How to install GNOME desktop from DVD on CentOS 6 using the command line?

Question

I have installed CentOS 6 in Virtualbox. Although I have chosen to install General Purpose GNOME Desktop, the GNOME desktop does not start. All I get is a black and white text prompt. I would like to know how I can install GNOME Desktop from the CentOS DVD.

1. How do I mount the DVD image?

2. How do I install GNOME desktop from command line?

3. If I already have the GNOME Desktop installed, why doesn't it start? How can I check from command line that I have GNOME installled?

This virtual machine does not have internet connection, that's why I want to install the GNOME Desktop from DVD.

Solution

As you have installed CentOS in VirtualBox, and as I understand, while installing you haven't choose X window system, so you are getting black screen with white cursor blinking.

Now what you can do is, install X Window System. If you have internet access in VirtualBox then you can try

yum groupinstall "X Window System"

This will use your internet connection to download the packages and install on system.

If you don't have internet access in VirtualBox then I will suggest you to mount the CD ROM in a virtual machine and install using that.

First of all you need to create a mount point and mount the Installation Media

mkdir -p /media/cdr
mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdr

Now you have to create a local repository in /etc/yum.repo.d/

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
vi local.repo

In this file write

[installtion Media]
Name="Centos Local Installation"
baseurl="file:///media/cdr"
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Now you can install the X Window system using

yum groupinstall "X Window System"

Let me know if you still have any problem.

Comments

[luistamawong]

I applied this solution, but yum didn't like my local.repo, so I rewrote it, so the repo name had no spaces, and the base url had no "".

[dc2009]

there are somes typos the line mkdir /medir/cdr should be mkdir /media/cdr and cd /etc/yum.repo.d/ should be cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

[Plutext]

I had to set priority to ensure it used my local repo; see serverfault.com/questions/399207/…