Installing CentOS 8 at BitFolk

Hi, TL;DR: Read this to learn how to install CentOS 8 https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Installing_CentOS_8 Unabridged edition: Given that CentOS 8 was released a few days ago I had a look at adding its installer. Unfortunately it seems that CentOS 8 has dropped kernel support for PV-mode Xen guests, which are the only type of guests that BitFolk currently supports. It is therefore not possible to use the official CentOS installer or core kernel package at the moment. We are in the process of moving to PVH mode¹ guests, but that's not ready yet. It all works; the main difficulty now is supporting both modes without it being a terribly confusing user experience. In the meantime, it is pretty simple to install CentOS 8 from another Linux. This could be any distribution including an earlier version of CentOS, though I would suggest that doing it from the BitFolk Rescue VM² makes most sense as it's always available and runs from RAM. As the core kernel package of CentOS 8 also does not support PV mode guests, it is also necessary to enable ELRepo³ and install the kernel-ml package. Here is a transcript of me installing CentOS 8 from scratch by this method with full explanation of every step. https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Installing_CentOS_8 Don't be put off by the massive amount of text here; the vast majority of it is command output which I have only included so you know what to expect. The only issue I have found with this method are some odd 1–2 minute pauses around creating initramfs / bootloader config. This only happens inside the install chroot and is probably something trying to probe and timing out. It appears to be harmless, just irritating. If you know what that is about or have any other improvements to make, please do edit the page⁴; it is a wiki. Cheers, Andy ¹ https://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Software_Overview#PVH_.28x86.29 ² https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Rescue ³ https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml ⁴ I would suggest refraining from adding purely optional things that are a matter of taste though, as otherwise the page will become incredibly long and opinionated. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting