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Installing CentOS 5.8: Netinstall ISO and Mirror Settings

The CentOS 5.8 netinstall ISO downloads and the mirror site and directory settings for i386 and x86_64. Historic: CentOS 5 reached end of life in 2017.

Written

From my Linux study notes, 2012. Some commands and versions here are old, so please reuse them carefully. Anything marked "added later", and the notes at the end, explain what has changed since.

Historic post. CentOS 5 reached end of life on 31 March 2017 and no longer receives security updates. Do not install it on a new server or anything connected to the internet. If you are starting with Linux today, install a current release such as Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Debian or Ubuntu and follow that project’s own installation guide. See “Notes for today” at the end.

This was my record of where to get the CentOS 5.8 netinstall image and what to enter during installation.

Download the netinstall ISO

The netinstall ISO is a small image that starts the installer; the rest of the system is downloaded from a mirror during installation, so the machine needs a network connection.

64-bit (x86_64):

http://mirrors.manchester.icecolo.com/centos/5.8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-5.8-x86_64-netinstall.iso

32-bit (i386):

http://mirror.rmg.io/centos/5.8/isos/i386/CentOS-5.8-i386-netinstall.iso

These mirror links are from 2012 and may no longer work.

  • x86_64 is for 64-bit processors, which almost every machine from the last decade or more uses.
  • i386 is for old 32-bit processors.

Mirror details to enter during installation

When the installer asks where to install from, choose the HTTP method and enter:

Web site name:

mirror.centos.org

CentOS directory for i386:

/centos/5/os/i386

or

/centos/5.8/os/i386

CentOS directory for x86_64:

/centos/5/os/x86_64

or

/centos/5.8/os/x86_64

The directory must match the ISO you booted: use the i386 directory with the i386 ISO and the x86_64 directory with the x86_64 ISO. /centos/5/ pointed to the newest CentOS 5 release at the time, while /centos/5.8/ pointed to 5.8 specifically.

Notes for today

  • These settings no longer work. After CentOS 5 reached end of life, its files were removed from the normal CentOS mirrors. Old releases are kept only as an archive at vault.centos.org, which is useful for historic reference, not for production systems.
  • What to install instead. For a free Red Hat-style server, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are the common replacements for CentOS. Debian and Ubuntu are popular alternatives. Each provides its own installation guide, for example the Rocky Linux documentation at https://docs.rockylinux.org/. The installer screens are different from CentOS 5, so follow the guide for the release you download.
  • Commands from this era. CentOS 5 used service and chkconfig to manage services. Current systems use systemctl start name and systemctl enable name. yum has become dnf on newer Red Hat-family systems (yum still works as an alias); Debian and Ubuntu use apt.