Adding Gnome Desktop to pure CentOS/RHEL Server

http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Unix/Linu…alInstall.shtml

# yum -y groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "X Window System" "Fonts"
# yum -y groupinstall "Graphical Administration Tools"
# yum -y groupinstall "Internet Browser"
# yum -y groupinstall "General Purpose Desktop"
# yum -y groupinstall "Office Suite and Productivity"
# yum -y groupinstall "Graphics Creation Tools"

Enable GNOME
Since the server was previously running on CLI mode, we need to change the initialization process for the machine to boot up in GUI mode.
Open /etc/inittab using a text editor and change following line:

id:3:initdefault:

To:
id:5:initdefault:

After making the change, reboot the machine.
# init 6
Note that you can switch from GUI to CLI mode manually by using following method:
GUI to CLI: Ctrl + Alt + F6
CLI to GUI: Ctrl + Alt + F1