These instructions are for installing Gnu/Linux onto a PC. If you have existing data or an operating system on the machine you are installing on, ensure that you know what you are doing, and that you have a full backup in case you overwrite anything you meant to keep.

These instructions are for installing the x86-compatible (32-bit) version of Fedora. Anything different that needs to be done for the x86_64 (64-bit AMD64, EM64T) version are shown in green, like this.

Boot from the first CD.

Select graphical mode installation.

Run the media test if it has not been run before.

Select English as the installation language.

Select UK keyboard.

Select Install Fedora Core.

Select Workstation installation type.

Select Manual partition with Disk Druid and create a set of partitions.

Use GRUB as the boot loader.

Leave the IP and Netmask information configured by DHCP, but only set the first part of the hostname, e.g. gina - if the fully qualified name is used it causes sendmail to double up the domain in the from email headers that are sent from this machine.

Enable the firewall and allow Remote Login (SSH). Set Enable SELinux to Disabled (I don't need it so why take the performance hit).

Select Europe/London and System clock uses UTC on the timezone screen.

Enter a root password.

Select Customize software packages to be installed.

Change the software selection as follows.

• Add KDE to the selection.
• Deselect vim-enhanced from the Editors (I will build the latest version myself).
• Select gftp from Graphical Internet. Deselect evolution and evolution-webcal.
• Deselect mutt from the Text Based Internet (again I prefer to compile and install the latest version myself).
• Select gnucash from Office/Productivity.
• Select k3b from Sound and Video.
• Select Authoring and Publishing.
• Select kdegames from Games and Entertainment.
• Select sendmail-cf from Mail server.
• Select MySQL Database.
• Select KDE Software Development.
• Select System Tools.

Click next and continue with the install.

Reboot!

Contents

Configure and run yum to update any RPM packages that are out of date.

 # rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM*
 # yum update

Enable the yum daemon, which uses a daily cron job to get the updates automatically.

 # chkconfig yum on
 # service yum start

Clean the old yum headers occaisionally with a monthly cron job to run.

 yum clean all

Now use yum to install the following:

• bittorrent - for downloading distros, etc.
• cdrdao - for writing CDs.
• gtk+-devel - needed when building MPlayer
• Objective Caml compiler - needed when building Unison
• compat-gcc-32-c++ - needed becasue MPlayer won't compile witht the version of gcc (4.0.0) shipped with Fedora Core 4
• screensavers
• mail-notification - panel application to flag new mail
• grip and easytag - used for ripping MP3s
• alacarte - a handy GNOME desktop menu editor

 # yum install bittorrent
 # yum install cdrdao
 # yum install gtk+-devel
 # yum install ocaml
 # yum install compat-gcc-32-c++
 # yum install xscreensaver-extras
 # yum install xscreensaver-gl-extras
 # yum install mail-notification
 # yum install grip
 # yum install easytag
 # yum install alacarte

For playing and ripping MP3s, some packages are needed from the rmp.livna.org repository. Set this up by installing the livna-release rpm package.

 # rpm -Uvh livna-release-4-0.lvn.5.4.noarch.rpm

Then install lame, libmad and gstreamer-plugins-mp3.

 # yum install lame
 # yum install libmad
 # yum install gstreamer-plugins-mp3

Contents

Customise the shell prompt by adding the following lines to the end of /etc/bashrc.

 ColourFuscia="\[\033[0;36m\]"
 ColourGreen="\[\033[0;32m\]"
 ColourDefault="\[\033[0m\]"
 
 # Set green to red if root
 if [ "$UID" = "0" ]; then
        ColourGreen="\[\033[1;31m\]"
 fi
 
 PS1="$ColourGreen($ColourFuscia\u@\h$ColourGreen:$ColourFuscia\w$ColourGreen)$ColourFuscia\\$ $ColourDefault"

Change the resolution of the virtual terminals (running on Ctrl-Alt-1 through Ctrl-Alt-6). Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add vga=791 to the end of the menu kernel line, e.g.

 kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-30.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hda=ide-scsi vga=790

790 produces a 1024x768 resolution with 32,768 colours. You could use any of the following (if you video card supports them).

The bios on gina.stevesearle.com is from the year 2000, so fails the cutoff date. To get round this and run the acpid daemon, add acpi=force to the /boot/grub/grub.conf, as follows.

 ...
 kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.27_FC3 ro acpi=force root=LABEL=/1 vga=795
 ...

Keep /tmp tidy. The following cron entry deletes all files

 30 1 * * * find /tmp -mtime +7 -type f -print -exec rm {} ";"; find /tmp -mtime +7 -type d -print -exec rm -rf {} ";"

Contents

Sendmail is a mail transfer agent. MTAs are used to transfer messages between machines. Normally Sendmail will send out any mail with headers showing it as coming from the local client - in my case a from address of steve@gina.stevesearle.com. So the following changes to the Sendmail configuration make it look as if the email has come from steve@stevesearle.com. To do this, the following lines are added to the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file (uncomment - remove dnl ... dnl - and edit where neccessary). The MAILHUB line is added at the end of the first block of defines and causes email that would otherwise have been delivered to a local user on the machine to be sent to the network mail server.

 ...
 define(`MAIL_HUB', `relay:stevesearle.com')
 ...
 MASQUERADE_AS(`stevesearle.com')
 ...
 FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)
 ...

Note that the EXPOSED_USER line in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc will prevent mail sent by root from being masqueraded, this should be removed if this is a problem.

Regenerate the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf with (note the sendmail-cf package must be installed for this to work, and no warnings are displayed if it isn't installed.

 # make -C /etc/mail

Add the fully qualified domain name to the first line of /etc/hosts.

 127.0.0.1               gina gina.stevesearle.com localhost.localdomain localhost

Doing this enables you to send mail to servers that won't accept email from localhost.localdomain.

Restart sendmail.

 # service sendmail restart

Create a .forward file to ensure that any mail to root gets read. Ensure that it is only writable by the user, otherwise it will be ignored.

 # chmod 644 ~/.forward

Contents

Add mount points for any NFS exports from other machines, by editing /etc/fstab and adding the appropriate lines, e.g.

 hayley:/backups        /backups        nfs     rsize=8192,wsize=8192

This would automatically mount hayley's /backups directory under /backups on this machine. (Permission would have to be granted on hayley via the /etc/exports file to allow this.) Don't forget to create the /backups directories on the local machine.

Contents

I run an old machine as a backup device. A backup folder is NFS exported to the rest of the network, and each machine runs a cron tar job to back up various files and directories.

Contents

These instructions have been derived from the excelent SpamAssassin-ClamAV-Procmail-Howto.

Download Clam AntiVirus to /tmp.

Create a user group and user.

 # groupadd clamav
 # useradd -g clamav -s /bin/false -c "Clam AntiVirus" clamav

Install.

 $ cd /tmp
 $ tar -xzf clamav-0.80.tar.gz
 $ cd clamav-0.80
 $ ./configure
 $ make
 $ su -c "make install"

Edit both /usr/local/etc/clamd.conf and /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf and remove or comment out the Example directive.

 ...
 # Comment or remove the line below.
 # Example
 ...

Create /etc/init.d/clamd as follows.

#!/bin/bash

 TMPDIR=/tmp
 PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

 case "$1" in
	start)
		echo "Starting ClamAV..."
		if [ -S /tmp/clamd ]; then
			echo "ClamAV is already running!"
		else
			/usr/local/bin/freshclam -d -c 10 --datadir=/usr/local/share/clamav
		  	/usr/local/sbin/clamd
	  	fi
  		echo "ClamAV is now up and running!"
  	;;
	stop)
  		echo "Shutting down ClamAV..."
	  	array=(`ps ax | grep -iw '/usr/local/bin/freshclam' | grep -iv 'grep' \
	   		| awk '{print $1}' | cut -f1 -d/ | tr '\n' ' '`)
	   	element_count=${#array[@]}
   		index=0
	   	while [ "$index" -lt "$element_count" ]
		do
 			kill -9 ${array[$index]}
		   	let "index = $index + 1"
	   	done
   		array=(`ps ax | grep -iw '/usr/local/sbin/clamd' | grep -iv 'grep' \
   			| awk '{print $1}' | cut -f1 -d/ | tr '\n' ' '`)
		element_count=${#array[@]}
	   	index=0
		while [ "$index" -lt "$element_count" ]
		do
			kill -9 ${array[$index]}
			let "index = $index + 1"
		done
		if [ -S /tmp/clamd ]; then
			rm -f /tmp/clamd
		fi
		echo "ClamAV stopped!"
	;;
	restart)
		$0 stop && sleep 3
		$0 start
	;;
	*)
		echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
		exit 1
 esac
 exit 0

Make it executable and start it.

 # chmod  755 /etc/init.d/clamd
 # /etc/init.d/clamd start

Make it start at boot up and stop at close down.

 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc2.d/S20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc3.d/S20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc4.d/S20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc5.d/S20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc0.d/K20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc1.d/K20clamd
 # ln -s /etc/init.d/clamd /etc/rc6.d/K20clamd

Schedule the following command to run regualry to check for viruses.

 /usr/local/bin/clamscan -ir --stdout /

Contents

Uptimed is used to keep track of the highest uptimes my GNU/Linux computers have.

Download it, and build and install it with

 $ cd /tmp
 $ tar -xjf uptimed-0.3.1.tar.bz2
 $ cd uptimed-0.3.1
 $ ./configure
 $ make
 $ su -c "make install"

Then add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit to create a unique id each time the server is booted.

 echo "Creating unique uptime daemon bootid..."
 /usr/local/sbin/uptimed -b

Now add these lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to start the uptime daemon.

 echo "Starting uptime daemon..."
 /usr/local/sbin/uptimed

Rename uptimed.conf-dist

 # mv /usr/local/etc/uptimed.conf-dist /usr/local/etc/uptimed.conf

then edit this to set the EMAIL and SEND_EMAIL variables.

Reboot and enter:

 $ uprecords

to see how long the server has been up for.

Contents

Download various perl modules as follows. The SSLeay stuff is needed to use SSL with Webmin. You need to be on-line for this.

 # perl -MCPAN -e shell
 cpan> install MD5
 cpan> install Bundle::CPAN
 cpan> reload CPAN
 cpan> force install Net::SSLeay
 cpan> exit

Contents

Install Webmin, an excellent browser based tool for administering and configuring the system.

The tarball should be un-tarred in /usr/local or similar, as this is just configured in the directory it was un-tarred in.

 # cd /usr/local
 # tar -xzf webmin-1.130.tar.gz
 # cd webmin-1.130
 # ./setup.sh

If you want to access the webmin from another machine, you need to change the firewall settings. Add the following line to /etc/sysconfig/iptables (immediately before the -A RH_Firewall-1-INPUT -j... line).

 -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m state --dport 10000 --state NEW -j ACCEPT

 # service iptables restart