where you need to change the CPU to “host” in order to install AlmaLinux 9 otherwise you will get a kernel panic on boot.
Select Install AlmaLinux 9.0 and press enter.
Next, select your language settings.
The next part of the installation is where we start configuring things. These are the things I like to configure in order. The order I usually follow is listed in the image. Installation destination, network and hostname, root password, and user creation. Note that starting with version 9 security has changed for RHEL-based releases. Root passwords are not required and it will lock the root account which is recommended.
Installation Destination is very easy. If you are just doing a standard install and nothing special, just click on Done. Otherwise, you can do your manual partitioning here. If you have never setup a Linux system before, I would let the installer do this for you.
The next thing I do is add a hostname and adjust the networking. By default, the installer will enable any detected network interfaces and attempt to use DHCP. This is where you can set a static IP for the system as well as set the hostname. If you don’t set the hostname, it’ll default to “localhost”.
Depending on the system, I will adjust the software. At minimum, I’ll enable these two options: Standard and Headless Management. Adjust these to what software you’d like pre-installed. You can always install additional software later.
Next, create a standard user account and make it an administrator. This will let us use the system without the root account. Going forward, it’s considered best practice to disable root.
We’re now ready to get started with our install!
The install will take a few minutes to complete.
Once the install is completed, reboot the system.
And now you have a functional AlmaLinux system!
