Good to know. I just felt compelled to post the update because I hate when I'm searching for a tech answer, find one, and it doesn't work as described. So, when setting up a new server, I followed my posted instructions from nearly two years ago...the fact that the first step now returns an error is unfortunate but thankfully it doesn't matter, you can just do the rest of them.

ALSO: The handy KDE app for managing users and groups, kuser, has been deprecated, and not replaced with anything in KDE (at least the version available on clearos-centos). If you want a GUI tool for user and group management, and the function in ClearOS isn't enough, you can install a CentOS tool, "system-config-users". Be aware it has many dependencies.

And be sure to disable clearos-centos and clearos-centos-updates before allowing the system to do any updates, whether automatic or manual, if you're running a paid edition. Use these only to install specific applications you need that aren't available otherwise.

The groups are still available from the Centos repositories - this is where I install the "Development Tools" from...

try " yum groupinstall "X Window System" --enablerepo=centos* "
Would have installed 119 packages on my system had I responded with a "y"
EDIT: This is with the Community Edition - no idea if this works for paid editions

http://www.sraellis.tk/clearos.html

The command:
yum groupinstall "X Window System"
no longer works; this group appears to have been removed from the clearos-centos repository.
However, it's not necessary, as installing the other kde components will automatically install any X Window components not already installed on ClearOS as dependencies.

Erik Schoenmaker wrote:


Hi Greg! Thanks for your answer. Are you also using RDP to connect to the KDE interface or only use the machine locally? Are you using this ClearOS as a router or just as an extra router/firewall with kvm for example?

No. I used the GUI sparingly, to handle a few things that a linux guru could probably have handled from the CLI, and I leave it there in case someone else has to handle something while I'm out (I'm the only linux user at the company). Originally I had SSH open to the outside and would handle things that way, but you get so many people trying an SSH port that I firewalled it to the outside. Now I RDP to a windows machine on the network, and use Putty to SSH into the server (or use webmin). When I need to--haven't needed to touch anything outside work hours in a while, knock on wood.

I am looking for a good solution on a remote site for a router -> kvm -> vm (preferably with graphical interface). I want to connect this site with OPENVPN. The ClearOS has direct internet access.

Do or dont? I hope you can point me in the right direction.

I actually need to do more to secure our remote access, so I'm more in your position than able to offer advice on that.

Greg Helledy wrote:

Erik Schoenmaker wrote:

Why is installing a graphical interface a bad idea in a production environment (technically)?
I currently have (in a test environment) ClearOS as a kvm server and I really like the Virt-Manager graphical version.

Two related reasons:
1. In principle, the more software there is running on a system, the more opportunities for exploits there are. You can't exploit code that's not there, so you shouldn't have anything on a server that's not required for it to do the jobs it's tasked with.
2. As they note, ClearOS isn't tested with a graphical desktop. It's possible, if unlikely, that installing the desktop will "break" some part of ClearOS in a way that's not obvious. It works normally, but has a flaw that's not present in the "factory" version.
And one other one:
3. It may serve to encourage people to use the system. A computer with no GUI is probably going to be left sitting at its login screen. Once you've got the browser and audio software on it, next thing you know someone's watching Youtube and checking their personals mailbox.

That said, I installed KDE on one of our servers, and haven't had any problems. I didn't do anything to make it easy to get to--to even access it you have to log in to the graphical console, press the key for a new terminal screen, log in again, then run "startx". So I'm pretty sure it's safe from people watching videos on it.

Hi Greg! Thanks for your answer. Are you also using RDP to connect to the KDE interface or only use the machine locally? Are you using this ClearOS as a router or just as an extra router/firewall with kvm for example?

I am looking for a good solution on a remote site for a router -> kvm -> vm (preferably with graphical interface). I want to connect this site with OPENVPN. The ClearOS has direct internet access.

Do or dont? I hope you can point me in the right direction.

Erik Schoenmaker wrote:

Why is installing a graphical interface a bad idea in a production environment (technically)?
I currently have (in a test environment) ClearOS as a kvm server and I really like the Virt-Manager graphical version.

Two related reasons:
1. In principle, the more software there is running on a system, the more opportunities for exploits there are. You can't exploit code that's not there, so you shouldn't have anything on a server that's not required for it to do the jobs it's tasked with.
2. As they note, ClearOS isn't tested with a graphical desktop. It's possible, if unlikely, that installing the desktop will "break" some part of ClearOS in a way that's not obvious. It works normally, but has a flaw that's not present in the "factory" version.
And one other one:
3. It may serve to encourage people to use the system. A computer with no GUI is probably going to be left sitting at its login screen. Once you've got the browser and audio software on it, next thing you know someone's watching Youtube and checking their personals mailbox.

That said, I installed KDE on one of our servers, and haven't had any problems. I didn't do anything to make it easy to get to--to even access it you have to log in to the graphical console, press the key for a new terminal screen, log in again, then run "startx". So I'm pretty sure it's safe from people watching videos on it.

Why is installing a graphical interface a bad idea in a production environment (technically)?
I currently have (in a test environment) ClearOS as a kvm server and I really like the Virt-Manager graphical version.

Because I read this:
https://www.clearos.com/clearfoundation/social/community/graphical-desktop-for-clearos-7

ClearOS is not designed for desktop managers and installing a full desktop is highly NOT recommended. This howto is only for proof of concept and should never be implemented in a production environment. In addition, only the Community Edition is supported (this will not work in the Home and Business Editions).

Thanks for helping me.

The packages with the @ are the ones you have installed with the repo they are installed from. The other packages are just available for installation and not installed.

Nick Howitt wrote:

Greg Helledy wrote:
Enable repository clearos-centos ("toggle" it) in the webadmin interface.

I believe, from the devs, that if you enable clearos-centos, you should also enable clearos-centos-updates.

That's a great point. I enabled clearos-centos-updates, and ran an update. It didn't have any updates for PackageKit.
Just to be sure, I uninstalled then reinstalled the relevant packages with the new repository enabled.

That didn't fix it either. So I pasted some of the crash output into Google and discovered I have run into CentOS bug # 9917:
https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=9917

Dozens of reports of the same/similar issue, starting in December, as recently as Friday. Looks like I'll just have to wait for it to be fixed.

So, CentOS 7 has not had a working GUI package manager for at least 4 months...

Ignoring the current bug in the CentOS application, ClearOS 7 Business seems to install a GUI with KDE easily. Great news, IMO. Thank you Dave for giving me the inspiration to try it.

Greg Helledy wrote:
Enable repository clearos-centos ("toggle" it) in the webadmin interface.

I believe, from the devs, that if you enable clearos-centos, you should also enable clearos-centos-updates.

Greg Helledy wrote:

Marcel van Leeuwen wrote:


Out of interest why do you need a grapical enviroment?

In my case, because:
a. We will be installing a third-party FTP server that offers GUI configuration, and
b. At my small company I'm the only linux guy. People who only know windows have to be able to do basic things when I'm not in. That means a GUI.

Thank you for the answer! Ah I see. It's cool it's possible.

Our current production machine is ClearOS Professional 6.7, 64-bit. PackageKit as installed from the clearos-provided centos repository works fine.
What I'm evaluating is ClearOS Business 7.2 (I just downloaded the .iso earlier this week). The issue is actually the same in CentOS 7.2--it's not ClearOS specific.

I've actually got 3 VMs on the machine next to me:
1. ClearOS Business 7--now has working KDE, but still no GUI package manager
2. CentOS 7.2, with KDE interface chosen at install time
3. CentOS 7.2, with Gnome interface chosen at install time

3. Defaulted to having something called "Package Installer". It's odd-looking, nothing like PackageKit on ClearOS6 or anything else I've seen before. In there, I found an application called "Gnome Packages" and installed that.
It then appears under Applications | System Tools as "Software".

All are running in VMWare Workstation 12 Player.

So I went to the ClearOS 7 VM (with the centos repository toggled on)
and did
yum list gnome*

One of the packages that came up caught my eye, it was called gnome-software.
So I did
yum install gnome-software

I was afraid this might require installing a ton of stuff, but it had 7 dependencies for a total 11 MB download.

This added to the menu (remember we're in KDE now), under Recently Installed, something called Application Installer, with the same icon that "Package Installer" had under Gnome on the CentOS install. And sure enough, it's the same application. I fired it up, and searched for "packages", and it produced "Gnome Packages". So I installed that.

Now, executing gpk-application brings up PackageKit. Finally!

Except that it crashes when I select an uninstalled package.

(gpk-application:14440): GLib-CRITICAL **: the GVariant format string '(&s&su&s&st)' has a type of '(ssusst)' but the given value has a type of '(a{sv})'



(gpk-application:14440): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_variant_get: assertion 'valid_format_string (format_string, TRUE, value)' failed



[1]+  Segmentation fault      gpk-application

I don't suppose that means anything to anyone, does it?

Note that this happens on VM 3 (the properly-installed CentOS with Gnome), not just VM1, which might be considered a hack job.

What ClearOS version Greg?

Marcel van Leeuwen wrote:


Out of interest why do you need a grapical enviroment?

In my case, because:
a. We will be installing a third-party FTP server that offers GUI configuration, and
b. At my small company I'm the only linux guy. People who only know windows have to be able to do basic things when I'm not in. That means a GUI.

I have done the following, based on Dave Loper's howto, except for KDE:

Enable repository clearos-centos ("toggle" it) in the webadmin interface.

As root, execute the following commands:
yum groupinstall "X Window System"
yum install kdelibs
yum install kde-baseapps
yum install kde-workspace
yum install kdenetwork
yum install kdeadmin
yum install firefox

startx

and, it worked. I did the install commands separately because I wanted to watch what was going on in as much detail as possible, in case things went wrong.

The GUI setup is a little rough to start with. No desktop background had been chosen so it's solid black, the application launcher had no icon (you just had to know where it was) and so on. But, as far as I can tell, it didnt' break anything. I've rebooted the system and it SEEMS to be ok. Of course this is a VM and not being used for any actual work yet. YMMV.

The one big frustration I'm having is that the single GUI application management app available in CentOS seems to work differently in CentOS 7. On my ClearOS6 box, I installed PackageKit and can run it with gpk-application. I install it in the ClearOS7 VM, (and also on a CentOS7 VM), and no gpk-application file is created. I know I must be missing something, what's the executable for PackageKit? How do I start it from the command line, since it doesn't create a menu entry in KDE?

Dave Loper wrote:

Support on this method is limited. Only a few of us are working on these mechanisms and so there is not broad support for it. And if you get stuck, we might not be able to get you out of it through paid support. That being said, as a community effort we should have people exploring it, poking at it, developing documentation and howtos around it. There are powerful tools there that we aren't using yet and can be but it is hard to become a subject matter expert over night. That warning expresses the notion that if something goes wrong, you may be the person of last resort to fixing it.

I do have some systems that I personally support that use this method...but then again, I can be that person for of last resort there.

Out of interest why do you need a grapical enviroment?

Yep, understood. I get that support on release 6 was unofficial, too, but it worked without a hitch and it just never occurred to me that I might not have the same option in release 7.

Support on this method is limited. Only a few of us are working on these mechanisms and so there is not broad support for it. And if you get stuck, we might not be able to get you out of it through paid support. That being said, as a community effort we should have people exploring it, poking at it, developing documentation and howtos around it. There are powerful tools there that we aren't using yet and can be but it is hard to become a subject matter expert over night. That warning expresses the notion that if something goes wrong, you may be the person of last resort to fixing it.

I do have some systems that I personally support that use this method...but then again, I can be that person for of last resort there.

Dave, thank you very much for your work in doing this. When I look at your howto I see the following warning:

ClearOS is not designed for desktop managers and installing a full desktop is highly NOT recommended. This howto is only for proof of concept and should never be implemented in a production environment. In addition, only the Community Edition is supported (this will not work in the Home and Business Editions).

I just want to confirm that this is true.
When I installed ClearOS Professional on our first server (6.5 was the current version at the time) I thought not having a GUI wouldn't be an issue, but over time I've found it's useful to be able to install 3rd party applications--some of which benefit from or simply require a GUI.

I am using a VM to evaluate ClearOS 7 Business for another server we are going to replace. It's our company FTP server which I don't even want to imagine trying to administer by CLI (yes we're using a 3rd party solution, the ones offered in the app store don't meet our needs). So it looks like we will not be able to use ClearOS for this server (and I will now have to plan on migrating our ClearOS 6 box to another solution when ClearOS 6 reaches EOL).
This is disappointing.

I believe when you enable clearos-centos you chould also enable clearos-centos-updates so try --enablerepo=clearos-centos,clearos-centos-updates.

Dave Loper wrote:

As with version 6, ClearOS 7 does have a graphical desktop. Please note that developers do not test software with the graphical desktop so the introduction of bugs and other issues can result by adding the graphical desktop to your system. As such, we encourage any feedback and interaction from the community in regards to the graphical desktop since the graphical desktop does provide unique 3rd party tools for direct management of the box.

Here is the howto.

Also, any feedback on the howto would be greatly appreciated.

Hello Dave

Thanks for this note.

When i try to have the GUI on my new clearOS install, i've the following :


executing :

yum --enablerepo=clearos-centos install gnome-classic-session gnome-terminal nautilus-open-terminal control-center liberation-mono-fonts firefox

fails with :

Error : Paquet : libgudev1-219-19.el7_2.4.x86_64 (clearos-centos-verified)
Requiert : systemd-libs = 219-19.el7_2.4


Did you met also this error ?

Thanks

Regards

Mac

I didn't tried it yet. I suggest you try it in virtual machine first.

Has anyone gotten this to work in Home edition 7.2 yet?
My new 7.2 install is running sweet (cant believe it). I dont want to trash it if its not going to work.

Just one more update for a while...

Due to this account manager error posted below, my ClearOS desktop experiment is...on hold for now.

I have to reimage the machine because all of my data is on there and this LDAP problem seems to have broken something. While I can't say exactly what caused this, if you experiment as well you might want to do this on your "play" PC rather than one with your data on it. I did get my data offloaded (FTP+FileZilla=Joy) but it's a little messier than I had expected. Maybe I will go back to experimenting in the future once I shut down an old PC of mine, but for now I have to play it safe. Well, a little safer anyway.

Thanks all

There might be another reason for this breaking...I went to add a new user in tonight and found the "account manager is offline". I'm reading another thread here to see if I can get that working first. Once it starts back up again, maybe that is part of the problem.

https://www.clearos.com/clearfoundation/social/community/account-system-is-offline/latest

Ok...here's where I'm at trying to get "easylife" to work.

When I download and try to install it with rpm, it gave me a bunch of dependencies that were missing. So I installed the following...

yum install usermode usermode-gtk yad

Then, I tried installing again with no dependencies (so it gets past the Fedora check):

rpm --nodeps -i easylife-4.4-1.noarch.rpm

Ah, it "looks" like it works...it's in the system menu anyway.

When I tried it, it comes back with an error that there is no regular user found and it shouldn't be run as root. Fine, I'll logout and go into one of my other accounts.

So, I login a regular account and try running it; a pop-up states that I am doing something that needs the root password. Ok, I enter that. Once I hit enter, it comes back with the same error message that there's "No regular user found..." even though I'm logged in as a regular user. There's an error message back in the console:

"GtkDialog mapped without a transparent parent. This is discouraged."

When I surfed around the Internet I found another posting that says gksu needs to be installed, but it's not a known package in the ClearOS repositories so with some additional surfing someone said to try install beesu instead. I did, and no luck. So I removed beesu.

Anyone have an idea on how to get easylife to work so I can get all of these background drivers and services installed? I could also try and install this all manually (by all, I mean at least the nvidia video, nvidia sound, and flash emulator) but if this is something trivial that is broken it does in fact sound like an "easy" way to get the missing parts installed from a desktop environment quickly.

Thanks!

The quick summary is...it works!

I came here after an older post of mine when I tried to do this under 6.3 and 6.7, and Tim sent me here. Now that I've reimaged the server with 7.1 and have a new video card (GTX 960) I decided to give this a go. I haven't done the VNC install yet, but that brings me to two questions.

1. Tim suggested a few add'l packages to add below (like Thunderbird "is a must") and I'd like to add VLC from videolan.org which I also consider a "must add". Now that we have a GUI, is there a GUI package manager that I can download and install now so I don't have to manually download everything and 'yum install'? i.e. a full Gnome or KDE desktop would have this.

2. While trying different Linux packages (I use Linux Mint on two old desktops) I came across a nice installation package for Fedora that installs all of the background missing stuff that you'd need on a typical desktop, except the GUI installer that I mentioned above. It's at http://easylifeproject.org if you'd like to see what I mean.

ClearOS isn't Fedora I know. ClearOS is based on CentOS, which comes from RedHat that spins off Fedora as a desktop environment. So, I'm crossing my fingers that all of this stuff can be installed to bring ClearOS up to an easy media server with light web surfing, i.e. streaming online video as well.

I did install the nvidia .run drivers off their web site on ClearOS 6.7 before reinstalling 7.1. That was a bit of work; you have to install gcc and also kernel-devel in order for the nvidia install to create a new kernel, and this would have to be manually run again after every Kernel upgrade. It did work somewhat as I was able to run Folding at Home on the video card but it only worked with Core 21. The others would crash.

If I can get the full driver set to work, I really only use this server as a file server and may be able to install Steam for example to run a few Linux games. This is pretty much uncharted territory on ClearOS I know and getting off topic. Once I get the GUI fully setup (questions 1 and 2) if all goes well, I'll start a new thread.

Thanks Dave & Tim!

Possibly not directly related as it has nothing to do with the graphical desktop, but when I set up ClearOS 6 on a new server I had black screen problems and it seemed that ClearOS was using a video mode not properly supported by the m/b. I don't really understand why as it uses something like 800x600 which is pretty basic. I solved it during boot by changing the grub parameter "vga" to "vga=791". It may be worth a brief look at this thread or it could be a complete red herring.

Not sure whats going on here. Did everything by the numbers here and all went well. Not one problem. Its coming up with a black screen. Looks like it trying to display a desktop only its black with no icons. Thing with vnc or freenx nomachine. They connect but its the same screen. When I reboot the server its goes to what looks like a deep blue desktop background with some smearing on it like somethings corrupt. It doesnt even reboot it just sits at this screen. Kill the power to the machine and boot it back up it just goes to a black screen. Cant even alt-f2/f6 into prompt. Just sits at the this black screen.
Anywhere I can look for problems or did I miss something here

Thanks Tim and Peter. Ill try this. Any ideas on how to get webmin installed.
This is what Im getting when I try to install the rpm. Ive never seen this one before

error: %pre(webmin-1.780-1.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 2
error: webmin-1.780-1.noarch: install failed

Hi Jeff,

jeff1965 wrote:

I cant get it to install. I keep getting the error
Error: systemd conflicts with initscripts-9.49.24-1.v7.x86_64
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Same thing even with clearos-centos-updates added

The unverified clearos-centos repository was enabled in your yum command (Home and Business Editions don't use this repo). If you ever use clearos-centos then the clearos-updates repo also needs to be enabled. Try it again with clearos-updates enabled.

Essentially, the howto is only relevant to Community Edition systems -- I'll update the howto shortly!

Hi Jeff, this might help, see Petes reply
https://www.clearos.com/clearfoundation/social/community/clearos-7-x-updates-broken#reply-104561

I cant get it to install. I keep getting the error
Error: systemd conflicts with initscripts-9.49.24-1.v7.x86_64
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Same thing even with clearos-centos-updates added

Anyone get this to install

Also looking to install webmin as there are a couple of things in it I like to use.

Tim,

I borged your VNC steps into the howto...thanks!

You might also try installing thunderbird, eog, gparted, gedit, gnome-system-monitor, gnome-packagekit (from the clearos-centos repo) :-)

Great - works well thanks Dave!

As an extension to run a remote VNC connection on your new graphical desktop following steps from my previous Howto
https://www.clearos.com/clearfoundation/social/community/xfce4-remote-desktop-headless-setup-clearos-6-x
and
https://www.howtoforge.com/vnc-server-installation-on-centos-7

Install VNC server and create user

yum --enablerepo=clearos-centos install tigervnc-server

useradd -r vncuser

Setup systemd service parameters from template

cp /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service

Edit /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service and replace both entries of <USER> with vncuser

Setup vncuser password and service

su vncuser

vncpasswd

vncserver #runonce and press ctrl+d to exit back to root

Setup daemon and configure to run

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl enable vncserver@:1.service

reboot

You can now download your favourite VNC viewer to your client (e.g. TightVNC for windows) and connect to your display by using your ClearOS address "hostname:1" or "ipaddress:1". If you have the firewall enabled you may need to open up port 5901+

It should start automatically after boot, but you can also call manually with:-
systemctl start vncserver@:1.service
and check status with
systemctl start vncserver@:1.service

P.S if you want to change the screen resolution, connect via VNC, and go to top left hand menu Applications -> Settings -> Displays