Dave's MFCF Linux hosts template for RedHat 7.1 Network Installation and Setup

Things You Should Know Before The Install Starts

  1. My comments in the install section will be listed in italics .
  2. The type of graphics card and the amount of video RAM your PC has. The rest of the hardware should be auto detected if you followed the MFCF Linux Support guidelines.
  3. <Hostname> (that was registered with "hostmaster@ist.uwaterloo.ca") along with its IP address (129.97.NNN.XXX).
  4. Router (Gateway) IP if it's not 129.97.NNN.1, where NNN designates the subnet your host will be attached to.

Operating System Install

Initial Setup and Booting of Host.

Answering the OS Install Questions.

Each of the following list items corresponds to a seperate window whose name is displayed in the top center of the "User Selection" window.

Use the instructions at the bottom of the install screen to navigate around the screen and to move between windows.

The bolded text below itemizes the recommended settings for each of the "User Selection" Windows.

  1. Choose a Language
    English
  2. Keyboard Type

    Always try to use the default setting first.

    us
  3. Installation Method
    NFS image
  4. Configure TCP/IP

    Do not select "Use dynamic IP configuration (BOOTP/DHCP)"

    IP Address: 129.97.NNN.XXX
    Netmask: 255.255.255.0
    Default gateway (IP): 129.97.NNN.1
    Primary nameserver: 129.97.128.100

    Where:

    NNN and XXX are the values obtained when you registered your <Hostname> with "hostmaster@ist.uwaterloo.ca".

    <Hostname> is the the fully qualified name. ie The fully qualified hostname of "linux22.math" is "linux22.math.uwaterloo.ca""

  5. NFS Setup
    NFS server name: rha.uwaterloo.ca
    Red Hat directory: /Distros/7.1/

    Note that the Red Hat directory name is case sensitive.

At this point the graphical user interface install starts and the screen is divided into two windows: the "Online Help" on the left side and "User Selection" on the right. The item names now correspond to the "User Selection" window.

  1. Mouse Configuration

    Always try to use the default setting first.

    3 Button Mouse (PS/2)
  2. Welcome

    Nothing to enter on this screen.

  3. Installation Type
    Custom Setup
  4. Disk Partitioning
    Manually partition with Disk Druid

    The real partitioning of the disk was done before the install started with PQ partition magic.

  5. Disk Druid

    Edit hda2 to have

    Mount Point: /

    Edit hda4 to have

    Mount Point: /home

    Boot Partition Warning Window pops up

    The new hardware has a system BIOS that supports booting above the 1024 cylinder limit. So we can ignore this.

    Select OK.

  6. Choose Partitions to Format

    Always format "/", and (only if you haven't done it recently or suppect that your disk is flacky) "check for bad blocks while formatting".

    Since the "/home" directory already had information, it was not formated.

  7. LILO Configuration
    check Create boot disk

    We want to use LILO to handle booting.

    check Install LILO
    select /dev/hda Master Boot Record (MBR)

    Since we want to use "lba32" mode of addressing the disk drive,

    uncheck Use linear mode (needed for some SCSI drives)

    Select the Device that has the OS installed that you want booted by default and make sure that the "Default boot image" box is checked.

    You can also change the labels of the boot devices as you like by selecting the "Device" and entering the new label in the "Boot label: " box.

  8. Network Configuration

    There should be nothing to do here as the information was already provided as part of NFS mounting the install media.

  9. Firewall Configuration

    These notes are very preliminary

    Since we're going to use pmfirewall package to setup ipchains
    "Please choose your security level:"

    select No firewall
  10. Language Selection

    Select the languages first

    check English (Canada)
    check English (Great Britain)
    check English (USA)

    And then

    Choose the default language: English (Canada)
  11. Time Zone Selection

    Do not select "System clock uses UTC" since we will be dual booting the host where one of the choices is a Microsoft OS.

    Click on map to select time zone or scroll through options and select one of the "Eastern Time" zone choices.

    Location: ... Eastern Time
  12. Account Configuration
    Set a "Root Passwd" and "Confirm" it.

    I recommend setting up additional accounts after the OS is installed. You can then use the command "adduser". (MFCF should have a web page on account management but we don't yet, 01/09/18.)

  13. Authentication Configuration
    Enable MD5 passwords
    Enable shadow passwords

    DO NOT select "Enable NIS", "Enable LDAP", or "Enable Kerberos".

  14. Package Group Selection

    These choices were selected:

    "X Window System", "GNOME", "KDE", "Mail/WWW/News Tools", "DOS/Windows Connectivity", "Graphics Manipulation", "Games", "Multimedia Support", "Networked Workstation", "Network Management Workstation", "Authoring/Publishing", "Emacs", "Development", "Kernel Development", "Utilities".

    Also checked Select individual packages

  15. Individual Package Selection

    Only changes to the settings created by the previous step are noted bellow.

    Applications -> Archiving
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Communications
      Select   Unselect
        efax

    Applications -> Editors
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Engineering
    Select all in group

    Applications -> File
      Select   Unselect
      tree  

    Applications -> Internet
      Select   Unselect
        fetch mail
        gq
        htdig
        htdig-web
        openldap-clients
      openssl-perl  
      openssl-python  
      x3270-text  
      xmailbox  
      xrn  
      ytalk  

    Applications -> Multimedia
      Select   Unselect
      gimp-data-extras  
      gimp-perl  
      gsm  
      transfig  
      xfig  
      xmms-gnome  

    Applications -> Publishing
      Select   Unselect
      enscript  
      tetex-doc  

    Applications -> System
      Select   Unselect
      gnome-linuxconf  
      linuxconf  
      macutils  
        modemtool
        mt-st
      procinfo  
      psacct  
      symlinnks  
      sysctlconfig  
      tripwire  
      usbview  
      xcpustate  
      xosview  
      xsysinfo  
      xtoolwait  

    Applications -> Text
      Select   Unselect
      mawk  
      rgrep  

    Development -> Debuggers
    Select all in group

    Development -> Languages
    Select all in group

    Development -> Libraries
    Select all in group

    Development -> Tools
    Select all in group

    Documentation
      Select   Unselect
      XFree86-doc  
      bash-doc  
      blas-man  
      lapack-man  
      php-manual  
      python-docs  

    System Environment -> Base
      Select   Unselect
        nss_ldap
        pam_krb5
        rhn_register
        rhn_register_gnome
        up2date
        up2date_gnome
        yptools

    System Environment -> Daemons
      Select   Unselect
        finger-server
      ntp  
        rusers-server
        talk-server
        telnet-server
        ypbind
        ypserv

    System Environment -> Libraries
      Select   Unselect
      Wnn6-SDK  
      fnlib  
        krbafs
      libPropList  

    System Environment -> Shells
    Select all in group

    User Interface -> Desktops
    Select all in group

    User Interface -> X
    Select all in group

  16. Unresolved Dependencies

    Still need to find where Canna-libs, Wnn6-SDK, compat-glibc and other items came from!

    Select Install packages to satisfy dependencies.

  17. X Configuration

    Always try to use the default setting first.

    Select your graphics card here.
    Video card RAM:
    How much memory does the graphics card have?

  18. Monitor Configuration

    Always try to use the default setting first.

    Try to find your Monitor and/or set the
    Horizontal Sync: AB.C-XY.Z KHz
    Vertical Sync: GH-JK Hz

  19. Customize Graphics Configuration

    Pick your favourite colour depth and screen resolution for the monitor/graphics card you're using.

    Color Depth: True Color (24 Bit)
    Screen Resolution: 1280 x 1024

    I'm not recommending you use gnome here, it's just the default for RedHat so until someone provides a comparison between KDE and Gnome that shows KDE is much better, I'm recommending the default.

    Default desktop environment GNOME

    Go ahead and use the graphical login since you can switch to the non-graphical virtual terminals "Ctl-Alt-F1, Ctl-Alt-F2, ... Ctrl-Alt-F5" if you want a plain ASCII login.

    Login type Graphical

  20. About to Install

    Last chance to "backup" and make changes. Once you're happy...

  21. Installing Packages

    Nice GUI shows you how the install is going. When it is done you automatically switch to the next section.

  22. Bootdisk Creation

    Put a formated floppy disk in floppy drive, and continue.

  23. Congratulations

    Nothing to do but hit Exit.

Updating the System

"lynx" config file must be changed to tell it to use passive ftp service.

echo "FTP_PASSIVE:TRUE" >> /etc/lynx.cfg

We use IST's (Jeff Voskamp's) UWupdates package to keep system up to date, so install it.

rpm -ivh ftp://rha.uwaterloo.ca/linux/UWupdates.i386.rpm

Update the system.

ListUpdates | ApplyUpdates

Change the default timeout for the OS selector to 30 seconds by changing the "timeout=50" line in /etc/lilo.conf to timeout=30 and then running "lilo"

reboot host to make sure all updates have taken affect.

reboot

Apply MFCF's Post Installation scripts.

After the host has rebooted, logon as root, use a web tool to download the compressed tar file "postinstallation.tar.gz" into the "/root" directory.

Unpack the compressed tar file and run the hostsetup script the MFCF.postinstallation directory.

cd /root; tar zxvf postinstallation.tar.gz
chown -R root.root MFCF.postinstallation
cd MFCF.postinstallation; ./hostsetup -v

IDE CDRW setup

To use the ide cdrw we need to enable the ide-scsi pseudo device driver by adding the line append="hdc=ide-scsi" to the "/etc/lilo.conf" file and rerunning lilo. The "/etc/lilo.conf" file ends up looking like 

	boot=/dev/hda
	map=/boot/map
	install=/boot/boot.b
	prompt
	timeout=50
	message=/boot/message
	lba32

	image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
		label=RedHat_7.1
		read-only
		root=/dev/hda2
		append="hdc=ide-scsi"

	other=/dev/hda1
		label=Win2k

Setup Printing. 

# /etc/printcap.local
#

ljp_cs|lp:\
	:sd=/var/spool/lpd/ljp_cs:\
	:mx#0:\
	:rm=print.math:\
	:rp=ljp_cs:\
	:nline_after_file=true:\
	:lpd_bounce=true:

ljp_3016:\
	:sd=/var/spool/lpd/ljp_3016:\
	:mx#0:\
	:rm=print.math:\
	:rp=ljp_3016:\
	:nline_after_file=true:\
	:lpd_bounce=true:

And then run "/etc/init.d/lpd restart" after creating the file to create the necessary print spool directories.