How to Install RHEL 8 on Oracle Virtual Box

Hello & Welcome !! In this article, you will learn how to download RHEL 8 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) for free, install it on your Oracle Virtual Box or directly on your bare metal.

Features in RHEL 8 :-

• Application Stream (AppStream) repositories allows delivering userspace packages (runtime languages, databases, web servers, etc) more simply and with greater flexibility. Userspace components can now update more quickly than core operating system packages and without having to wait for the next major version of the operating system. So you can get the newest stable version 🙂
• Supports more efficient Linux networking in containers through IPVLAN.
• Includes a new TCP/IP stack with Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR) congestion control.
• System-wide Cryptographic Policies are also included.
• Lightweight, open standards-based container toolkit (Buildah, Podman, Skopeo)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console provides a simplified interface to more easily manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers locally and remotely, including virtual machines
• Yum 4, the next generation of the Yum package manager in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, delivers faster performance, fewer installed dependencies and more choices of package versions to meet specific workload requirements. Yum 4 is based on DNF technology.
• Support for LUKSv2 to encrypt on-disk data combined with Network-Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE) for more robust data security and more simplified access to encrypted data.

RHEL 8 is based on Fedora 28. It includes newer software packages such as

• Linux kernel 4.18,
• Python 3.6, PHP7.2, Apache 2.4.35, Nginx 1.14
• MariaDB 10.3, MySQL 8.0, PostgreSQL 10, PostgreSQL 9.6, and Redis 4.0
• OpenSSL 1.1.1 and TLS 1.3 are both supported.
• GNOME Shell has been rebased to version 3.28, using Wayland the default display server. X.org server is available as well.
• nftables replaces iptables. The firewalld daemon now uses nftables as its default backend.

Let us get back to the practical part and do the installation stepwise as shown-

Step 1 :- Download RHEL 8 ISO

To download the RHEL 8 ISO image at no cost at all, head over the Red Hat developer program and create an account. Fill in all the required details.

Once done, proceed over to the Red Hat Login page to complete your profile by providing other details such as your local address.

Thereafter, head out to the RHEL 8 download page and download the RHEL 8 ISO file for free. Once you have downloaded the ISO image, you can choose to create a bootable USB drive using “Rufus” or any other utility of your choice.

If you wish to install RHEL 8 on VirtualBox as I’ll demonstrate, an ISO image alone is enough.

Step 2 :- Creating & Adding VM in VirtualBox

2.a. - Open your VirtualBox and click on the “New” icon. Assign a preferred name to your virtual machine and click “Next”.

2.b In the next step, allocate some memory for your virtual machine. In this case, I have chosen to assign a memory capacity of 3072 MB.

2.c. In the next window, select “Create a virtual hard disk now” and click “Create”.

2.d — Set Hard disk file type to VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) and click “Next”.

2.e - Now, select the ‘Dynamically allocated” option and click “Next”.

2.f. Then allocate some hard disk space for your virtual machine. In this example, I have chosen to assign 100 GB to my VM. Once done, click on the “Create” button.

Step 3 :- Setting Up the VM for RHEL8

3.a :- Set the VM for the RHEL 8 ISO image.Click on VM Name — >Settings.And then alter the boot order.Untick the Floppy and order up the Hard Disk. Ensure that the Hard Disk is above optical.

3.b. Click on “Storage” –> “Controller: IDE” and click on the ‘empty’ disk and select your ISO image file.

3.c. Alter the Netwok Setting inorder to get connectivity between the VMS. Click on the “Attached to” dropdown and Change NAT(Default) to Bridged Adaptor.

Step 4:- Installing RHEL 8 on VirtualBox

4.a :- On the first screen after powering on the VM, the following options will be printed on the screen. Select the first option “Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0.0”.

4.b. Once the RHEL 8 is done with the booting process, the window below will prompt you to select the installation language. Select your preferred language and hit the “Continue” button.

4.c : — A summary of all the critical components that need to be configured will be displayed as shown. Ensure you click on every one of them and tweak the settings according to your preferences.

• In the “Installation Destination’ select the hard drive that you’d want to install RHEL on and feel free to select either ‘Automatic’ or ‘Manual’ partitioning. In this case, I will select the ‘Automatic’ partitioning option for the system to automatically partition the hard disk and save the changes. For a production server, however, you may be required to manually partition the hard drive to suit your preferences.

• Disable DUMP(as we are on VM)

• Click on Network & Host Name And turn on the toggle next to the network interface. Setting host Name is optional.

• Be sure to adjust your ‘Time and date’ settings appropriately.
• Click on Software Selection, choose your preferred Base environment and click ‘Done’. In this case, I have chosen to go with the Workstation option which is quite okay for a desktop PC.

• With all the salient parameters, click on the “Begin Installation” button for the installation to commence. But while at it, you will be required to provide a root password and create a new user.

• Click on the ‘Root Password’ tab and provide a strong password for the root user. Click ‘Done’ to save the changes.
• Now, create a new user by specifying a username followed by the user’s password.

• Once everything is set, the installer will begin to install RHEL 8. The installation process ensures that all the system packages and the grub bootloader are installed. Once the installation is complete, click on the ‘Reboot’ button to restart the system.

“ At this point, it is safe to remove your installation media, or in this case, unmount the ISO image file. During the reboot process, select the first entry and hit ENTER.”

• Upon rebooting, two things will be required of you, Firstly, you will be required to accept the License Agreement and Subscription Manager on your RHEL 8 system.

• At this point, accepting the license agreement is one time only as it appears on the first boot. Click on “License Information” and check off the “I accept the License Agreement” checkbox and click “Done”.

• Click on “Subscription Management” and click “Next” . Enter you username and password and then click “Register”. Attach Role & click “Done”.

And Done!! Your RHEL8 is ready to use just after some minute configurations to be done at welcome screen on the very first Login.

It is very simple configuration.Either read it or simply Next — Next — Next. :-D

Here is your final OS Screen. Enjoy using RHEL8 !!

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