Graphics Lab 1.7 GHz P4 Linux Hosts
Template for RedHat 7.1 Network Installation and Setup
//www.math/~dlgawley/admin/os_installs/linux/graphicslab/template.html

Things To Know Before The Install Starts

  1. Comments in the install section will be listed in italics .
  2. These machines currently (Dec 2001) have an ASUS V3800 TNT2 64 MB AGP card in them but RedHat doesn't have NVidia under the ASUS list. So use the NVida RIVA TNT2 (generic) driver during the install.
  3. Router (Gateway) IP is 129.97.202.1.
  4. <Hostnames> (that are registered with "hostmaster@ist.uwaterloo.ca") are "csgraphlab01.math" to "csgraphlab10.math" along with the corresponding IP addresses 129.97.202.41 to 129.97.202.50.
  5. All machines have had their MX records set to blanch.math.uwaterloo.ca (aka mail.student.math) so they should never receive email (except from themselves and we fudge the /etc/sendmail.cf so that doesn't happen).

Operating System Install

Initial 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: 129.97.202.XX
    Netmask: 255.255.255.0
    Default gateway (IP): 129.97.202.1
    Primary nameserver: 129.97.128.100

    Where:

    XX is the corresponding IP address from 41 to 50 for csgraphlab01.math to csgraphlab10.math respectively.

  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

    Logitec
        Mouseman+/FirstMouse+ (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: /fsys
  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

    "Please choose your security level:"

    select High
    select Customize
    Allow incoming
    select SSH

  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

    Select "System clock uses UTC"

    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 commands 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, 01/05/18.)

  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

    As a check sum, the lower right corner has "Total install size: 1,392M"

  15. Individual Package Selection

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

    Amusements -> Games
    Select all in group

    Amusements -> Graphics
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Archiving
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Communications
      Select   Unselect
        efax

    Applications -> Databases
    No changes.

    Applications -> Editors
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Engineering
    Select all in group

    Applications -> File
    Select all in group

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

    Applications -> Multimedia
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Productivity
    Select all in group

    Applications -> Publishing
    Select all in group

    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 -> System
    No changes.

    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 -> Kernel
    No changes.

    System Environment -> Libraries
      Select   Unselect
        krbafs

    System Environment -> Shells
    Select all in group

    User Interface -> Desktops
    Select all in group

    User Interface -> X
    Select all in group

    User Interface -> X Hardware Support
    No changes.

    As a check sum, the lower left corner has "Total install size: 2,222M"

  16. Unresolved Dependencies

    select Install packages to satisfy dependencies.

    You will need to go through this process twice.

  17. X Configuration

    RIVA TNT2
    Video card RAM:
    64 MB

  18. Monitor Configuration

    DDC Probed Monitor   GSM4a4d
    Horizontal Sync: 30-100 KHz
    Vertical Sync: 50-200 Hz

  19. Customize Graphics Configuration

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

    Default desktop environment KDE

    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

A couple of other packages that we want of off the PowerTools distribution.

rpm -ivh ftp://rha.uwaterloo.ca/linux/RedHat-distros/7.1-pt/RedHat/RPMS/openmotif-2.1.30-8.i386.rpm rpm -ivh ftp://rha.uwaterloo.ca/linux/RedHat-distros/7.1-pt/RedHat/RPMS/ddd-3.3-1.i386.rpm

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
There will be alot of "error: failed dependencies:" messages but they can be safely ignored. If you don't believe me, try running "ListUpdates" again after the above finishes.

Change the default timeout for the OS selector to be as short as possible by changing the "timeout=50" line in /etc/lilo.conf to timeout=1 and then running "lilo" since these machines are only running linux.

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 " http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dlgawley/admin/os_installs/linux/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

Setup Printing.

See http://www.math/~dlgawley/linux/printingsetup.html.