How to Configure Internet access on a CentOS Minimal install

By default a CentOS minimal install can't connect to the network or the internet, in order to configure it to access the outside world you need to follow the following steps:

Configure the DHCP client on the default network interface eth0 by executing the following command:

dhclient eth0

Edit the main network configuration file to make sure networking is enabled using the command

vi /etc/sysconfig/network

and make sure that it has networking set to yes

NETWORKING=yes

Edit the network configuration file for eth0 to enable it to use a dynamic ip using dhcp

vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Modify the file to have the following

DEVICE="eth0"
BOOTPROTO="dhcp"
ONBOOT="yes"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"

Save the file and then restart the network service using the following command

service network restart

Make sure that eh0 has pulled an IP using the following command

ifconfig