CentOS server setup guide for people from debian

This guide is outdated and unmaintained. I have not used CentOS for a decade.

A basic server setup guide for people from debian to CentOS.

Software

yum is apt-get/aptitude on CentOS.

Remove not necessary software:

yum grouplist
yum groupremove <wildcards>
yum list installed
yum remove <wildcards>

Upgrade system: (equivalent to apt-get update && apt-get upgrade on debian)

yum update

Add more packages:

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge

Unlike Debian, Centos's official package repo is very limited.

Services

Check what is running:

chkconfig --list |grep '3:on' |awk '{print $1}' |sort

Use chkconfig <service> off to disable unnecessary services.

chkconfig is included as default in Centos. In Debian, you can install it via apt-get install chkconfig, though Debian people are likely to use sysv-rc-conf instead.

Hostname

Make sure your /etc/hosts file have a line like:

127.0.0.1               <your-hostname>.example.com <your-hostname> localhost.localdomain localhost

And /etc/sysconfig/network have a line like:

HOSTNAME=your-hostname.example.com

Then run hostname <your-hostname>.example.com

Debian doesn't use /etc/sysconfig/network. In Debian, you change hostname in /etc/hostname:

echo 'your-hostname' > /etc/hostname

Debian prefers to not include the example.com part.

SSH

Same to Debian.

Firewall

CentOS may enable iptables by default. You may want to disable it via service iptables stop or /etc/init.d/iptables stop. And disable its startup at boot time via chkconfig.

If you want to mess up with it, its configuration file is located at /etc/sysconfig/iptables, different to Debian.