Some installation tidbits of fedora-core 5 (on vaio-FJ)
Introductory words for newbie
Fedora Core is one flavor of Linux operating system. With F.C. 5, it has become very easy. It uses open-source softwares which more free than freeware, and more reliable, stable, secure, and now in some way easier and prettier too, so why not..
In essence, to install a new utility (say firefox) in FC5, all you have to do is to connect to internet and type yum install firefox and the utility would be ready to run without having to reboot most of the time. yum is a s/w which in FC5 uses some default fedora repository to look for s/w you asked. Some s/w are available through 3rd party repository. I for example use one extra repos called freshrpms, and that covers most of my need. Installation or Removal of programs through Yum channel and with use of only few repos. keeps the system clean and without conflicts; which in time, becomes a big deal. At times however, you have to venture out and get *.rpm (eqv. of *.exe) from individual site and FC5 automatic installer would be able to roll out that. If you want to have more fun, you can compile executables from source in your system and install. This may be not as daunting as it look. When you are stuck at any point, many time somebody might have addressed that issue, and is searchable online. How to search and what to filter in is the tricky part, many times just pasting the error message in google works fine.
About this page:
words of caution: Its work in progress. I would be adding things as I proceed. These notes may not work as it is for your installation. and again, this is a scribble (useful for me to refer back) of tidbits, sometime unclear, cryptic. and of course you are not advised to learn English from this page.
Installation of Linux with FC5 has become straightforward as it is; still at times its difficult or time consuming specially for a new-comer; few installation instructions on web, notwithstanding. In this regard, more perspectives is better. I did use them (eg: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc5.html , www.stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installation_notes.html) and would recommend them. With this page, I hope to put out additional tidbits. At times, this may give a simpler, updated route that goes with new FC5 defaults. and for some specific programs with iota more infos that may make it work. some commentary on what did not work is good too.
Ok. I am doing a dual install with XP.
Some installation strategy
On release date, I tried installing from network, since it is usually a faster method. (need to upload a very small file of rescue cd. and then you download only relevant s/ws which cuts a good quantity off. ) I was asked to put ftp site address, and directory name, which I filled as:
a) ftp: mirror.linux.duke.edu b) dir: /pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/
The entry is right for my area. did not work perhaps becuase of traffic
Installation effort from cds, selecting lots of package failed for me too. Anyway that is not a very good idea I realized. Its better to get a working OS on your system first, and then work through flesh over skeleton. Integrity-wise it would be the same. It would still be more integrated compared to getting windows from the vendor and installing random 3rd party softwares. did not work either. I installed minimum package. (needed cd1, cd2 and one small utility for hal in cd4).
Post-Installation Begin..
Package Manager (pirut) failed to find dependencies for: many programs. whereas yum install works fine for those programs. so I just picked programs one by one to be installed through yum. Ideally, one can type yum -y program_a package_b library_c (your list of utilities) and hope that everything would be done automatically by the coffee break. However, if for some connection or other reason if it breaks down, may waste big effort and time. So I did it in some reasonable parts.
A greater number of useful programs are already available through the default repos. I assorted these following program that I wanted to use. I looked for them in pirut before including any thirdparty repository. Somehow, yum info utility_a does not bring out information, that pirut does with its search. I was aslo surprised to see for example xmgrace there, which I used to install from 3rd party before.
(yum install)
grace kile lyx emacs qtparted wine openoffice.org-math f-spot k3b thunderbird gaim gimp qiv inkscape xfig gsview xpdf planner xmms xmms-mp3 xmms-skins xmms-flac xmms-cdread sabayon blas lapack octave azureus bittorent-gui deskbar-applet ekiga gdesklets
m17n-db-hindi
k3b kdemultimedia gkrellm switchdesk
In case, some are unfamiliar to you, you may search in pirut for their description. You list may of course vary. I had to install more dependencies later on when I proceeded with more application installation.
Kile adjustment in Gnome:
With ViewPdf, kile by default runs embedded 'libkghostviewpart' utiity of kde. Change the default by selecting
Settings>Configure-Kile>Build(Select)>ViewPDF(Select a tool)>Advanced(tab)>Type(Select 'Run Outside of Kile'>General(tab again)>Command(type evince there) + Options (type '%target' there) > OK.
Widgets:
yum install gdesklets
this is just a widget manager. I still have to go and select widgets i like from repos like:
http://gdesklets.org .
gdesklet(file) would install it with ease.
SUDO
Adding super-user do(sudo) privileges to user. Its safer and convenient. A special command [$/usr/sbin/visudo] exists, that let you edit the /etc/sudoer file.
It explains the place where to edit (replacing $username)
3rd Party Yum Repository
It is as easy as to type one command. The following is for freshrpms, which is at present suffice for my need (for eg. wireless firmware). Other repos. may be added in similar fashion.
$sudo rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/5\
/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
There is mild caution about mixing repos. for example fedora.us or livna is not compatible with dag for example. atrm has issues too.
Wifi and Network Manager
My centrino motherboard has ipw2200 wireless. Whose firmware is not installed by default. which is straightforward.
$yum install ipw2200-firmware
NetworkManager-gnom can be called by [$sudo system-config-network]. Without the firmware, it did recognize ipw2200 as ethernet. Changing the options in the configurator is straight, and only this is required to make wifi work. I did edit for eth1 to start at boot,(and removed this option in eth1). It works on Reboot.
need to find wireless option scanner now. Kwifimanager does not yum_install. wifi-radar is a good utility in this regard. required components to be put manually around. I found a generic rpm here. It installed but did not work.
. http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/sourceforge/w/wi/wifi-radar/wifi-radar-1.5.4-1.noarch.html.
wlassistant is one utility I found in pirut.
Mounting Windows File system
NTFS support: Still you need to get rpm for a module, to read XP file system. Type
$ uname -rm
to knwo your system and find a corresponding rpm from http://www.linux-ntfs.org/content/view/187/
select, click and you would get default GUI for installer.
For me there were two HD disk nodes generated in /dev ($ls /dev/sda*) directory, but was not automounted. To automount on boot, I created two directory in /mnt dir. and added two lines through ($sudo gedit /etc/fstab )
/dev/sda2 /mnt/windows ntfs ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/storage vfat ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
Multimedia (Real, Mplayer, Xine Plugins)
yum part would install xine and mplyaer. but for plugins and codec, I had to download directly from corresponding sites.
Real
I did not install helixplayer for its plugins are not perfect. I installed realplayer from their website.
http://www.real.com/linux/
(Download rpm package with default installer works fine.)
did open npr.org and set defualt as /usr/bin/realplay worked smooth.
raaga or musicindiaonline still does not work.
Mplayer PlugIn and Codecs
(http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/)
there fc4 plugin rpm works, tho its better to look for fc5 rpm. u still need codecs. Can be done in the following way(20050412 is still the latest package there)
$wget http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20050412.tar.bz2
$sudo tar xjf essential-20050412.tar.bz2 /usr/lib/win32/
it shall just put many dll etc. files in appropriate path. win media codec.
CERN-ROOT
It is an Object Oriented (C++ based) Data Analysis Framework, developed by mainly CERN (physcists working in high energy labs) This is promising technology to make life easier but if the beast is tamed. It is non trivial to install as well, specially because some parts are not compatiable to gcc4.
I installed the following libraries, compilers etc. to be safe. (Though both X11 and XPm are installed as standard package by default, still need to install the corresponding -devel , else it would not work. Besides, I did not have gcc, g++ and g77 installed which it requires in order to compile. gcc3.2 compatible)
$sudo yum install libX11-devel libXpm-devel
$sudo yum install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296 gcc gcc-g++ compat-gcc-32 compat-gcc-32-c++ compat-gcc-32-g77
I first went to as su
$cd /usr/src
Then followed their instruction (to install from cvs http://root.cern.ch/root/CVS.html)
The point to deviate is to put appropriate option for configuration to avoid gcc4 compatibility issues.
./configure linux --disable-cern --enable-soversion
% export CVSROOT=:pserver:cvs@root.cern.ch:/user/cvs
% cvs login
(Logging in to cvs@root.cern.ch)
CVS password: cvs
% cvs -z3 checkout -P root
U root/...
U ...
% cd root
% ./configure --help
% ./configure <platform>
% gmake
% gmake install
$export ROOTSYS=/usr/src/root
$root
SSH:
laptop is the client system on which I want to setup ssh such that I can access my office machine without providing long command and password. This setup make
there may be some different ways to set up ssh.
[naam@localhost ~]$ ssh-keygen -q -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -t rsa
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
[this password is for ssh purpose only, I did not enter anything for that. however there is perhaps a way to enter passphrase automatically.So it could be your favourite poem (more wierd, more secure) if you want.
this generates a public portion of rsa key corresponding to the client system in .ssh/id_rsa.pub. and private key part is stored automatically in .ssh/id_rsa.
This public portion of the key has to be appended in remote server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys section.
[anand@grads-39 ~]$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
[anand@grads-39 ~]$ cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
[anand@grads-39 ~]$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
[anand@grads-39 ~]$ rm ~/id_rsa.pub
Making .ssh/config file at client end. Assuming server name is grads-39.univ.edu, and you would like to get connect it using $ssh phy
I put lines like this.
---------------
Host phy grads-39.univ.edu
HostName grads-39.univ.edu
User anand
Compression yes
Protocol 2
----------------
securing permissions of home-directory, .ssh and files inside.
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod go-w ~/
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod go-rwx ~/.ssh/*
DVD:Rip :
yum install transcode Gtk-Perl ImageMagick ogmtools subtitleripper vcdimager
yum install perl-Video-DVDRip
Did work! But all components are old. it cribs.
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod go-w ~/
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
[naam@localhost ~]$ chmod go-rwx ~/.ssh/*
Freemind
This is a very powerful nice utility if it suits you. could throuw out your mind and organize. There is no yum repos for fc4.
From http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7118
I downloaded a generic rpm which could not locate many dependencies. Fedora has this mismatch problem with java/jre . I am not comfortable with trying other distribution binaries. luckily all dependencies were within yum repos.
#sudo yum install jakarta-commons-codec ws-jaxme jgoodies-forms msv-xsdlib relaxngDatatype
after that there were more related rpms there i installed anyways because this package tries to bring together many assets of different programs so more the better.
freemind-javadoc, jcalendar, freemind-plugins-time and freemind-plugins-svg. the laast one depends on "rhino" and "batik" which again yum could install.
XAIR- AIGLX (eye-candy):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/AiglxOnFedora
$sudo gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/aiglx.repo
paste:
------
[aiglx]
name=aiglx $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://people.redhat.com/rstrode/aiglx/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
-----
$sudo yum install xorg-x11-server-Xair
System > Administration > Login Screen >(tab)Security>(Choose item starting with 0)Add/Modify>>(Choose aiglx)
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool true
[to start gdm without xair
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool false
]
gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Adding to the "Device" section:
----
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
-----
of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf will also give you increased performance.